Grooves

  I've worked thirty years in retail stores.  During my tenure in retail, I learned a lot about how to be successful.  I learned how to display merchandise that would make the customer want to buy it.  For example, when I worked in Books at Belk, there was a new book by Billy Graham.  I built a cross with those books on a table.  We sold out of the books.  Creativity was the key to displaying items for sale.  I also learned what people wanted to buy.  When I was a buyer for Belk, I brought in a Tummy Toner knock-off as seen on TV.  We sold 10,000 units within a six-week period.  When I worked at Rich's/Macy's, I had the number one Lamp department in the Rich's company in sales and the number five Luggage department in all of Macy's stores.  Why?  I knew how to sell.

 My unfulfilled dream has been to have a store of my own selling books, records, posters, autographs, memorabilia, magazines, videos, and other stuff.  For a long time, I have been selling much of this stuff on eBay and Amazon, but I wanted to have a store of my own.  I have had some of my stuff in a couple of other stores, but I had no real control over the sales.  

 When I thought I could do a store, I put in a lot of study into what other stores did that were similar to what I wanted to do.  In my business model, I picked a few things from record or memorabilia stores, but I found that no one in the Southeast was doing what I wanted to do.  So then, the preparation began.  

 I had a very large collection of VHS tapes with music on them.  I took those tapes and recorded them on 8-hour tapes.  I created tapes with a lot of genres from rock to pop to country to classical to jazz and more that would appeal to customers. In order to break up the music, I also added movie or comedy clips to add to the videos.  I made sure that everything would be suitable for any customer that came into the store. The idea was to play these tapes in the store on a big-screen TV and maybe have a sofa so that customers could sit and watch them. I had over 130 video tapes to show in store.   When DVD's came out, I transferred much of the material to discs.  I had over 180 discs, since I couldn't get any more than six hours to a disc.

 The store was going to be called Grooves and Such. My advertising would use the tagline "Grooves and Such, it's a Gas, Gas, Gas" using the first initials in the store's name and borrowing a line from "Jumpin' Jack Flash" by The Rolling Stones.  I thought it was catchy. I needed cork boards to display the autographs and posters; three glass cases to show the small stuff; a few tables with boxes to use for the records and videos; and other fixtures for the books and magazines.  The store itself would be no more than 1200 square feet.  I figured that $175,000 would be needed to get the store going and allow it to be profitable within a year.  The location would have to be in an area with free parking and easy to get to, like a traffic light nearby.  I scouted several locations and found a few that could work.

 My dream never materialized.  The closest I got was in 2015, when I was working with a friend who would supply the financial needs.  Unfortunately, he was killed.  One blessing was that the store probably would have failed during Covid.  Maybe one day.