Our Price
Encyclopedia
Our Price was a chain of record stores in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland
from 1972 until 2004. Originally founded in 1972 by Gary Nesbitt, Edward Stollins and Mike Isaacs, early stores were branded "The Tape Revolution" and concentrated on the then-new compact cassette
format.
The name was changed to "Our Price Records" in the mid-1970s; then to "Our Price Music" (reflecting the growth in the tape and compact disc
formats) in the mid-1980s; and then to "Our Price" following a final brand relaunch in 1993.
The company was based in London, with a head office above the shop in Kensington High Street
. It initially focused on the committed rock album buyer, with regular imports of "cut-out" US albums, a remainder store on Charing Cross Road
branded Surplus Records, and a mail-order business driven by advertising in the music press. These different routes to market fell away after the core chain grew in 1980 with the purchase of the Harlequin Records chain. Thereafter, national expansion followed, with the 100th store opening in the Kings Road
, Chelsea; the 200th at Stirling
, Scotland; and the 300th in the early 1990s in Brixton
, south London.
the largest). Brand recognition was driven by pun-rich radio advertising built around the "Get Down To Our Price" slogan, which later transferred to TV featuring an animated carrier bag called Billy. A sister chain, Our Price Video, was established to capitalise on the success of the new VHS tape format, and some towns eventually had two or three Our Price-branded stores. Our Price Video was later rebranded under the "Playhouse" fascia, but failed to establish a significant market share in VHS sales, and it was wound up by WH Smith in the late 1990s. (The otherwise unconnected Silver Screen retail chain was founded on the same "specialist movies" principle in the early 2000s; it too foundered, and has now closed down.) In 1987 the rock star Shakin' Stevens
chose a branch of Our Price to film the opening scene of his video for What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?
The expansion of Thorn-EMI
-owned HMV
in the late 1980s established a chain of newer, larger stores, which threatened and eventually overtook Our Price in popularity.
in 1984, and then acquired by WH Smith two years later, with Smith's "Sound FX" chain absorbed into Our Price. The corporate environment - in addition to its high street chain, WH Smith also owned the Do-It-All
DIY chain, Sherratt & Hughes booksellers and other businesses - changed Our Price fundamentally, and several members of senior management left the company in 1989 to create the rival MVC
(Music & Video Club), which itself would eventually be bought by Woolworths
. WH Smith later bought a majority interest in Richard Branson
's Virgin
Music retail chain, a move which (with both Our Price and Virgin brands combined) would push them back ahead of HMV
, but WH Smith sold Virgin, along with Our Price, to a division of the Virgin group of companies a few years later.
After this takeover, the Our Price name began to be dropped in favour of the Virgin name, or VShop. The VShop continued to sell videos, DVDs and CDs, but concentrated equally on selling Virgin branded mobile phones, with stores removing the bulk of back catalogue CDs from display with the aim that customers could order these in store for home delivery through dedicated computer terminals in a so called 'clicks and mortar' strategy to combine high street shopping with the emerging internet shopping phenomenon. It lost out to competitors in the fields of music and mobile phones to competitors such as The Link
, The Carphone Warehouse
, HMV and MVC
, while the increasing popularity of internet shopping rendered the in-store ordering terminals redundant.
, while maintaining their megastores until 2007 (then sold to Zavvi), sold the VShops and the remaining stores still under the "Our Price" brand on to Brazin Limited in 2001, a major Australian music retailer, who operates the Virgin, Sanity and, from 2006, HMV music store brands in that territory. Brazin re-branded all the stores as "Sanity
", a move which cost over 8 million pounds. Sanity never took off in the United Kingdom. In 2002 they announced a plan to trade in the UK under two names, their current one and a re-launch of the Our Price name (which continued to have resonance with UK consumers). This only happened at a few select locations and the stores closed the following year, with Brazin concentrating on the Australian market.
The remainder of the Sanity/Our Price chain was sold to a private investor in September 2003 but due to difficulties with credit and stock purchasing the chain entered administration in December 2003. In January 2004, the administrators closed all stores within two weeks, ending with the Chesterfield
store which hosted a closing day party. The remaining stock in the chain was sold in its entirety to the Oxfam
shops, whilst staff had to wait until May 2004 before the administrators paid the back wages that were owed to them from December 2003 and January 2004.
The Our Price and Our Price Records name and brand is owned by Entertainment Direct Ltd, an establishment which provides music, film and sports memorabilia to support charities, fundraisers and worthy causes throughout the UK.
An Our Price Records-branded store is seen in a Virgin Atlantic 1980s-styled nostalgia advert screened in the UK from 4 January 2010
Some seven years after its closure, Our Price still has a presence in the city centre of Wolverhampton
, West Midlands
; as that retail unit has yet to be occupied by a new tenant and the empty unit still bears the Our Price name on its front.
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
from 1972 until 2004. Originally founded in 1972 by Gary Nesbitt, Edward Stollins and Mike Isaacs, early stores were branded "The Tape Revolution" and concentrated on the then-new compact cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
format.
The name was changed to "Our Price Records" in the mid-1970s; then to "Our Price Music" (reflecting the growth in the tape and compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
formats) in the mid-1980s; and then to "Our Price" following a final brand relaunch in 1993.
The company was based in London, with a head office above the shop in Kensington High Street
Kensington High Street
Kensington High Street is the main shopping street in Kensington, west London. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
. It initially focused on the committed rock album buyer, with regular imports of "cut-out" US albums, a remainder store on Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus and then becomes Tottenham Court Road...
branded Surplus Records, and a mail-order business driven by advertising in the music press. These different routes to market fell away after the core chain grew in 1980 with the purchase of the Harlequin Records chain. Thereafter, national expansion followed, with the 100th store opening in the Kings Road
Kings Road
King's Road or Kings Road, known popularly as The King's Road or The KR, is a major, well-known street stretching through Chelsea and Fulham, both in west London, England...
, Chelsea; the 200th at Stirling
Stirling
Stirling is a city and former ancient burgh in Scotland, and is at the heart of the wider Stirling council area. The city is clustered around a large fortress and medieval old-town beside the River Forth...
, Scotland; and the 300th in the early 1990s in Brixton
Brixton
Brixton is a district in the London Borough of Lambeth in south London, England. It is south south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
, south London.
Expansion
In the first half of the 1980s, Our Price established itself as the UK's second largest retailer of records and tapes (with WoolworthsWoolworths Group
Woolworths Group plc was a listed British company that owned the high-street retail chain, Woolworths, as well as other brands such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK and book and resource distributor Bertram Books...
the largest). Brand recognition was driven by pun-rich radio advertising built around the "Get Down To Our Price" slogan, which later transferred to TV featuring an animated carrier bag called Billy. A sister chain, Our Price Video, was established to capitalise on the success of the new VHS tape format, and some towns eventually had two or three Our Price-branded stores. Our Price Video was later rebranded under the "Playhouse" fascia, but failed to establish a significant market share in VHS sales, and it was wound up by WH Smith in the late 1990s. (The otherwise unconnected Silver Screen retail chain was founded on the same "specialist movies" principle in the early 2000s; it too foundered, and has now closed down.) In 1987 the rock star Shakin' Stevens
Shakin' Stevens
Shakin' Stevens, also known as "Shaky" is a platinum selling Welsh rock and roll singer and songwriter who holds the distinction of being the UK's biggest-selling singles artist of the 1980s . His recording and performing career began in the late 1960s, although it was not until 1980 that he saw...
chose a branch of Our Price to film the opening scene of his video for What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?
What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?
"What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?" is a song written by Joseph McCarthy, Howard Johnson and James V. Monaco in 1916. It was released in 1917 by Ada Jones and Billy Murray on Victor 18224....
The expansion of Thorn-EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
-owned HMV
HMV Group
HMV is a British global entertainment retail chain and is the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company also operates in Hong Kong and Singapore. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index...
in the late 1980s established a chain of newer, larger stores, which threatened and eventually overtook Our Price in popularity.
Flotation
Our Price was floated on the London Stock ExchangeLondon Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
in 1984, and then acquired by WH Smith two years later, with Smith's "Sound FX" chain absorbed into Our Price. The corporate environment - in addition to its high street chain, WH Smith also owned the Do-It-All
Do It All
- History :Do It All was originally created by WH Smith in 1979 when the company acquired a DIY chain.Fierce competition in the 1980s saw the chain struggle, and in 1990 it was merged with the rival Payless DIY chain, owned by the Boots Group. The combined group - in which WH Smith and Boots both...
DIY chain, Sherratt & Hughes booksellers and other businesses - changed Our Price fundamentally, and several members of senior management left the company in 1989 to create the rival MVC
Music and Video Club
Music and Video Club or MVC was a British entertainment retailer which sold DVDs, VHS, audio cassettes, video games, and CDs of popular and specialist titles. At its peak the company operated 82 stores in the United Kingdom and also sold products over the Internet...
(Music & Video Club), which itself would eventually be bought by Woolworths
Woolworths Group
Woolworths Group plc was a listed British company that owned the high-street retail chain, Woolworths, as well as other brands such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK and book and resource distributor Bertram Books...
. WH Smith later bought a majority interest in Richard Branson
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English business magnate, best known for his Virgin Group of more than 400 companies....
's Virgin
Virgin Group
Virgin Group Limited is a British branded venture capital conglomerate organisation founded by business tycoon Richard Branson. The core business areas are travel, entertainment and lifestyle. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by Companies House, who class it as a holding...
Music retail chain, a move which (with both Our Price and Virgin brands combined) would push them back ahead of HMV
HMV Group
HMV is a British global entertainment retail chain and is the largest of its kind in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company also operates in Hong Kong and Singapore. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index...
, but WH Smith sold Virgin, along with Our Price, to a division of the Virgin group of companies a few years later.
After this takeover, the Our Price name began to be dropped in favour of the Virgin name, or VShop. The VShop continued to sell videos, DVDs and CDs, but concentrated equally on selling Virgin branded mobile phones, with stores removing the bulk of back catalogue CDs from display with the aim that customers could order these in store for home delivery through dedicated computer terminals in a so called 'clicks and mortar' strategy to combine high street shopping with the emerging internet shopping phenomenon. It lost out to competitors in the fields of music and mobile phones to competitors such as The Link
The Link (retailer)
The Link was an internet-based mobile phone and communications retailer in the United Kingdom. It is owned by Dixons Retail , the UK's largest consumer electronics retail group, and traded online through a dedicated retail website, which in addition to mobile phones also offered satellite...
, The Carphone Warehouse
The Carphone Warehouse
Carphone Warehouse Group PLC , known as The Carphone Warehouse, is Europe's largest independent mobile phone retailer, with over 1,700 stores across Europe. It is based in the United Kingdom and is a 50% subsidiary of Best Buy...
, HMV and MVC
Music and Video Club
Music and Video Club or MVC was a British entertainment retailer which sold DVDs, VHS, audio cassettes, video games, and CDs of popular and specialist titles. At its peak the company operated 82 stores in the United Kingdom and also sold products over the Internet...
, while the increasing popularity of internet shopping rendered the in-store ordering terminals redundant.
Demise
Virgin GroupVirgin Group
Virgin Group Limited is a British branded venture capital conglomerate organisation founded by business tycoon Richard Branson. The core business areas are travel, entertainment and lifestyle. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by Companies House, who class it as a holding...
, while maintaining their megastores until 2007 (then sold to Zavvi), sold the VShops and the remaining stores still under the "Our Price" brand on to Brazin Limited in 2001, a major Australian music retailer, who operates the Virgin, Sanity and, from 2006, HMV music store brands in that territory. Brazin re-branded all the stores as "Sanity
Sanity (music store)
Sanity is an Australian chain of music and entertainment stores, owned by Ray Itaoui, CEO. Sanity has over 155 outlets in Australia. The brand specialises in the sale of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray video games and related merchandise and accessories.-History:...
", a move which cost over 8 million pounds. Sanity never took off in the United Kingdom. In 2002 they announced a plan to trade in the UK under two names, their current one and a re-launch of the Our Price name (which continued to have resonance with UK consumers). This only happened at a few select locations and the stores closed the following year, with Brazin concentrating on the Australian market.
The remainder of the Sanity/Our Price chain was sold to a private investor in September 2003 but due to difficulties with credit and stock purchasing the chain entered administration in December 2003. In January 2004, the administrators closed all stores within two weeks, ending with the Chesterfield
Chesterfield
Chesterfield is a market town and a borough of Derbyshire, England. It lies north of Derby, on a confluence of the rivers Rother and Hipper. Its population is 70,260 , making it Derbyshire's largest town...
store which hosted a closing day party. The remaining stock in the chain was sold in its entirety to the Oxfam
Oxfam
Oxfam is an international confederation of 15 organizations working in 98 countries worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world. In all Oxfam’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives...
shops, whilst staff had to wait until May 2004 before the administrators paid the back wages that were owed to them from December 2003 and January 2004.
The Our Price and Our Price Records name and brand is owned by Entertainment Direct Ltd, an establishment which provides music, film and sports memorabilia to support charities, fundraisers and worthy causes throughout the UK.
An Our Price Records-branded store is seen in a Virgin Atlantic 1980s-styled nostalgia advert screened in the UK from 4 January 2010
Some seven years after its closure, Our Price still has a presence in the city centre of Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
, West Midlands
West Midlands (county)
The West Midlands is a metropolitan county in western central England with a 2009 estimated population of 2,638,700. It came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, formed from parts of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The...
; as that retail unit has yet to be occupied by a new tenant and the empty unit still bears the Our Price name on its front.