Internet Project > Global Brands > His Master's Voice < by Hüseyin Can Yenilmez

HIS MASTERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S VOICE - HMV

HMV is a UK-based music and film retailer (registered in England as Sunrise Records and Entertainment Ltd.). The first HMV-branded store was opened by the Gramophone Company on Oxford Street in 1921, and the HMV name was also used for television and radio sets manufactured from the 1930s onwards. The retail side of the business began to expand in the 1960s, and in 1998 was divested from EMI, the successor to the Gramophone Company, to form what would become HMV Group.

HMV stands for His Master's Voice, the title of a painting by Francis Barraud of the mixed Terrier, Nipper listening to a cylinder phonograph, which was bought by the Gramophone Company in 1899.

For advertising purposes this was changed to a wind-up gramophone, and eventually used simply as a silhouette.

HMV owned the Waterstone's bookshop chain from 1998 until 2011 and has owned the music retailer Fopp since August 2007. It purchased a number of former Zavvi stores in February 2009, and also branched into live music venue management that year by purchasing MAMA Group. It sold the group in December 2012.

On 15 January 2013, HMV Group plc entered administration. Deloitte was appointed to deal with the administration of the company. On 16 January 2013, HMV Ireland declared receivership, and all Irish stores were closed. A week later, on 22 January 2013, it was reported that Hilco UK would buy the debt of HMV, a step towards potentially taking control of the company. The sale of HMV's Hong Kong and Singapore business to private equity firm Aid Partners was completed on 28 February 2013. On 5 April 2013, HMV was bought out of administration by Hilco UK for an estimated ÂŁ50 million to form the current company. HMV Group plc, which had been listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index, was liquidated in July 2014.

HMV Canada is a former subsidiary which was sold to Hilco by the HMV Group in 2011. HMV Canada went into receivership in 2017 after being sued by Huk 10 Ltd., a shell company owned by Hilco.

On 28 December 2018, HMV announced that the company had once again fallen into administration, just six years after a £50 million takeover by Hilco UK. On 5 February 2019, just over one month after re-entering administration, HMV was acquired by the Canadian company Sunrise Records, which had bought the leases for 70 former HMV Canada properties in an effort to continue operating them as record stores. Sunrise planned to emulate the growth strategies it had used in Canada, including leveraging the renewed interest in vinyl phonographs. On 12 October 2019, Sunrise Records opened the Vaults in Birmingham the largest HMV record store.

Product range HMV stores stock a range of products including audio, books, Blu-rays, CDs, vinyl, DVDs, video games, record players, headphones as well as an increasing range of movie, television and music merchandise.

The company launched a music download service in October 2013 (www.hmvdigital.com), provided by 7digital, which includes iOS and Android apps.

The company relaunched its online store in June 2015, providing CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, and LP records for online order and home delivery with exclusive stock also available.

Sunrise ownership (2019–present) On 28 December 2018, HMV confirmed it had again been placed into administration. Hilco UK cited the "tsunami" of retail competition as the reason for the move.[64] On 5 February 2019, Canadian record store chain Sunrise Records announced its acquisition of HMV Retail Ltd. from Hilco UK for an undisclosed amount. Sunrise had previously acquired the leases for over 70 HMV locations in Canada after HMV Canada entered receivership, which expanded the Ontario-based retailer into a national chain. Sunrise plans to maintain the HMV chain and five Fopp stores, but immediately closed 27 locations, including the flagship Oxford Street branch and other locations with high rent costs.[65]

Company founder Doug Putman stated that he planned to increase the chain's emphasis on vinyl phonograph sales as part of the turnaround plan: Sunrise's leverage of the vinyl revival had helped bolster the Canadian locations' performance after the shops' transitions from HMV, having sold at least 500,000 vinyl LPs in 2017 alone. Putman argued that, despite the growth of digital music sales and streaming, "talk about the demise of the physical business is sometimes a bit exaggerated, especially in music specialists. Most of the decline is coming from nontraditional sellers like the grocery chains. We'll be here for quite some time."[66][67][65]

On 25 February 2019, the Financial Times reported that the Sunrise acquisition was valued at £883,000. Following subsequent negotiations with its landlords, by late-February, HMV has reopened 13 of its stores (including one Fopp store).[68][69][70]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMV

Brief History of the HMV Early days and expansion

1921 Sir Edward Elgar opens the Gramophone Company’s first HMV store on London’s Oxford Street.

1930S Begins producing radio and television sets under the HMV and Marconiphone brand names

1931 Joins with Columbia Graphophone Company to form Electric and Musical Industries (EMI)

1966 Expands to more stores in London and the south-east

1970S Opens stores across the UK but faces increasing competition from Our Price and Virgin. UK singles sales reach 500m 1986 Opens new Oxford Street store, claimed at the time to be world’s largest record store. UK single sales close to 650m.

1990S Celebrates 75th anniversary with continued growth and more than 300 stores

1998 HMV Media was spun off from EMI, with the music company owning a 43 per cent stake in HMV Media. Later that year, HMV Media bought the Waterstone’s bookshop chain and proceeded to merge it with Dillons.

Warning signs

2001 Digital music begins to take off as Apple launches iPod.

2002 The business was floated on the London Stock Exchange as HMV Group plc.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/chart/HMV.L

2005 Warns that underlying sales in the UK fell nearly 10 per cent, hit by ever-increasing digital downloading

2006 Profit warning and departure of longtime chief executive Alan Giles. Private equity group Permira makes takeover approach but walks away after enhanced bid rejected

2009 Extends push into live music by buying venue owner MAMA Group

2010 Ends the decade with its retail stores performing poorly, with like-for-like sales in the UK and Ireland down 15 per cent in a 19-week period

2011 It announced its intention to close 40 HMV stores as well as 20 Waterstone’s stores due to falling sales. HMV Ireland revealed that its profits had fallen by almost 90 per cent to £465,000 compare to £4.1m the previous year. Later that year, it sold Waterstone’s for £53m to A&NN Capital Fund Management.

Digital disruption

2012 Digital music revenue overtakes sales of CDs and records for the first time. Simon Fox quits as chief executive after six years

2013 HMV Group appointed Deloitte as company administrators and suspended shares, putting its 4,350 UK employees at the risk of redundancy.

2013 Hilco UK announced that it had acquired HMV, taking the company out of administration and saving 141 of its stores and around 2,500 jobs.

2015 Regains its top spot from Amazon as the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s number one seller of physical music during the Christmas period 2018 Files for administration for second time in six years, hit by sharp declines in sales of DVDs and CDs

2019 Sold to Canadian group Sunrise Records

Sources: https://www.ft.com/content/aabf7736-2933-11e9-a5ab-ff8ef2b976c7 https://www.marketingweek.com/hmv-brand-timeline/

HMV’s own “About us” webpage

hmv is a leading specialist retailer of music, film, games and technology products, with over 120 stores around the UK, offering a wide selection of new release and catalogue titles.

The hmv brand, made famous by the iconic image of the ‘dog and trumpet’ trademark featuring ‘Nipper, is practically synonymous with the very history and development of British popular music and culture. Hmv’s rich heritage as a retail specialist stretches back over 90 years to 20th July 1921 when its first store in London’s Oxford Street was officially opened by the celebrated British composer and conductor, Sir Edward Elgar.

Since that time hmv has made music and entertainment available to its customers in every format imaginable: from sheet music and the earliest gramophone 78s to today’s digital downloads. On the way hmv has, of course, notably also taken in vinyl singles and albums, cassettes and CDs as well as film and TV content on VHS, DVD & Blu-ray and games titles across all platforms. More recently still hmv has gone ‘back to the future’ by carrying the latest portable technology such as headphones and tablets.

As one of the first high street brands to recognise the passion that so many of us have for music, film and games, hmv virtually invented the idea of instore events and product launches, and over the years many of the world’s greatest artistes have appeared in its stores to meet their fans, sometimes to perform live or occasionally just to shop. From recording giants such as Elgar and Yehudi Menuhin in its very earliest days to icons including Cliff Richard, Kate Bush, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Madonna, David Bowie, Beyonce, Amy Winehouse and Quentin Tarantino and more recently Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and One Direction, hmv has hosted them all.

In its first few decades hmv traded principally from its main London flagship store and supplied ownlabel products to recognised dealers around the country on a franchise basis, but all that changed with the advent of first Elvis then the Beatles in the late Fifties and early Sixties and explosion of popular culture that followed. More HMV stores began to open around London and then gradually the rest of the country as the chain began to take shape and expand during the Seventies. But it was really in the Eighties, through the combined catalyst of Liveaid in 1985 and the advent of the compact disc around the same time that hmv really took off as a leading retail brand with a national footprint.

hmv continued to expand through the 1990s, reaching 100 stores in 1997. The launch of the DVD format in the late 1990s propelled the hmv’s growth for the following decade with the company exceeding 200 UK stores in 2004.

Source: https://www.hmv.com/about

HMV’s DIGITAL EXPERIMENTS November 2007 • HMV Digital drops subscription service June 2008 • HMV launches blogging site September 2008 • HMV to launch MP3 store this month November 2008 • HMV launches MP3 store September 2009 • HMV to close GetCloser October 2010 • HMV piloting third party online marketplace • HMV Digital becomes part of 7Digital site

Source: https://completemusicupdate.com/timeline-hmv/