After 45 years in operation, the seven-unit, Sacramento, California-based home entertainment software chain Dimple Records has announced it will liquidate its stores and close down.
After receiving accolades at the Music Biz annual conference last year where Dimple owners, the Radakovitz Family, were presented with the organization’s Independent Spirit Award, the company has now announced the hiring of Great American Group to run a going out of business sale for the chain.
The chain’s website is now located at DimpleRetires.com and advertises 20-40% off in an everything-must-go “retirement sale.”
The seven-unit chain had four stores in Sacramento — two book and vinyl stores and two all-around entertainment software stores carrying CD, DVD, vinyl and trend and pop merchandise; and stores in Citrus Heights, Roseville and Folsom, California. The seven stores ranged in size from 3,000 square feet to 13,000 square feet, with four topping 10,000 square feet each.
Dimple also has a substantial business through the Amazon marketplace. Moreover, the company also has another 42,000 square feet of warehouse space filled with pallet-loads of entertainment software packed to the ceilings.
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Dilyn Radakovitz says that at the Music Biz conference, the family — which sees four members working for the chain, her husband Johnny who founded the chain and their two sons — thought they were bringing on a new investor to help the business, but that deal never materialized.
She says a number of factors contributed to the decision to shutter the stores. First off, all of its stores previously sold a lot of R&B, hip-hop and rap music, with three of the stores heavily weighted toward those genres. But most of the big acts in that genre are no longer releasing physical product.
“We used to sell 3,000 copies of a big album” from that genre, Raadakovitz says. “But you can’t sell what they don’t make.”
Another factor was the push to raise minimum wage, which not only upped the salaries of the new employees but increased wages all the way up the ladder. “We have over 100 people working for us,” so those wage increases ate into margins, she says.
Finally, she says every retailers finances part of their business through accounts payable, so between the banks and the chain’s vendors it owes money. Her husband “Johnny wants to retire … but he didn’t want our sons to be stuck with all that debt,” she says. “Hopefully, through the sale we will raise enough money to pay off all that debt.”