HMV to roll out Fopp format?

Music for Grown-Ups was a supporter of the Fopp mini-chain of CD/DVD/bookshops and was saddened when it went belly up last year.

The Fopp format – quality back catalogue at heavy discounts, and a perception of the soundscape which recognised the yawning gulf between pre- and post-Punk poprock – was a refreshing counterpoint to the heavy hand of the music megastores.

Ironically, megastore-in-chief HMV, whose silly prices lost my custom years ago, rescued two of the Fopp branches I used to frequent most, in London and Cambridge, and restored them to exactly the same pre-failure format. And the Fopp shops seem to be doing good business whenever I’m in.

HMV is such a big company, facing multiple threats to its business – downloads, supermarkets, Amazon … blah … blah – that it can’t be interested in running a handful of small Fopp outlets - unless it has a firm idea of what it wants to do with them.

Prediction: before the end of 2008, HMV will roll out the Fopp chain to at least the size of the original network. That would be welcomed here and by all fans of music for grown-ups.



Gerry Smith