Sam Goody
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| Electronics | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1951 |
| Defunct | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Products | DVDs, CDs, Movies, Video Games, Posters |
Sam Goody was a music and entertainment retailer in the United States and United Kingdom, operated by The Musicland Group inc. It was purchased by Best Buy in 2000, sold to Sun Capital in 2003, and filed for bankruptcy in 2006 closing most of its stores. The remaining stores were purchased by Trans World Entertainment which also runs FYE, Saturday Matinee, and Suncoast Motion Picture Company. It specialized in music, video, and video game sales. In 2008 Trans World converted most Sam Goody stores into f.y.e., though some still operate under the Sam Goody name.
Sam "Goody" Gutowitz (1904-1991) of New York City opened a small record store on New York's 9th Avenue shortly after the advent of vinyl long-playing records in the late 1940s. Although he did some retail business, most of his volume was in mail-order sales at discount prices. He became something of a folk hero among penniless college students as the first successful large-scale LP discounter.
Later, The Sam Goody name was applied to a chain of record stores established in 1951 by Gutowitz. In 1978, the company was acquired by the American Can Company (later renamed Primerica), the owners of Minneapolis-based Musicland, Goody's rival. Sam Goody continued to grow through both acquisitions and organic growth, including the launch of its website. The stores averaged 4,600 square feet (430 m2) but varied in size from 1000 to 30,000 square feet (2,800 m2). The Musicland Group was once the largest music retailer in the country, operating at its peak more than 1300 stores, over 800 of them Sam Goodys, and earning over $2 billion in annual revenue.
Best Buy attempted to diversify its retail holdings by purchasing Musicland. Best Buy's attempt to transform Musicland into a youth-oriented small-format technology hub failed after two years of ownership. Losses were exacerbated by a decline in physical CD sales in line with the general decline in CD sales, and by competition from big box retailers. Just weeks before Best Buy was prepared to liquidate the entire chain of stores (and after closing several hundred), they found a buyer in Sun Capital Partners, a private equity firm in Boca Raton, Florida, which acquired the chain in a cash-free transaction by acquiring Musicland's liabilities.
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