Sanity Entertainment

Sanity Entertainment

Type	Unlisted private company
Industry	Retail
Founded	1980 (company origins) 1992 (Sanity brand)
Founder	Brett Blundy
Headquarters	36-48 Ashford Avenue Milperra, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Key people	Ray Itaoui (Owner) Garry Mortlock (CEO)
Products	CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays & merchandise.
Revenue	A$185,278,000 (as of 2012)
Number of employees	1,753 (as of 2012)
Website	Sanity.com.au

Sanity is an Australian chain of music and entertainment stores and is the country's second largest retailer of recorded audio and video discs. It is privately owned by Ray Itaoui, and as of March 2015, Sanity comprises 155 outlets in every state and territory. The brand specialises in the sale of CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays and related merchandise and accessories, sold from its network of stores and website. The Sanity brand was owned and conceived by Brazin Limited from 1992, before being folded into BB Retail Capital in 2006, then became a company in its own right after it was divested to Itaoui in 2009.

In 1980, 20-year-old Brett Blundy and a business partner he met from school bought two rundown record stores called Disco Duck. They immediately closed one, combined the stock into the Pakenham store (situated in a small shopping arcade) and reopened as Jetts, selling vinyls and cassettes. The lease for this store was for a three-year period, but it was losing money from day one. Blundy and his partner found another unloved record store a year later, this time within a bigger shopping district at Parkmore Shopping Centre, Keysborough, supported by a larger surrounding population. Before they purchased it, the Parkmore store was turning over $2,000 a week, but six months later as a Jetts outlet, it had increased to $15,000, and was subsidising the failing Pakenham store which was closed once the lease had expired. The Parkmore outlet lasted until 2010 under the Jetts, Delta, and Sanity branding.

In 1986, Blundy and his business partner went their separate ways with Blundy selling his 60% stake in the eight-store Jetts chain to his former partner for $600,000. This left Blundy to pursue an idea he had three months before the Jetts sell-off, after he noticed one of his "fashionable" female store managers kept wearing a broken bra, held together with a safety pin. Knowing that most lingerie at that time were beige in colour with unflattering cuts, he wanted to sell underwear in various cuts and colours, alongside G-strings that were unheard of for casual wear. Three months later, he took out his first franchise in The Bra Shop chain at Chirnside Park Shopping Centre, mainly selling brand name product, but gradually sourcing different lines independently of the franchise (his first run of 15 G-strings sold out in one day). Bryan Luca, the franchisor of The Bra Shop, entered into an agreement with Blundy to buy his three Victorian stores in exchange for Luca's four underperforming Bras 'N' Things outlets in New South Wales and a guarantee to not trade in Victoria. Brazin Limited officially commenced operation after Blundy expanded Bras 'N' Things into South Australia and then Queensland.