Once a popular haunt for record lovers on most High Streets.
Summary
Our Price Records was the popular record chain was founded in 1971 by Gary Nesbitt, Edward Stollins and Mike Issacs. Their first store was in Finchley Road, London.
By 1976 the company had six stores branded as The “Tape Revolution”, specialising in the sale of eight track cartridges and the new compact cassette (how times change).
By now vinyl records were becoming more and more popular so the company was re-branded to Our Price Records.
It quickly established itself as the UK’s second largest record and tapes retailer (Woolworths were no.1) and by 1984 became the first specialist music store to float on the London Stock Exchange.
Where Did they Go?
It was bought by WH Smith in 1986 for £43 million.
Keeping up with the growing trend in CD’s (Compact Disc) the stores underwent a name change to Our Price Music in 1988. By1993, the company had 300 stores and underwent another slight name change, this time to Our Price.
WH Smith went on to buy a majority interest in Virgin Music in 1994. This pushed both the Our Price and Virgin Music brands ahead of HMV.
Sadly by1998 the stores were losing money and WH Smith sold Virgin/Our Price for £145 million to a division of the Virgin Group.
With Our Price still losing money Virgin attempted to sell the company off to it’s management team. When the buyout failed Virgin began a re-branding exercise that saw the Our Price name axed from 102 stores.
In the early 2000’s with 77 stores left under the Our Price brand Virgin scaled down it’s entertainment retail division. Megastores were sold in a management buy out, the remaining Our Price stores were sold to Australian entertainment retailer Brazin, who in 2003 sold to an investment company ‘Primecast’.
Sadly the same year Primecast began to struggle with the shops and by December 2003 had put the chain into Administration.
By April 2004 after no buyer could be found all Our Price Stores were closed.
In October 2022 reports began to surface about a revival find out more and get involved
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paul-h/our-price-makes-a-comeback
Commercial Break