Kevin Sutton:

>Classical at Tower Dallas makes up 5% of the store's total sales, yet a
>huge amount of floor space is dedicated to it.  From a business point of
>view, with classical turns at less than one, it does not make sense to
>carry a huge inventory.  When customers bitch at me about large product
>returns and the necessity to special order, I have no choice but to reply
>that if they were buying instead of bitching, we could carry a larger
>selection.  Frankly, people don't buy much classical music.  I spend 6 out
>of ever 8 hour shift at Tower classical alone and bored in the basement.
>As much as we would want it to be so, a store is not a museum or a library.
>You gotta sell the goods to stay open.  On the pop floor, the line is 10
>deep with each customer dropping in excess of 50 bucks.  It ain't happenin
>downstairs.  Until it does, there is no choice but to reduce the stock.

Well, *I* typically spent $200 on classical every time I went into Tower -
a rather high price to pay for the luxury of browsing, by the way.  The New
Orleans store was so busy that they had 3 employees in classical, but I
don't know relative sales figures.  The places that seemed empty to me were
the jazz, "world," pop, and "oldies" sections - ie, most of the second
floor.  At any rate, once Tower reduced its classical stock, it was no
longer worth my time (or the time of any big classical spender I knew) to
drop in.  Their sales dropped even further, they cut back, their sales
dropped, they cut back, and so on.  As far as I can tell, there's hardly
any classical in the New Orleans store these days.

Perhaps the classical market is so subdivided, it makes little sense to
carry *any* physical inventory.

Steve Schwartz