Nou Dadoun
Mar 26, 2003, 01:19 AM
The rumour mill has been working overtime with folks in the jazz community (and the record community) speculating on "what's going on with Black Swan Records" so I thought I'd put this note together to set the record straight.
I don't think it's any secret that Black Swan Records has been struggling for a long time; in the eight years since the store moved to West Broadway from our second location on West 4th, the recording industry has undergone massive upheavals and nowhere has the competition been fiercer than in Vancouver. In that time, HMV, Virgin, Future Shop, record clubs, Internet sales, downloading/CD burning, has made the prospect of a self-supporting Jazz record store a difficult concept at best. Combined with a general economic downturn in BC and a weak Canadian dollar, even the prospect of imports has proved to be too pricey to keep a reasonable (unsubsidized) trade going. At the same time, a lot of our long-time customers have moved out of the old Kits neighbourhood, driven away by high real estate prices and changing lifestyles.
So, after years of struggle on the West Side with rising overheads and declining sales, we've decided to take the bull by the horns and concentrate on our strengths. We're giving up the Broadway storefront for a smaller more-focused location in the heart of downtown, Suite 301 in the Dominion Building at the corner of Cambie and Hastings. We're revamping our website to keep building up our Internet sales and (I hope) working with Brian Nation and www.vancouverjazz.com and others to continue to promote Vancouver artists, the West Coast music community and other creative endeavours in general. We're hoping that our long-time supporters will still seek us out and that the disappointed folks wandering along Broadway looking for Celine Dion, Kenny G and Journey CDs don't.
Thanks again to all our friends who have built up their record collections and music passions at Black Swan over our 26 years on the West Side. We'll be opening the new location in early April with the same phone/fax numbers and email addresses.
We'll be in touch ... Nou Dadoun
I don't think it's any secret that Black Swan Records has been struggling for a long time; in the eight years since the store moved to West Broadway from our second location on West 4th, the recording industry has undergone massive upheavals and nowhere has the competition been fiercer than in Vancouver. In that time, HMV, Virgin, Future Shop, record clubs, Internet sales, downloading/CD burning, has made the prospect of a self-supporting Jazz record store a difficult concept at best. Combined with a general economic downturn in BC and a weak Canadian dollar, even the prospect of imports has proved to be too pricey to keep a reasonable (unsubsidized) trade going. At the same time, a lot of our long-time customers have moved out of the old Kits neighbourhood, driven away by high real estate prices and changing lifestyles.
So, after years of struggle on the West Side with rising overheads and declining sales, we've decided to take the bull by the horns and concentrate on our strengths. We're giving up the Broadway storefront for a smaller more-focused location in the heart of downtown, Suite 301 in the Dominion Building at the corner of Cambie and Hastings. We're revamping our website to keep building up our Internet sales and (I hope) working with Brian Nation and www.vancouverjazz.com and others to continue to promote Vancouver artists, the West Coast music community and other creative endeavours in general. We're hoping that our long-time supporters will still seek us out and that the disappointed folks wandering along Broadway looking for Celine Dion, Kenny G and Journey CDs don't.
Thanks again to all our friends who have built up their record collections and music passions at Black Swan over our 26 years on the West Side. We'll be opening the new location in early April with the same phone/fax numbers and email addresses.
We'll be in touch ... Nou Dadoun