Right then, as promised here are some pictures from the Grantham store. Most are from before we opened and feature the three staff who worked there. Again forgive me if I have got names wrong, getting older is not beneficial to the brain cells!
This first one features me doing a slimmed down impersonation of Ian Botham at the back with from left to right, Martin (Surname?), Tracy/Jane can't remember which (Surname?), and finally Adrian in the striped shirt who was the manager. This would have been in the very early days of inputting stock.
This is the three staff again with owner Mario, sporting a fine mullet. Stock has started to arrive and being shrinkwrapped and input onto computer system.
As well as direct deliveries we took stock over each day from the central stock based upstairs at Newark.
A few days later and more stock has arrived and display teams have started turning up to put up wall displays. This was back in the days when all the companies had their own display teams travelling the country putting up displays in all the independent stores as well as the chains. This shows a display for Kiss "Animalize"
In this pic you can see a better view of the computer, looks very dated now and the small box on the left is the 8" floppy disc drive, that was backed up every night and once opened was available for Gallup to download the days sales. This was pretty advanced for this time, most stores were still using the old diaries.
Punk was still selling pretty well, note Oi! The Album.
Featured such bands as Cockney Rejects, Peter & The Test Tube Babies, 4 Skins, Slaughter and the dogs Etc. It was through EMI and had the wonderful catalogue number ZIT1.
This is Mario doing a David Bailey and shows how we displayed albums in the window.
More boxes have arrived and the store layout is staring to take shape.
More displays are up and the window strips are mirrored on the walls, featured here David Bowie "Tonight"
All set up and ready to open. The display on the back far corner is the latest and best selling 7" vinyl with the rack below dedicated to singles. We stocked an extensive range of new release and back catalogue singles. This was still at a time that singles remained in the company catalogues for more than just a few weeks, some for years.
This was the front of the store just prior to opening and before the signs were fitted. We had a big opening sale, bringing in lots of stock from the other three stores to give the opening a bigger push. We had LPs from only 50p !
Last one looking up into the shopping centre and just after opening. The signs still not up so must have been very early days. Also we had a couple of A boards outside with new albums on.
So this was all in 1984, and the store sadly did not take off. It seemed as though Grantham was not ready for a store of this size at this time.
Still need to find pics from Lincoln store, but will keep on looking.
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