No Ivory Tower

Unless you've been spending too much time with Lord Lucan you probably know by now that Tower Records have opened a branch in Dublin's Wicklow Street, coincidentally at an address formerly occupied with equal style and industry by Hot Press in the late eighties.

Tower already have five stores in Britain, and they have joined the fray in a Dublin already served by three megastores and numerous other recorded music emporia.

So how does the Tower Philosophy differ from that of their competitors? "Tower have a very free and easy attitude towards the staff and stock selection," the Dublin store manager Elaine Downie explains. "We're a little less staid, I think, than HMV or Virgin. We leave it to the discretion of each section buyer to decide what to stock. That attitude comes right from the top. It's a great attitude."

Downie herself reports to Tower's European Operations Manager, but the only time he is likely to involve himself in Downie's sphere of influence is either to compliment a job well done or to make some constructive criticism. "As long as we keep making money and bringing in the right stock, things are fine," she says.

The most obvious thing that can go wrong in a Tower-type situation is to over-buy stock that stiffs on the shelves, but Downie personally feels that under stocking is an even greater sin since it means that turnover is being lost and is probably being picked up by a competitor.

One of the main talking-points about the new Tower store is its import section. "There are lots of records not available in Britain or Ireland but which are obtainable in the States, Japan or Germany, and if a customer wants it we should have it, no matter where we have to get it from." The import sales can be from old Tim Buckley albums, Steve Forbert, country acts, and is less likely to be current material. "I suppose the older buyer might be more likely to be able to pay the extra for imports, so a lot of our imports sales are of albums that have been out for years," she told Hot Press.

Obviously Tower's arrival in the Irish marketplace means more business for Irish-based record companies since Downie says that Tower buy as much as they can from the local suppliers. "Most of the local companies are fine," she concedes, "but you do get some who are a bit slow. There are a lot of companies in Ireland who have the rights to sell a lot of product, but you can't get it here, so we just get it from the UK. We deal directly with the UK companies, We don't have to go through Tower UK. Of course we do have an export department and we can get stock from them."

Asked if price is the primary factor in Tower's sales policy, Downie says that stock selection is even more important. "But we do discount a hell of a lot of product," she says. "There's always something going on in Tower with attractive discounts. We try to keep prices down as much as possible, and we automatically pass on any discounts we can arrange with the record companies."

Much comment has been aroused by the sheer number of the Tower store's stocks of artists like Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Frank Zappa. "Frank Zappa stuff flies out the door," Downie says. "That's the type of stuff that if we couldn't get here or in London we'd have to get it on import. Eric Clapton and The Ventures are other huge sellers, as are Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Pentangle, Planxty, all established acts with a good back catalogue. All that stuff still sells. The Beatles, The Beach Boys, they fly out the door."

Within a few days of opening Elaine Downie was visited by a representative of another Dublin store who wanted to "talk some sense into her" about Tower's pricing policy.

"He was wasting his time," she says. "We're not going to do something that's against our principles by letting someone intimidate us into increasing our prices. There's not going to be a wee cartel operating in Dublin where we all get together and keep prices up. Tower is an independent company and we're going to keep it that way."

With the exception of 12-inch singles, Tower does not stock vinyl, although Downie would consider stocking rare vinyl if they got hold of the right product, acid jazz and stuff DJs might use.

There is a very strong emphasis on compact discs, as against cassettes. "What the marketing people here told us just wasn't right," she argues. "We are selling much more CDs than tapes. In fact we're selling 4 compact discs to one tape. We were told it was 60-40 in favour of the cassettes before we opened here! That information came from the people at the record companies! Some said 50-50, but others said 60-40 for cassettes. And they were all wrong!"

Innocent bystanders might wonder how Ireland's record marketing whizzkids could get it so wrong. How does Elaine Downie explain it? "Either they're not interested in what they're doing and they're taking their own figures or the record stores are not buying enough CD product," she reckons.

Whether other stores in town adopt their stock policies in the light of Towers' finding remains to be seen but one way or another their response is unlikely to influence the singularly-minded Downie.

When considering the different types of music selling in Dublin compared to her previous home in Tower's Glasgow store, Downie points to the high sales of indigenous Irish folk music - in Glasgow she found it virtually impossible to get Scottish folk records. "In fact we sold a huge amount of Irish stuff in Glasgow, especially Mary Black, Christy Moore, Clannad and so on," she explains adding that Ireland generates extra summer sales from tourists in a way which rarely happens in Scotland.

Another factor about life in Dublin that took her by surprise is the lack of city centre activity on Sundays. "There's so many people walking around the streets looking for something to do. In Glasgow most shops open on a Sunday. I'm also surprised by the number of stores in Dublin that don't open late," she told Hot Press. Tower open until midnight seven days a week.

Downie was formerly assistant manager in Tower's Glasgow outlet and when invited to manage their new Dublin store and a staff of 37 she saw the posting as a challenge: In a remarkably short space of time she has steered the Dublin store to third place among the six stores Tower have in Britain and Ireland.

Already Tower's Dublin shop has earned kudos for its import, jazz and blues sections, and for the generous space given to Irish music. Perhaps its something to do with her Celtic blood, but Downie seems to have taken to the Dublin market with relish. Her bonhomie is contagious, and the bug already seems to have been caught by both her staff and Dublin's music fans.