Almost three years since closing its massive outlet in downtown Vancouver, HMV is poised to return to Robson Street just as the holiday shopping season ramps up.
The London-based film and music retailer announced October 3 it had secured a lease a block-and-a-half from the old flagship store that once stood on the corner of Robson Street and Burrard Street.
“To be honest, we never wanted to leave,” HMV Canada president and CEO Nick Williams told Business in Vancouver.
“The reality was, it was simply that the lease for the real estate that you saw came up, we didn’t need 55,000 square feet anymore and we were frantically searching prior to that for a better opportunity.”
HMV’s three-storey downtown outlet closed in January 2012 but a much smaller temporary pop-up store opened in September 2013, just half a block down from the old location.
The new facility, which will open December 1 at 1148 Robson Street, is more modest in size at 3,000 square feet.
Williams said having a presence on Robson Street, which has some of the highest average retail lease rates in Canada, is very important for both the visibility of the company’s brand in Vancouver as well as for shoppers in the city.
Since the closure of flagship outlet, which opened at the Robson and Burrard location in 2005, Vancouverites have been without a major music retailer in the downtown.
Williams said consumers shouldn’t expect too many changes when the new store opens. While the company has expanded offerings such as licensed products and T-shirts, the CEO said the main sales driver would continue to be physical DVDs, Blu-rays and CDs.
After the previous HMV flagship closed its doors, a Victoria Secret megastore took over the vacant property and filled up 35,000 square feet in the spring of 2013.
