HMV has made the announcement that many people have been waiting for; they will be relaunching their flagship store on Robson in Vancouver for the holiday season.

The reason they gave for leaving in the first place was that the lease was too expensive. A three-storey building and 55,000 square feet was not necessary and had caused financial issues for HMV, causing them to close down three years ago.

But with music being so readily available online, and a majority of people using products such as iPods, will starting up a smaller retail store help HMV with their sales?

Big companies such as Blockbuster and Rogers who offered DVD, CD and hardcopy game rentals have suffered severely with everything now all being online. So what makes HMV think that they will be able to make a big comeback based solely on a smaller store?

Our society is slowly but surely moving more and more into and ONLY into in the cloud technology. There aren’t very many people using CD’s anymore to play their music or popping in DVD’s to watch movies. HMV leasing a smaller store may help slightly in terms of reducing costs, but their profits will not be flowing in at massive amounts. So is it even worth it to start up a new store in Vancouver only to find themselves making little to no money?

Sources:

http://www.biv.com/article/2014/10/hmv-set-return-vancouvers-robson-street/

http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2013/09/hmv-robson-street-vancouver-is-back/