Sam Goody employee in Oregon denies reports that the last location is closing: ‘We’re not going anywhere’

Sam Goody, the once-ubiquitous music and entertainment retail chain founded in 1951, is set to close one of its last two remaining U.S. stores next year. However, recent media reports saying that both locations will soon shutter may have been premature.

Currently, the brand has a store in the Ohio Valley Mall in St. Clairsville, Ohio, and another one in the Rogue Valley Mall in Medford, Oregon. The Ohio Sam Goody is expected to shut its doors sometime in February 2025, a rep for the mall confirmed to Fast Company.

A number of media outlets reported this week that the Oregon Sam Goody is also closing. But when reached by phone, an employee of the store strongly denied those reports.

“It’s not true,” said Gavin Culver, the store’s manager. “We’re going to do the last Blockbuster kind of thing because we’re cool like that out here. We’re not going anywhere.”

Management for the mall’s office also said it hadn’t heard anything about the store closing when contacted by Fast Company. We’ve also reached out to the real estate company that operates the mall, but we did not hear back.

A bygone era of music retail

The Ohio Valley Mall store, which opened in 1980, was once a major hub for music enthusiasts, offering a wide range of vinyl, CDs, and other media.

Store manager Rick Polanski, a 43-year veteran of the location, acknowledges the shifts since the store’s heyday: “It’s changed over the years, and it [stinks],” Polanski told the Times Leader. “I put two-thirds of my life into this place. We were a $2 million store at one point, but times have changed.”

It’s unclear why the decision is being made now, as no formal statement was released.

Sam Goody began as a side venture for its founder, Sam “Goody” Gutowitz, who started out selling records from his toy and novelty store in New York City. Over the decades, the chain grew into a prominent music retailer, becoming a staple in malls and shopping centers across North America.

The company eventually merged with entertainment retailer Musicland, according to Rolling Stone, when Goody passed away in 1991. There were 320 stores nationwide—most of which had been opened after the Musicland acquisition.

Once the company was acquired by Trans World Entertainment in 2006, many of the 345 media retail giant’s stores began closing and many were rebranded as FYE (For Your Entertainment) stores.

Fast Company also reached out to FYE for comment.

By 2012, only a handful of Sam Goody stores were left operating under the original name. Since then, these stores have continued to close, leaving only the last two locations in Ohio and Oregon.

Since the rise of the digital era, sales of physical media—including CDs, vinyl, and DVDs—have seen a significant decline as digital streaming and downloads became the dominant method of content consumption. Tower Records, another formerly ubiquitous record store chain, closed its last location in 2006.

Additionally, the mass closures of shopping malls, where Sam Goody was a prominent staple, may have contributed to the store’s end.