Tower Emulating Indie Stores With New Pug’z Brand

Retail

by Deborah Belgum

Tower Records, the Sacramento-based record chain that’s looking for a new formula to improve its bottom line, is converting its Westwood record store into its newest concept store, called Pug’z.

Pug’z is styled to imitate many of the indie and second-hand music stores like Amoeba Records that have become popular among younger consumers.

The Westwood Village store will have a selection of used CDs, as well as vintage clothing and furniture. A section on the third-level mezzanine will feature poetry readings, concerts and art shows. The store will continue to sell CDs and DVDs.

“We just want to have a whole bunch of different stuff in one store where everyone is laid back and cool and the style is reflective of the area we are in,” said Sara Hanson, a Pug’z spokeswoman.

This is the second Pug’z to be opened by Tower Records. The first opened in East Sacramento 18 months ago near California State University Sacramento.

Being located close to UCLA, the Westwood location was considered a natural. “There has been a rise in used merchandise in stores, especially where colleges are located,” Hanson said. “We wanted to get a little more with that.”

The store will make the change the first week of August.

Bookstore Leaving

With the Midnight Special Bookstore leaving its prominent Third Street Promenade location in Santa Monica after 10 years, who is likely to move in next spring?

That’s a very good question, said Walter Marks III, president of Walter N. Marks Co., the Culver City company that owns the building where the venerable bookseller has been housed since 1992.

“We hope to find a unique retailer,” said Marks, whose father Walter Marks Jr. encouraged the bookseller to move to its Promenade location more than a decade ago and had been subsidizing the rent for 10 years. “I want someone who is fearless and has a concept that is not in every mall.”

Marks said he hasn’t been approached by a retailer yet to occupy the 5,500 square foot space the bookstore was renting for close to $2 a square foot, only 20 percent of what most retailers are now paying on the promenade.

“We loved being associated with Margie Ghiz (the owner of Midnight Special Bookstore), and everything the bookstore stood for,” Marks said. “But obviously the economics of the promenade have changed. It was time to find a new retailer.”

Marks said his family-run company, which also owns The Helms Bakery Building and the Beacon Laundry Building in Culver City, was losing more than $400,000 in rent by subsidizing the bookstore.

Bayside District Corp., the business improvement district in Santa Monica, is trying to keep the bookstore in Santa Monica. “We’re going to do everything we can to keep them in the downtown area,” said Kathleen Rawson, Bayside’s executive director.

Staff reporter Deborah Belgum can be reached at (323) 549-5225 ext. 228, or at

[email protected].