(Twenty Years) Part 14: Emancipation

It was a year and change after I became the assistant manager of the store that the day we had been waiting for all these years finally arrived: Deak had decided at last to walk away from Record Den and was negotiating the sale of the store to Greg. Typically, we found out later through other sources that selling to Greg hadn't been Deak's first choice (shocker!), but apparently no one else had been interested in buying out the location, leaving him with no choice but to work with Greg's terms. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if he had sold a store out from underneath us again, but it certainly wouldn't have been pretty.

As you might have guessed by now, Greg's nearly three decades of loyal service to the Record Den chain were richly rewarded at the end as Deak relentlessly attempted to squeeze as much dosh as possible from anything not nailed down. The negotiations, such as they were, followed a similar pattern throughout: Deak ratcheted the price of every display fixture and desk organizer on the premises as high as he dared, and then Greg would endeavor to argue him down to a suitable meeting point. There were even a few times during this process when Greg would outright refuse an offer, either trying to play hardball or from outright disinterest (this was the case when Deak was asking silly money for the internet rights to the "Record Den" name, which we wound up declining).

Interestingly, we noticed during the negotiations that Deak still seemed to place a high value on the "Record Den" name on the wholesale front, yet he had to know as well as we did that our name was Mud as far as the industry at large was concerned. In reality, the only true value the words "Record Den" had to anyone was with our customers, none of whom had any idea of the credit shenanigans our company had pulled with the majors over the previous decade. That said, it's pretty surprising that Greg was able to get us an open account with WMG (Warner Music Group), and nothing short of miraculous that he eventually finagled a way to buy direct from Universal (the biggest of the Big Four, and the Godzilla of music distribution).

While I'm sure that Greg's longstanding reputation with many sales reps and promotional execs is a lot of what greased the wheels with WMG and Universal (particularly the former), it's also fair to assume that our new company name helped put their respective credit departments at ease. The creation of "Walrus Music" as a corporation was a deliberate move to separate this new venture from the old "Record Den" in the eyes of our would-be creditors. The name was the end result of Greg and I volleying Beatle-themed ideas back and forth for a day or so in search of a cool sounding company name. I would like to note here, for the record, that I think "Walrus Music" was a bit too obvious a choice: I was trying to come up with far more obscure points of Fab reference in my ideas. That said, I have to admit that Greg probably had a point when he noted that my favorite idea might not be the most inviting-sounding business name ever ("Hello, this is Slagger's! Can I help you?"), and since he was putting up the dough to start the corporation, "Walrus Music" won the battle.

With no announcement (save for the few friends and store regulars who had been aware of the situation) or fanfare whatsoever, Record Den officially became Greg's business at the end of March, 2001 with the newly-incorporated Walrus Music taking over all operations. While we looked exactly the same on the outside, it felt wonderful walking into the store that day, knowing that we would never have to deal with Deak on a professional basis again and relishing our new found independence. Finally the masters of our own destiny, we started working out new ideas on changing things around to our liking, and wouldn't you know, the first major change to the store occurred within days of Greg's taking control ... about two, to be precise.