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Chapter 8 - CD WOW!
www.cd-wow.com
CD WOW!
is a company dedicated to customer satisfaction. Two
of the directors have spent the vast majority of their working lives in
the music business as music wholesalers and distributors. It is this
experience of the wholesale business that enables you to buy at the
best possible prices. The other directors bring the logistics and
systems experience to complete the necessary skills.
Your name: Philip Robinson
Company name: CD WOW! (Music Trading On-Line (HK) Ltd
Website URL:
www.cd-wow.com
www.wowwoman.com
And many country and currency versions as the “Charts” are
different in each country and the DVDs are language specific.
Key markets:
UK, Ireland, USA, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway,
Australia
Your company / website vision statement / goal:
Best Value Always in home entertainment products – to develop
our business into an Internationally recognisable brand.
What you sell / services you offer (brief description of your
company):
CDs, DVDs, Games, (and moving into Books summer 2005)
excellent customer service along with Best Value Always pricing
policy.
Have you always wanted to run your own business? What were
some of your previous jobs / companies?
I am a serial entrepreneur and have been running my own
businesses since the age of 19.
A valuations business, valuing jewellery and watches for probate
and insurance purposes, a Wine Bar and of course market stalls,
and fashion shop in Carnaby Street.
I started a racking company, placing music cassettes into high
footfall retail outlets such as petrol stations and newsagents etc.
Built this business to having over 5,000 accounts in the UK and
sold this company to a PLC in 1983 which I ran for 18 months for
them.
Due to the vast quantity of cassettes we were selling in this business
started a “publishing” business making music compilations and cover
version albums to supply in to this market in a new company I
started in 1985 which I sold to another PLC in 1989.
The CD boom was really taking off and I realised that the CD was
the first music format that was not time related. Previously, with
albums and cassettes the running time affected the cost of
production, while with a CD the production cost was the same with
1 minute or 73 minutes of music!
I started a company in 1990 which had secured the copyrights to
1,000 of tracks and the license fees were structured on an album
not by track.
This enable the company to launch a range of CDs called
“DoublePlay” which retailed at a new price point which at the time
was a first of £2.99 and all of the CDs contained more than 25
tracks. The market wished to replace their collections of LP and
cassette on to this new format.
The company floated, with a full listing in February 1994 for £50m
and the issues was trice subscribed. I continued to run the business
for a couple of years and left to pastures new.
I was the sponsor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and created
125 new symphonic recordings with the orchestra working with
amazing conductors such as Sir Charles Mackerras and Lord
Yehudi Menuin, this is still the largest classical recording contract
every to have been signed.
The logic behind this was to market a well known and well
respected orchestra to create a best value label of classical music
which had both national and international appeal.
I sold the rights for the
USA and
Japan which covered all of the
recording costs, and had the rest of the world including the
UK and
Europe in which to market this
“Royal Philharmonic Collection”, I
sold this label in 1998.
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