Spec's Music

History

Beginnings

Spec's was incorporated in 1948 by founder Martin Spector. The company's first store was a 1,500-square-foot (140 m²) structure in

By the 1950s, Spec's expanded their sales line to include

Expansion

Between 1968 and 1980, Spec's expanded at a rate of two stores per year, all located in South Florida. Many of the stores in the 1980s were given a flashy

Additional changes adopted in 1993 included new fixtures inside the stores that could house a combined stock of compact discs and cassettes, as well as listening "posts," each equipped with two headphones and programmed to play 10 compact discs, with featured titles rotating every several days or weeks. These new additions were showcased in a prototype 7,000-square-foot (650 m²) store that opened in Tallahassee, Florida, in early 1994. A little more than a year later in mid-1995 the company turned to the "superstore" format to try to maintain its leading position in Florida, which was being threatened by increasing competition.

Closure

In the early 1990s, Spec's opened two new superstores in Coconut Grove and South Beach. These two-story stores each featured more than 70,000 titles, a cafe, and weekend concerts. However, despite the hype surrounding the grand opening of these two new stores, Spec's Music was beginning to show signs of anemic financial performance. Sales and earnings were slipping, forced downward by the continuing stiff competition in Florida. Music sales were down nationwide, and Spec's Music was struggling. By the end of 1995, the company's annual sales stood at $79.6 million, a negligible increase over 1994's total of $78.4, but actual earnings slipped from $2.8 million to a meager $1 million.