I've been trying to post at my normal rate this week but I'm having some trouble.  Last week was a lot more disturbing for me than I let on.  I've always thought of the blogs as a place where people tend to over react but up until now I found it more endearing than anything else.  Seeing that people could actually lose their jobs based on those over reactions was difficult for me to watch and since facing that reality I've not felt much like writting here.   

So what I decided to do instead was to dust off a post I'd wanted to put up a while back.  Last month a record store in Sacramento named R5 records celebrated its 1 year anniversary.  I'd hoped to be there for it but sadly couldn't get up there.  That might sound weird coming from me (a guy who buys his music online and has never owned a record in his life) but this store has some special significance.  Let me give you a quick history to explain.

In the 60s Russ Solomon started a Record Store in Sacramento, CA by the name of Tower Records.  The store was very popular and eventually became a national chain. More importantly (to me) Tower became very much a Sacramento tradition to those who lived there. 

I have a very emotional attachment to the chain.  Near my Grandmother's house in Sacramento there was a strip mall that consisted of all the Tower stores (Books, Music and Video) along with a Comic Book Store.  As a kid I used to take the bus up there and spend the great majority of the day browsing around.  It was honestly more fun than I could even describe to you here.

(The beauty of the "Tower Culture" is that they actually liked their customers and didn't mind a 8 year old hanging out there for hours on end)

Anyway, Tower Records rose to great prominence nationwide because it (a) stocked hard to find records and (b) would special order you something if they didn't have it (which was apparently rare in the Pre-Amazon world).  The logo even became iconic in that a huge Tower store was located on Los Angeles' Sunset Strip which is frequently drawn, painted, photographed and otherwise depicted in the media. 

But, as some times happens, things took a turn for the worse.  You'll get hundreds of reasons for why that was (bad management, expanding too quickly, the rise of digital music, the rise of Best Buy, etc...)  but whatever the case the chain went downhill fast.

On December 22nd of 2006 the Tower chain met its sad end as the final few outlets closed their doors forever.

R5 Records, located in the same building as the first official Tower Records store, is Tower founder Russ Solomon's attempt to create a record store that is true to the chain's original roots.  So far, the attempt seems to be successful.  Mr. Solomon has said he doesn't have any intention of starting another chain and would be happy to have it stay a one store operation and it seems like that approach is working for him.

Turning back to Tech, the whole thing got me thinking on web startups. 

I sometimes think the web is almost a disadvantage to perspective startups.  Having access to the entire world seems to make them think they have to conquer it when in actuality they could probably find enough business to stay afloat in their own backyard (relatively speaking of course)

It all comes back to something we've discussed before which is the importance of realizing there's more than one business model for companies on the web.  If your goal is to start, as opposed to flip, a company than you don't necessarily have to give your service away for free, or try to make your money off ads or even get big fast. 

As longs as you have enough customers to pay your bills and some moderate growth you're probably going to be fine. 

For The Record (no pun intended): A Company named Caiman Inc. bought the name "Tower Records" and the Tower Records web site while the original company was in bankruptcy court.  That company has said they might open new stores.  But if they do that would obviously be a completely different company from the original Tower.