The former owner of Sounds Plus in Bury St Edmunds is already making plans to return with another retail offering, ahead of the store’s closure in August.
Sounds Plus will cease trading after 39 years on Saturday 11th August, after owners Pete Alexander and Stevie Grognet decided not to renew the lease on the shop.
“We do well, it’s a popular shop and we get people coming in but it has been a difficult time for the high street businesses. Anything we earn is soaked up by the location and the overheads have made it impossible for us to continue as we are now,” said Alexander.
“I know of a lot of other businesses which have struggled with the rise of the internet and we’ve seen so many others go before us. I don’t think it will be long before everyone has moved to other locations to be honest.”
Alexander plans to open a new Sounds Plus shop, elsewhere in the town, just a week later on 18th August.
“It’ll be very much the same thing but on a smaller scale. I’m going to try and do it more like guitar shops were in the 1960s. It’ll be a lot more old school like they used to be with everything second hand and old rugs and band posters,” he said.
“Guitar shops have become quite commercial nowadays but traditionally they were more like little clubs where people would go to meet each other and play music. I want to try and get it back to that if I can.”
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