Australian music retailer Sanity has announced it will close its remaining stores across the country and move to an entirely online model by April 2023.
Per Sanity’s official website, the company currently has 41 physical shopfronts across the country. The majority of stores are in New South Wales and Queensland, with a handful located in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.
Businessman Brett Blundy started what would evolve into the Sanity brand in 1980, opening a single store, Jetts, in Melbourne. The first store to trade under the Sanity name was opened in Doncaster, Melbourne in 1992. Over time, the company grew considerably, with more than 150 stores covering every state and territory in the country at its peak.
Sanity was sold to current owner Ray Itaoui in 2009, and has continued to trade under the brand, stocking music CDs and vinyl, Blu-ray and DVDs, video and board games, books, Pop! Vinyl, merchandise and other products.
Itaoui attributed the imminent closure of the company’s brick-and-mortar outlets to the significant rise in digital music consumption in recent years. “With our customer shifting to digital for their visual and music content consumption, and with diminishing physical content available to sell to our customer, it has made it impossible to continue with our physical stores,” Itaoui said in a statement today, reported by 9News (January 4).
Itaoui went on to say that the company’s online store would continue to operate. “Our priority right now is to ensure each of our team members knows exactly what this means for their career and employment future,” he added.
“Our team is also working hard to ensure every customer receives all orders they have placed with us, including all pre-orders, which will be dispatched through our online business if the store is closed by the time their order arrives.”