Impulse Entertainment’s Craig Thompson on The Music Shop acquisition

Australia’s #1 B2B wholesaler Impulse Entertainment,who provide music and entertainment products to non-music retail outlets, has acquired online retailer The MusicShop.

The Brisbane-based wholesaler will expand the retailer’s product offering, which currently offers a range of CDs, DVDs, Music Books, Vinyl Records and Audio Accessories at MusicShop.com.au.

Craig Thompson, Impulse Entertainment Executive Director told TMN: “Integrating businesses is usually a tough challenge for any group, although we are impressed with how The Music Shop fits well into our organisation’s culture. Because both, Impulse Entertainment and The Music Shop, have staff passionate about Music and Entertainment, we found we share a common vision of how to best serve our customers.

“Moving forward, The Music Shop is expanding its product offering including a wide range of audio accessories. There’s more to come I cannot disclose at this time. We are also refining the customer experience and making sure we cater nicely for all music lovers out there.”

Impulse acquired Countrywide Music in 2000 and rebranded it as Countrywide Music Distribution and in 2010 purchased wholesaler and distributor One Stop Entertainment. However, the purchase of The Music Shop sees Impulse tap directly into the online market for the first time.

“The acquisition of The Music Shop fits into our core capability of distributing physical entertainment whilst also providing our business with access to new markets,” Thompson told TMN. “We have been supplying entertainment products to businesses across the country since 1998, so entering the e-commerce space is a natural expansion to our existing business model.

“We are thrilled with the opportunity of tapping into the B2C market, both domestic and international,” he continued."The Music Shop has created these opportunities for Impulse Entertainment and we’re just getting started.”

In March, ARIA released its 2013 wholesale figures, which showed digital music outsold physical music for the first timein history – digital music revenue took 54.7% market share last year while physical took 45.3%.

On the current state of music retail in Australia, Thompson said: “The music retail industry has now reached a sustainable level in the country. We seemed to have reached a peak of players exiting the purely physical [bricks and mortar] shops in the last five years.

“The music lovers we cater for do and will continue seeking good quality music from trustworthy suppliers," he told TMN."Owning a personal music library is definitely a more pleasant – and high quality – experience than downloading or streaming it.”

Since its inception in ’98 Impulse Entertainment has grown to a team of over 55 staffers and is the #1 supplier of music and entertainment related merchandise to the P&C market.

Image:Paul Freney (MusicShop.com.au), David Barzilay (Impulse Entertainment Online Manager), Susie Bass (MusicShop.com.au), Craig Thompson (Impulse Entertainment Executive Director)