DBB said:
The retail space is really small, and there's a creepy downstairs area that must be much larger. When I was doing a research project that later turned out to be totally useless, I was in Kråklund six to eight hours a day for about a week. At lunchtime, about half a dozen people come up those stairs behind the counter. It's like the entrance to some D&D dungeon.
What I love... all the cases on the shelves have no discs in them. You can look through the booklets all you want (and when I was going through all of them for the project, I was wearing rubber gloves). You go to the counter with this empty case, and they have to go downstairs to get a wrapped copy of the CD for you. If they're out, they get the CD out of a tray and you get to keep the copy that everyone has had their grubby little hands on, at a bit of a discount.
A New York metal store that I believe is no longer in existence used to have a similar scheme but apparently theft of the booklets was a large problem.
Kråklund also has a tidy little punk section and a little pop CD section, but most of the retail stock is MMMEEETTTTAAAAAALLLLLL. Interesting that Alexi Laiho has some side project signed to Kråklund and it's in the pop section... Interesting that things like old Genesis and Yes are in the pop section, but much of the Inside Out floofy bands are in the metal section.
Kråklund also has a very interesting way of displaying the CDs. There are the masses of CDs on the shelves that you have to flip through to look at, but the metal and punk shelves are against a wall where the albums are on full display. It's not a random placement, it seems that some bands get the featured wall treatment or they don't. I guess I should ask whether the bands up there are selected by any sales criteria or if it's more of an employee recommentation kind of thing. When bands like Cathedral and Dismember and Rage are up there, I don't think it's sales related.
