Fri, 13 May 2011 | BUSINESS SALE
Dress Circle, the West End theatre shop that bills itself as the "longest- running show business and musical theatre shop in the world", is urgently looking for external investment to keep it afloat, its owner has said.
Murray Allan, who has owned the shop for the last 17 years, said that he is facing having to close the Covent Garden retail premises and move the business online, due to a combination of onerous rent and competition from download sites.
"I'm very much struggling to keep the shop open," he told industry newspaper, The Stage. "I'm probably a couple of months [away from closure], if that. It's very soon. By the end of June I've got to either be rescued or become a website, an online store only."
The shop is a fixture of the West End musical theatre scene, regularly hosting signings and intimate performances from some of the theatre world's biggest stars. It has been in business since 1977, moving to its current premises in 1985.
He said that the shop held an established niche and had a lot of potential diversify if the right funding came along. Allan said that with outside investment for improved branding and marketing of the shop, they had the potential to move into areas such as the creation of licensed cast recordings of West End shows.
"We're not just a regular shop - we've been called a community and an institution," he said.
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