Sanity

History

1980s

In 1980, 20-year-old Brett Blundy and a business partner he met from school bought two rundown record stores called Disco Stick. They immediately closed one, combined the stock into the Pakenham store (situated in a small shopping arcade) and reopened as Jetts, selling vinyl records and cassettes. The lease for this store was for a three-year period; however, it was unprofitable from the outset. Blundy and his partner identified another underperforming record store a year later, this time within a bigger shopping district at Parkmore Shopping Centre, Keysborough, supported by a larger surrounding population. Before they purchased it, the Parkmore store was turning over $2,000 a week, but six months later as a Jetts outlet, it had increased to $15,000, and was subsidising the failing Pakenham store which was closed once the lease had expired. The Parkmore outlet lasted until 2010 under the Jetts, Delta, and Sanity branding.

In 1986, Blundy and his business partner went their separate ways with Blundy selling his 60% stake in the eight-store Jetts chain to his former partner for $600,000.

1990s

In 1990, Blundy's company Brazin Limited bought back the failed Jetts chain from the liquidators at a discount and began to progressively rebrand them as Delta music stores.

The Sanity concept and brand was established and introduced by Brazin in 1992 with its first store at Doncaster Shoppingtown. This occurred by chance thanks to Blundy's working knowledge of Doncaster Shoppingtown, as – while running his five-store company in the late 1980s – he worked as a casual shop assistant in its Just Jeans store to learn more about its culture and internal processes. When he found out the centre's only record shop closed without notice he brazenly talked his way into that lease with the centre manager, even though it was earmarked for another music retailer (that store ceased trading in 2010).

In 1997, the company acquired 14 CC Records outlets in Victoria, folding them into the Sanity/Delta network. Brazin Limited also listed publicly with the Australian Securities Exchange in December of that year with an initial public offering at $1.50 a share. Blundy retained a 62% stake in the company.

In June 1998, it acquired 27 outlets from the Brashs music chain on its demise via its administrators, KPMG, and the two remaining stores from Blockbuster Music in Pitt Street, Sydney, and Chapel Street, Melbourne – relaunching all of them as Sanity music stores on an ongoing basis (with staff, leases, etc. continuing at each store). After these acquisitions, Sanity and Delta had 148 outlets combined with Brazin publicly stating their aim was for 250 nationwide. The share price was now up to $2.29.

In September 1998, Brazin introduced IN2 Music stores by converting three Delta outlets in North Queensland and outer Melbourne. Like Delta, IN2 Music targeted a wider demographic than Sanity's focus on the youth 16-26 age group, giving Brazin more scope after the collapse of adult-orientated chain, Brashs. IN2 Music expanded the next year after the company purchased a further 23 CC Records stores in South Australia and Queensland, and re-branded more Delta outlets.

2000s

In March 2000, Sanity's first foray into a digital music download service caused consternation within the industry when they signed a five-year deal with Festival Mushroom Records for a three-year online exclusivity window on all tracks downloaded from the label at Sanity's website. Rival retailers or other online services were meant to be blocked from Festival Mushroom's catalogue for that period unless Sanity chose to strike separate deals with their rivals to let them in. Chaos.com and Leading Edge Music both made public threats to boycott Festival Mushroom's content, but HMV Australia (whose website did not offer downloading) followed through, removing all their CDs from their domestic stores, adding they were would do the same overseas. But the next week, Festival Mushroom backed down, stating Sanity would simply be the wholesaler of their digital downloads for the next three years, requiring them to make all products available to other retailers at the time of release. The store count at the end of June 2000 saw Sanity contain 233 outlets.

In October 2001, Sanity expanded into the United Kingdom via two related transactions with Richard Branson's Virgin Group, acquiring 77 troubled Our Price music stores for a symbolic £2, and in turn gaining exclusive license rights in Australia for Virgin Entertainment (which last traded in Australia nine years before under the co-ownership of the Virgin Group and Blockbuster Inc.). Brazin paid £7.7 million (A$21.8 million) to the Virgin Group while getting that exact amount back from Virgin for tax reasons. Brazin's managing director, Ian Duffel said that the UK music market was one of the strongest in the world that year and he expected a, "50 per cent increase in music revenues from day one." Further to the deal, Virgin would get 1 per cent of all turnover in the stores in conjunction to offering Brazin a £2 million loan facility. Brazin also made a commitment to restrict the size and proximity of its Sanity UK stores in order to ensure they do not pose a large competitive threat to Virgin's other music shops. In Australia, Brazin re-established the first Virgin Megastore, in Chapel Street's The Jam Factory shopping centre, in April 2002. Brazin also intended to use the Virgin brand to open 45 new stores in addition to converting 55 of its existing IN2 Music stores that had not already been rebranded as Sanity. However, the program stalled as Brazin battled internal disruptions and struggled to separate the target markets for Virgin and its chain of more than 200 Sanity stores (at the time). As a result, the company's entertainment division posted a $27 million loss in financial year, 2002–03, and by mid-2004, Brazin had only managed to open 12 Virgin Megastores.

In November 2002, an additional 41 British VShop music and mobile phone stores were acquired from the Virgin Group for £2 million. Earlier that year, Brazin experienced many delays in rebranding the Our Price stores due to landlords, heritage listings, and negotiations with Railtrack. The company also shifted Sanity UK's headquarters from Our Price's central London offices to Alperton. The new British outlets were already starting to return on investments and overall company operating profit rose to 32 per cent in the year to 30 June 2002 to $22.1 million with Sanity-branded outlets then numbering 291 in Australia.

2010s

By mid-2010, the last HMV store closed in Brisbane and all Virgin Megastores were phased out by Sanity Entertainment and closed.

In August 2010, all Virgin at Myer concept stores stopped operating under the Virgin brand due to Sanity Entertainment not renewing their contract with Myer Holdings (formerly Coles Myer) and were either closed or converted back into a basic audio/visual department operated by Myer (these non-branded audio/visual departments were later closed by Myer in 2011). Sanity elected to exit the Virgin brand despite the licensing deal running until 2015.

2020s

As of December 2022, Sanity had 12 stores remaining in New South Wales. There were also 12 stores remaining in Queensland, six stores in Victoria, three stores in South Australia, and four stores each in Western Australia and Tasmania.

In January 2023, Sanity announced it would close its 50 remaining physical stores by the end of April 2023. The company will continue to operate its online store.

On March 26, 2023, Sanity closed down its two remaining stores, marking the official end of its physical operations.

Recent developments

Despite consumer behaviour transitioning to streaming and online services, the 2000s saw Sanity resist change and keep their bricks-and-mortar store business model intact without too many changes. With Sanity reduced to 21 per cent market share, against JB Hi-Fi's 50 per cent, the chief strategy seems to be targeted towards rationalisation and increased competition from the Melbourne-based retailer, by gradually closing down large footprint stores within capital city CBDs, inner suburbs and airports (where JB Hi-Fi have a greater hold over these markets, and rents are more expensive), the three exceptions being Sanity opening stores in direct competition to JB Hi-Fi in Robina Town Centre (April 2010), Mackay (May 2012) and Casuarina Square (August 2012) where they were already well established. Yet, mostly Sanity have been replacing some of these stores by opening some new smaller outlets in regional areas such as Broome, Alice Springs (that store being their first Northern Territory outlet which opened in March 2011), and Emerald.

SAIN Magazine SAIN Unlimited and Ultimate

Sain magazine was published monthly from July 1998 to September 2006 by Sain Media and Publishing and was designed by publishing agency Grin Creative. SAIN was a 100 pages A4 full glossy title. It reached its 99th issue before being discontinued. For much of its life, it featured a flip-printing style; one half of the magazine was dedicated to movies and DVD releases, the other side to music.

Due to the success of SAIN Magazine, SAIN Media and Publishing and Grin Creative produced Sain UNlimited a 200 page glossy title made available in news stands nationally. Sain UNlimited was Australia's largest music publication during its time.

Ultimate was the final magazine of Sanity Entertainment, and was available free through Sanity/Virgin/HMV stores since December 2006 either monthly or bi-monthly. It was published by Nuclear Media and Publishing. In April 2013, it reached its 49th issue when the run stopped without announcement.