"Does Your Mother Know?" Vancouver neighbourhood indy mag store to close

[This post has been updated]Yet another indy magazine store is going out of business. Does Your Mother Know? of Vancouver is closing after 13 years in business.According to a story in Straight.com, owner Kent McKenzie has notified customers that the Kitsilano neighbourhood store at 2139 West 4th Avenue will close down on Sunday 24th. 

According to McKenzie, declining sales and the cost of rent are prompting the closure of the business. He noted clientele is “totally different” today than it was when the store opened.

“The only people buying magazines are in their 40s and 50s,” McKenzie said. “If it’s young and hip, the magazine itself, the young and hip are buying them. And there’s niche titles too.”

The store's distinctive name came about because  city hall had rejected his proposed names for the store; McKenzie submitted a name lifted from the bill of a shop in San Francisco and it was approved. (It's also a song title and lyric from ABBA.)

[Update: A story in the Vancouver Sun notes that many magazine retailers have had to diversify, selling other goods and obtaining things like Canada Post franchises. Kent McKenzie made the following observation about the customers:

Meanwhile, consumer mentality has also changed. “In the old days, people would rip a page out of a magazine and steal it,” McKenzie said. Today, “they’ll take an iPhone picture and not think of it as stealing. I’ve said ‘No, you can’t take a picture.’ and they’ll say “Yes you can, I have it here. It turned out fine!’”]

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/magazine+stores+casualty+online+media/6808915/story.html#ixzz1yIygrTcn

[photo: Noa G.]