Free Record Shop was a chain of home entertainment stores selling products such as CDs,

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s and

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s, founded by Hans Breukhoven. Its first store opened on 15 October 1971 in

Schiedam Schiedam () is a large town and municipality in the west of the Netherlands. It is located in the Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area, west of the city Rotterdam, east of the town Vlaardingen and south of the city Delft. In the south, Schi ...

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. At its peak, the franchise had more than 200 stores in the Netherlands and Belgium, but online available music and media supplanted the sale of physical media carriers. It owned the entertainment products retail chain vanLeest, an

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

-based flagship entertainment store called FAME, a gamestore chain called GameMania and several

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stores. The company operated multiple online stores using the different brand names. In March 2008 the company announced that they had sold off the Norwegian and Finnish operations to

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, in order to concentrate on the

Benelux The Benelux Union (; ; ; ) or Benelux is a politico-economic union, alliance and formal international intergovernmental cooperation of three neighbouring states in Western Europe: Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The name is a portma ...

market. In January 2012 the company licensed its websites to be fully managed and run by ECI Nederland BV, known for its labels ECI and Cosmox, making ECI the 2nd biggest online retailer in books and home entertainment in the Benelux. On 24 May 2013 staff and personnel were informed that Free Record Shop had declared bankruptcy. On May 28, the bankruptcy was accepted by a Dutch court. On 22 April 2014 Free Record Shop was finally declared bankrupt.

Notes

{{Authority control Defunct companies of the Netherlands Retail companies of the Netherlands Multinational companies headquartered in the Netherlands Capelle aan den IJssel Retail companies established in 1971 1971 establishments in the Netherlands Retail companies disestablished in 2014 2014 disestablishments in the Netherlands