Demise
The 2000s saw the Virgin Group start to scale down their UK entertainment retail division (in 2007 they sold their domestic Virgin Megastores in a management buy-out, later becoming, Zavvi), so it was decided to divest their remaining 77 Our Price-branded stores to Brazin Limited in October 2001, a major Australian entertainment retailer, who operated the 200+ store (at the time) Sanity chain in that territory. The Our Price stores were bought by Brazin for a symbolic £2, and inturn, the company gained exclusive license rights in Australia for Virgin Entertainment (which last traded in Australia five years before under the ownership of the Virgin Group), initially setting up Virgin Megastores in Melbourne and Sydney. In addition to the £2 paid, Brazin paid £7.7 million to the Virgin Group while getting that exact amount back from Virgin for tax reasons. Brazin's CEO, Ian Duffell 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.
Early in 2002, 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 first rebranded Our Price store with Sanity's darker, urban look opened in London's Waterloo station on 23 April 2002 and the second opened at Paddington station on 9 May 2002 to positive customer reactions and strong sales. The Sanity/Our Price 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.
In July 2002, the Virgin Group announced that a select group of three VShops in Brixton (Our Price's 300th store), Hounslow and Notting Hill be relaunched again, this time as, Virgin Megastore Xpress, moving away from mobile phone retailing and returning to larger back catalogue products. Another two VShop outlets in Reading and Colchester were relaunched as Virgin Gamestores, selling both gaming software and hardware.
In November 2002, Brazin acquired the remaining 41 VShop music and mobile phone stores (former Our Price outlets themselves) from the Virgin Group for £2 million. By early 2003, the Sanity/Our Price/VShop network had grown to approximately 130 stores across the country due to Brazin establishing new Sanity outlets in new locations.
In September 2003, even after increasing profitability across their store network, Brazin Limited sold all 118 Sanity UK stores (some where yet to be rebranded from Our Price and VShop) to Lee Skinner's investment firm, Primemist Limited, for an estimated ₤5 million, citing higher expectations not met.
However, Primemist Limited immediately struggled to operate the chain due to difficulties with credit and stock purchasing, thus, entered administration in December 2003, progressively shutting 99 outlets as buyers for the entire business or individual parts of it could not be found. By April 2004, administrators, BDO Stoy Hayward, closed the last 19 Sanity/Our Price stores - meaning a further 80 staff were made redundant in addition to the 330 lost earlier in the year. The last Sanity store to close was located in Chesterfield which hosted a closing day party. The remaining stock in the chain was sold in its entirety to the Oxfam shops, whilst staff had to wait until May 2004 before the administrators paid the back wages that were owed to them from December 2003 and January 2004.
Currently the Our Price and Our Price Records name and brand is owned by Entertainment Direct Ltd, an establishment which provides music, film and sports memorabilia to support charities, fundraisers and worthy causes throughout the UK.
An Our Price Records-branded store is seen in a Virgin Atlantic 1980s-styled nostalgia advert screened in the UK from 4 January 2010. The advert has since ceased airing as of mid 2010.
Some seven years after its closure, Our Price still has a presence in the city centre of Wolverhampton, West Midlands; as that retail unit has yet to be occupied by a new tenant and the empty unit still bears the Our Price name on its front.
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