Once we started advertising with him, business took off. Through a friend I met Mike Ross from KPRS radio, Kansas City’s only urban radio station. After a year and a half, I quit school, again, and went back to K.C. Louis, but I was NOT a good example of a studious college student. I supported myself by selling merchandise in Columbia and St. Thankfully, the owner of the building informed us we didn’t have to pay rent until we started making some money (try to find someone that generous today!!). We carried a variety of products including 8 tracks, record albums, used jeans, incense, turquoise jewelry, posters, stickers and a whole lot of other stuff, crammed into a space of 1200 square feet. My parents ran the store at first, as this is also the time I went back to college at Mizzou in Columbia, MO (primarily to find some girls to date). Following the advice of a relative in LA, 7th Heaven was born. In 1974, I realized that selling bootleg 8 tracks was probably not going to be a long-term career, especially since the copyright laws were updated to include pre-recorded music. I expanded my operation to include everything east on I70 to St. I also supplied other wholesalers that sold out of town. I hustled selling 8 tracks in liquor stores, gas stations, truck stops, swap meets and record shops. So, I did the logical thing…I quit college (As did my older cousin Arnie一the dental school dropout & influencer to sell 8 tracks at state fairs in the first place). Presenting the history of our record, sex, & smoke shop in KCĪfter spending the summer of 1972 selling eight-track tapes on the midway of state fairs, I decided that making money was a lot more fun, and profitable, then studying calculus and chemistry. Keep reading to learn the history of 7th Heaven Kansas City, in Jan’s own words. In honor of October 2020 being our 46th year in business, we asked 7th Heaven’s owner & CEO, Jan Fichman, to tell the story of our origins. 7th Heaven is not your average shop, so it’s no wonder our journey to get where we are today has been far from average, too.
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