CD Island calls it quits

Doug Mashkow has owned CD Island for 18 years, but changes in the industry are forcing him to close at the end of the month.

Christina Daly/Herald

CD Island, a longstanding staple at the corner of Merrick Road and South Village Avenue, will close its doors by the end of the month.

With the prevalence of downloadable services, like iTunes, and streaming services, like Netflix and Spotify, for music and movies, fewer people are purchasing physical media. Doug Mashkow, the owner of CD Island, has seen his in-store business steadily decrease, while orders placed on his page on Amazon have increased. But it’s just not enough to keep the lights on.

“It’s like putting a pet to sleep,” Mashkow said. “You’ve got that horrible feeling that you put so much care into it and you loved it all these years, and it’s on its way out. It’s sad. But I have to move on. There’s only so much more life to physical media.”

Mashkow said that, these days, as much as 80 percent of his sales come through orders on Amazon, where he does business as “cd baron.”

According to Mashkow, when he opened CD Island in 1996, there were 40 CD stores across the county. Today, only four remain.

Plans have already been made for the building that CD Island occupies. Chat Noir, a tea house next door, will expand when CD Island closes, using the space to increase its seating capacity.

“Right now, when I do bridal and baby showers, I have to close the restaurant down completely,” said Emma Tso, who owns Chat Noir. “So this will get rid of that pressure for me.”

The plans to close CD Island and expand Chat Noir have been a year in the making, but it wasn’t until Tso got her expansion plans approved by the Board of Zoning Appeals in late January that those plans were made public.

Tso, who has been in business in Rockville Centre for nearly six years, said the extra space will allow her to do more with her business. “I always wanted to do a tiny little gift shop,” she said. “And I want to move the cooking classes and wine tasting nights” — which the tea house hosts during the week — “to the weekends.”

CD Island is still open for now, with big discounts on most of its merchandise. “More than half the store is now 50 cents,” Mashkow said. “A lot of things that we bought back in the day just aren’t worth anything anymore.”

He will continue to own the building. Tso will rent the space from him, and he will still be doing some business there. He is still selling CDs and DVDs online, and will buy large collections of CDs and DVDs (100 or more) by appointment.

He said he is uncertain what the future holds after he closes CD Island, but he imagines he’ll stay in retail, probably switching over to a different store. “I’ve been a retail manager for 18 years now,” he said.