After 50 years, iconic Kansas City counterculture shop is closing; sales are underway

7th Heaven, a thrumming hub of Kansas City’s counterculture for the past half-century, will close later this year.

Owner and founder Jan Fichman said Monday that he plans to shut down the music store and head shop “sometime in November, probably,” though he hasn’t yet set a closing date.

“It depends on how quickly we move through the inventory,” Fichman said. “We have something like 36,000 used records in the store. All our smoking accessories and used music are marked down to half price, and new vinyl is 20% off. If you came in and wrote a check for a couple hundred thousand dollars today, we’d close it by Thursday.”

Fichman founded 7th Heaven in 1974. Raised in south Kansas City, he started out in the music business selling bootleg eight-track tapes at gas stations, truck stops and swap meets. After dropping out of college, Fichman opened his first shop in a former Taco Via at 7653 Troost Ave.; it later moved to the current location at 7621 Troost.

In addition to records, 7th Heaven sold incense, futons, water pipes, turquoise jewelry and used jeans, tapping into the tastes of the hippie underground.

“We caught it at the right time, and the business just took off,” Fichman said. “Selling records is a low-margin business. The smoke shop stuff is where the money was.”

Before long, 7th Heavens were popping up all over the region: at 95th Street and Nall Avenue in Overland Park; on State Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas; in Blue Springs and Sugar Creek, and even as far as Lawrence and Sedalia. At the company’s height, there were seven 7th Heaven stores. The last of Fichman’s stores closed in 2010, though his brother Ken owns a 7th Heaven in Blue Springs that is mostly a smoke shop.

“I believe we’ve sold more recorded music than anybody in the history of Kansas City,” Fichman said. “I totaled it up a few years ago and it’s somewhere around $30 or $40 million.”

As rap and hip-hop rose in popularity in the 1990s, 7th Heaven emerged as a hub for that scene. The shop allowed musicians to sell their records on consignment, and rappers like Master P, E-40 and Mac Dre sold their early mixtapes there.

“7th Heaven was very instrumental in the growth of the KC music scene and provided a place for us to get in the system, create our buzz, and make our money,” Courtney Richardson, who used to rap under the name Court Dog and was later signed to No Limit Records, wrote on Facebook on Sunday . “It will forever be a part of KC music history.”

Before he was a household name, Tech N9ne could often be found hustling his CDs at the shop.

“He’d come in and stand by the door and say to customers, ‘Would you like to listen to my new record? It’s right over there at the listening station,’” Fichman said. “He was always so humble and never forgot the people who helped him get where he is. I think that’s a big part of his success.

“Anybody can sell Taylor Swift and Metallica,” he added. “We were always trying to break underground artists. I hired people who were really smart about finding new music and new artists, and I just let them do their thing.”

The store weathered storms over the years — the rise of streaming music and a 2006 federal raid for selling drug paraphernalia. Fichman eventually pleaded guilty and forfeited $440,000 to the federal government and received probation.

“We were the big boys in town, so they came after us,” Fichman said of the bust. “They basically tried to destroy our business, but we kept on anyway.”

Word that 7th Heaven would close crept out on social media last week, and Fichman confirmed to customers in an email newsletter Saturday that the rumors were true.

On Monday afternoon, the shop was humming. Skronky jazz, Tupac, and late ‘90s rock played over the speakers as customers hunted for deals among the vinyl racks and glass cases filled with water pipes, grinders and vapes. One gentleman departed with a blue 6-foot bong that rose from the floor to his nose.

With retirement on his mind in recent years, Fichman said he tried to find a buyer for the shop, but no deal materialized.

“It’s a large store with a lot of overhead, and the smoking accessories business has changed a lot since legalization,” he said. “You can get that stuff everywhere now. Gas stations, convenience stores. You can get a pipe at Oak Park Mall now. Plus, people used to be willing to travel to Troost because of our huge selection. Today it’s not that way. And the city hasn’t done much developmentally to improve this neighborhood.”

He owns the building at 7621 Troost and plans to keep it, ideally leasing the 10,000-square-foot space to a new business after 7th Heaven is all cleared out.

A farewell party with in-store performances is in the works, Fichman said. He’d like to book artists with deep ties to 7th Heaven, like Rich the Factor, The Popper and Tech N9ne. “Maybe some Bay Area rappers too,” he said. “We’ve sold a lot of Bay Area stuff over the years.

“It’s been a good run — a lot of fun,” Fichman continued. “You know, it’s a pretty simple business. You listen to the community. They tell you what they want, and it’s your job to go find it for them and have it in your store.”