If you expect the owner of 7th Heaven, one of Kansas City’s most notorious retail outposts for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, to know the physics behind a gravity bong or have an encyclopedic knowledge of Little Richard’s vast recording career—think again.
Jan Fichman, the 72-year-old founder of the iconic shop, which closed at the end of November, is the first to admit he wasn’t an expert when it came to the store’s products.
Primarily known as a record store selling new and used vinyl, 7th Heaven (7621 Troost Ave., KCMO) steadily sold two other product categories over its 50-year history: smoking accessories, like “water pipes” for “tobacco” before marijuana was legal; and love goods, consisting of sex toys and other kinky stuff.
It was operationally convenient that the 1,200-square-foot store had three distinct spaces for each of these products. The smoke shop, for example, was the front-of-house money maker until vape outposts started appearing everywhere a few years back.
“I’d never smoked in my life,” Fichman says. “I didn’t even know what [pot] smelled like. I had no idea or any interest. This is strictly just straight-up entrepreneurial capital. It’s a widget. You buy a widget low, you sell a widget high.”
Those celestial widgets, which he even had his mom and dad selling in the early days when Fichman tried attending the University of Missouri, were a 7th Heaven business staple and arguably made the store ahead of its time. There were only a handful of “head shops” in the metro area for decades.
Fichman is a serial entrepreneur, and 7th Heaven’s Troost location, in many ways, was his stage. He created an experiential vibe that made customers linger, a formula that national retail chains are always seeking.
For many years, before the arrival of IKEA and Walmart’s entry into the business, futons were a big 7th Heaven seller, and Fichman still becomes animated when talking about the quality of workmanship that went into the furniture.
At its height, 7th Heaven had five locations around the metro area (Jan’s brother still licenses a Blue Springs store). At one point, the business also sold cheap used computers to Internet-hungry customers when those machines were still cost prohibitive. Body piercings were once a popular Troost location service, too.
Fichman’s passion for merchanting goes back to his father, a World War II veteran who fought the Nazis and later became an area car salesman, teaching his son how to strategically display cars on a lot. In high school, Fichman says working at Pinkie’s Ben Franklin store in Overland Park’s Ranch Mart shopping center gave him a rewarding hands-on experience, ordering products and forecasting what people wanted to buy.
Fichman got into the music part of the business by selling bootleg eight-track tapes out of his car during a small legal window in the early 1970s before the practice became copyright infringement. And musically, the store was ahead of the curve by being an early promoter of punk rock and hip-hop before they both became more mainstream in the 1990s.
Making one location work for 50 years is an incredible feat, says Frank Alvarez, another local retail music fixture. Alvarez, who has been involved in various metro businesses for 40 years, is co-owner of the six-year-old Sister Anne’s Records and Coffee in Hyde Park. He calls Fichman a “force” who did a lot to promote local recorded music back when costs were less prohibitive for bands to put out their own albums on vinyl, tape or CD.
Fichman himself fondly recalls selling albums by local rapper Tech N9ne and others in the genre, like New Orleans’ Master P, on consignment, before they blew up.
More than anything, the store owner enjoyed creating meaningful moments in customers’ lives. He remembers a man who specifically went to 7th Heaven looking for a disc by Luther Vandross, a favorite of his wife, on the anniversary of her death. “Do you know how much this means to me?” the man rhetorically asked Fichman when they found it in stock.
Fichman says he’s happiest knowing 7th Heaven expeditions “meant something to a lot of people over time.”
