Originator of FYE Who Started Franchise in Albany Has Passed Away

Maybe I've been living under a rock or maybe the music within the franchise FYE (standing for For Your Entertainment) but I never knew that the man behind the music chain was from Albany, NY.

Not only was he from our Capital Region but he also continued to have the home base for the music store locally as well.

His name is Robert Higgens and he built Trans World Entertainment from one single record store (which opened first in Trumbull, CT) to a franchise of over 1,100 while raking in $1 billion in revenue. Our first F.Y.E. location and Higgens' third was in 1997 at Colonie Center.

Higgens passed away at the age of 75 on Wednesday and while he had retired as CEO of the Trans World Entertainment company in 2014, he still remained on the board as a chairman.

Many say that Higgens was a very charitable man within our community with much of his donations being silently handled. Jim Barba, the president and CEO of Albany Medical Center stated:

"By sheer force of his intellect, his personality and his knowledge about finance, he led the medical center through a terrible financial crisis and developed a plan that would eventually lead it toward financial stability," Barba said. "When he was done after those two years, he asked me to take over as chairman, but he promised me that he would always be there for me, and that was a promise he kept right up to the end."

Sounds like he was not only an incredibly intelligent businessman, but he also had a passion for those around him and the community he grew and lived in. That's my kind of guy.