Cosmo Music Brand Guidelines: The Richmond Hill Music Store That Closed in 2025

An import business north of Toronto.

Cosmo Music began as Cosmo Guitars, an import business run by Tom Hebert in 1966, according to Music Inc. magazine and Daily Hive, both writing in March 2025. In 1968 the business opened its first retail store in Downsview, today a neighbourhood of Toronto, selling guitars and accessories. The company counted its years from that shop: when it announced its closure in 2025 it spoke of 57 years in business, and Long & McQuade, which now occupies its former building, gives 1968 as Cosmo’s founding year.

By 1971 Cosmo Music had moved north to Richmond Hill, Ontario, in York Region, where Daily Hive says it went on to operate for the next 54 years. Music Inc. says the move brought lessons and a wider range of instruments; brass and woodwind instruments followed in 1975. In 1985 the store moved to a larger site on Yonge Street, and by 1990, the magazine says, the company had opened a separate Brass and Woodwind Centre.

It stayed a family business throughout. Music Inc. reported in 2025 that the store had in recent years been run by Tom Hebert’s son, Mark Hebert, and the statements announcing the closure were issued in the name of the Hebert family as the owners of Cosmo Music.

One building for a shop, a school and a repair bench.

The step that shaped Cosmo Music’s later years came in 2008, when the company brought its separate operations together in one large building on Via Renzo Drive in Richmond Hill. Long & McQuade’s page for the site says the move united Cosmo’s retail, education, rental, repair and performance operations under one roof, and Music Inc. also dates the combined superstore to 2008; Daily Hive gives 2018 for the start of its superstore format.

That scale is what the trade and local press stressed. Music Inc. wrote in March 2025 that Cosmo had been dubbed Canada’s largest musical-instrument retail store, and Daily Hive called it the country’s single-largest music store. Long & McQuade describes it as having grown from an independent music store into one of Canada’s largest musical instrument retailers.

The business was more than a showroom. The local news site yourcitywithin, reporting in March 2025, said the store sold all kinds of musical instruments and also offered rentals and worked as a music school and repair shop; the company also ran an online store alongside the Richmond Hill building. The family’s own description, quoted by Music Inc., was of “a hub for musicians and music lovers alike” and “a space where musicians found inspiration, created connections, and shared their passion.”

The same statement opened with the line “Cosmo Music has always been more than just a store,” and closed with the family saying they were proud of what they had built over the decades. The chronology Music Inc. published alongside it runs from an import business to a guitar shop, then to lessons, to brass and woodwind, to a dedicated centre for those instruments and, in 2008, to a single building for all of it.

Shops, schools and workshops.

Musical-instrument retailers present themselves through a small set of public elements: a shop sign and logo, a colour scheme carried from the storefront to the web shop and the delivery box, and the words they use for their stores and services. This series looks at chains and single large stores in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, and describes each identity only as the company publishes it or as a dated source records it. Where a company does not publish its colours or typefaces, the palette in each guide is an unofficial interpretation.

Store formats differ widely. Some retailers run one very large store beside a central warehouse: German sources describe Music Store in Cologne and Musikhaus Kirstein in Schongau this way, each with a single store and a large logistics site. Others run chains of city shops across a country or a region, and the guide for each company sets out its own store count only as a dated source gives it.

Services sit alongside the sales floor. Some of these companies describe music schools, lessons or repair workshops as services they offer; Music Store founded its Rock School in 1992, German Wikipedia says, and lists a repair workshop among its services. Events play a part too: Musikhaus Kirstein has held its own house fair, MusiConnect, since its 30th anniversary in 2017.

Online shops now sit next to physical stores, and corporate pages tell the story of founders and owners, from a musician opening a small shop to a second generation joining the management. Each guide that follows separates what the company says about itself from what independent, dated sources document, and names those sources at the end.

A closure announced in March 2025.

On 12 March 2025 the Hebert family announced that Cosmo Music would close after 57 years, Daily Hive reported the next day. In a company statement quoted by Music Inc., the family thanked “our dedicated team, loyal customers, brand partners, and the music community,” and said it had been “a privilege to serve as a hub for musicians and music lovers alike.” A farewell letter reported by yourcitywithin on 31 March 2025 pointed to the hard years after 2020, technology investments that proved expensive and did not go as planned, and a softer market. The online shop closed first; the Richmond Hill store stayed open for a limited time for a final sale, and the company said it had begun processing refunds on outstanding orders.

The building stayed in music retail. In March 2025 Music Inc. reported that Long & McQuade, the national chain, would take over the physical location, and yourcitywithin said Cosmo’s website described Long & McQuade as having bought the building, with lessons and repairs set to continue during the handover. Long & McQuade says it took over the site and, after an extensive renovation, opened Long & McQuade Richmond Hill in September 2025; its page for the store lists instruments, rentals, repairs, music and dance education, professional audio and a 240-seat music hall, with a café in the entrance atrium. The renovated store trades under the Long & McQuade name, not Cosmo’s; Cosmo Music itself no longer trades.

For a design guide, Cosmo Music shows how a single destination store can carry a regional name for decades, with a shop, a school, a rental desk and a repair bench under one sign. Compare Long & McQuade, the chain that took over its building, and PMT, a British music chain that also closed in 2025. For this guide we use a deep midnight blue, a warm brass gold and soft ivory with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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