The legendary record store Champs-Disques in Paris

 The legendary record store Champs-Disques in Paris inspired Jacques Fred Petrus. He wanted to set up a record store in Italy with the same appeal. Champs-Disques was located in Galerie des Champs on the Champs-Élysées Avenue n° 84 and was created by Marcel Benbassat. It was undoubtedly the most crucial record shop in Paris during the 70s Disco era and the 80s. Marcel Benbassat specialised in imports. Vinyls came from New York, Los Angeles, London and sometimes Italy. Among his clients were all the DJs from the best clubs like The Queen, Le Palace, Le Sept, L'Élysée Matignon, Le Bus Palladium, Castel... As star customers he welcomed Michel Polnareff, Elton John, Henri Belolo, Karl Lagerfeld and even Michael Jackson. Fred Petrus and his business partner Franco Donato copied the concept and opened a similarly styled import store in Rome in 1976. Franco Donato was a professional interior decorator and would design four more Goody Music retail points. Even the logo of Goody Music imitated the brand of Champs-Disques. And in turn, the logo of Champs-Disques was a perfect copy of the trademark of the American pop duo The Carpenters, first used in 1971.

The US import store Goody Music was a so called Italian division of the American leading music retailer Sam Goody. But this wasn't the case at all. Just a pinch of Petrus' crookedness to magnify his trade. There were already two music importers in Italy: Carù Import Srl in Gallarate and Ronchini Import Srl in Parma. But they were only interested in selling music from England and American crossovers and stuck to long players and 7 inch singles. Goody Music Import thrived because just Petrus specialised in Dance music like soul, funk and disco from the USA. From 1975 onwards the 12 inch single made its appearance and Petrus embraced the new format, conceived specifically for discotheques. The other music retailers weren't excited because in te mid-seventies you could count the deejays in Milan on the fingers of one hand, and the fame of a disc jockey was of someone who would "set up" the records more than anything else. In those days the DJ, with rare exceptions, had no technological knowledge or skills of sound mixing as is the case now.The disco market was a very specific and dynamic branch that required a constant awareness of the trends and the demands. In a short time Jacques Fred Petrus owned the monopoly and supplied dance records to radio stations and discotheques all over Italy.
In a March 1980 interview for Billboard Magazine Freddie Petrus explained it the following way, "When I first started out in Italy in 1972, I was importing product from the U.S., mostly disco hits and general dance items. At that time, interest in R&B and black music here was small, so discotheques were my main customers, mostly with modest orders. Once I discovered that Italians were keen on dancing, my business grew to take in mail-order. Next step was a retail outlet in Milan –which is still going strong at Via Marghera– which began to pull in business from all over the country."
His company was doing so well that Petrus and co-owner Franco Donato needed assistance. Petrus asked his cousin Claude Petrus to join him in Milan. Unfortunately the mutual understanding between the two quickly deteriorated as Claude couldn't cope with Petrus' sometimes harsh nature. After a couple of months Claude Petrus shut the door of the Goody Music store behind him for good and flew back to the Caribbean. Claude Petrus recollected: "After my bad experience at his record commerce in Milan I tried to avoid him. But I must admit that Fred was very charismatic. He also had great capacities for foreign languages. He spoke Italian, French, English and Spanish, even if the vocabulary and the pronunciation were sometimes horrible. But then again, this could have been one of his powerful charming and seducing instruments...businesswise as well." Hence Fred called up his three brothers but it didn't work out. Only Alex Middleton, his youngest brother, succeeded in collaborating with the hot-tempered "Little Macho". They had a good brother relationship and apparently shared the same business instinct and musical interests. Alex would remain one of the few confidants in Fred's life until the producer's tragic death in 1987.