JERSEY CITY — 1994 was a bad year for records.

With CD sales booming, vinyl sales accounted for less than 1 percent of all music purchases that year. Even cassettes made up nearly a quarter of sales.

Still, DJs and hip-hop artists and college students still bought old records, so there was a market when Stephen Gritzan opened Iris Records in a Brunswick Street storefront on March 1, 1994.

Flash forward 25 years and vinyl sales now hover around 5 percent of all music sales. But the boost in sales is not enough for Gritzan, 59, who will shut down Iris Records for good on Saturday.

“It’s sad, but what are you going to do?” Gritzan told The Jersey Journal. “I think it’s time.”

There’s no one reason. The rent has skyrocketed, Gritzan said, to $4,000 monthly, up from $700 when he first opened, making the store the least profitable arm of his record selling business, which includes online sales.

But he also has a more personal reason: his girlfriend was recently deported to Canada and can’t return for five years, meaning there’s a lot of shuttling back and forth between here and there.

Plus, competition from online retailers, especially Amazon with its deep discounts, has cut into sales of new LPs. His business, formerly 100 percent used records, is now split evenly between new and old vinyl.

“Customers come into the store and they say, can you match the Amazon price? And it’s, like, no,” he said.

Iris Records was once the Brunswick Pharmacy. You can still spot some of the original interior. The raised platform where druggists once worked is now used for DJs during store events. Two old phone booths remain across from the front entrance.

“It’s a historic place,” Gritzan said.

Gritzan runs his online business out of an apartment across Brunswick Street from Iris, a space that’s filled with some of his 100,000 records. He stressed that he’s not abandoning Hudson County. This Jersey boy — he’s from Elizabeth, “born on Route 1&9,” he says — will still sell records at Grove Street and Journal Square markets and at kiosks at Another Man’s Treasure on Montgomery Street and Balance Salon on Second Street.

Scott Williams, a volunteer director at WFMU who has hosted a show on the station since 1997, is a longtime Iris customer. He said he still remembers a "very special afternoon" when he found two records in beautiful condition, and in the dollar bin no less: The Frogs' first release and an album by Pylon.

Williams, 48, said he understands why Gritzan is closing the shop.

"It seems that a lot of new vinyl is being bought not by record people but people wishing to accessorize their vinyl enhanced lifestyle by displaying reissues of a Michael Jackson record or Fleetwood Mac,” he said. “For somebody like Steve, that’s not a reason to buy records."

Iris Records will be open for extended hours this week, on Sunday from noon to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday from 3 to 9 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 8 p.m.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.