Did you also turn back the calendar to sometime before 1999?
I mean the obvious question is if this is even a viable business in this day and age.
Yeah, from an objective outside POV, this looks like one of those trainwrecks on the way that everyone sees coming except for the guy standing on the tracks.
It’s a fair question. Even with the resurrection of interest in vinyl, it looks like sales at record stores are declining, and the number of stores are declining.
I haven’t looked, but I wonder what sales trends for turntables, tonearms, and cartridges look like.
Might be somewhat of a leading indicator. People might buy new LP gear just to play the LPs that they already have, but … I doubt that’s the majority. I’d guess more hardware purchases leads to more software purchases over time.
And … FWIW:
ETA: and…
That’s not fair. The OP is literally asking ‘what am I overlooking?’
Jumping into a retail lease right away would be pretty risky, but the OP is going to be doing popup booths at local events first. That will give some insight into what the record market is like in that area without costing too much money. Not only will it demonstrate how many people are into records, but what sorts of musical tastes they have. The booth will be a good way to determine inventory and build up clientele before opening an actual retail location.
The normal pattern for people with Big Ideas is that cautionary advice rolls off like water on a duck until the duck is eaten by an alligator.
Agreed. I haven’t read much of the thread, so thanks for mentioning that.
But … along those lines … sometimes, a landlord with a decent retail storefront that’s been sitting vacant will do a (sometimes, very) short-term lease, allowing a quasi-pop-up store that may rely less on adverti$ing and more on profile, visibility, drive-by traffic, and foot traffic.
We often see those around Halloween or Christmas.
never mind - asked and answered
I share this view …
chances are you might not only gamble away your “gamble-money” but might sink yourself in the process … e.g. having to be lien of your company’s credits, standing in ($) for rental agreements, utilities, security, insurances,…etc…
I guess LSLs message is: the taximeter starts ticking way before you can even hang the “We’re open” sign on the door. By then you already had to upfront a lawyer, accountant and prob. 2-5 months of rent … so a good sized 5-digit number … how many months do you have as cash reserve? … my gutfeeling is if you cant upfront 1 year of full cost - don’t even think about it.
IIWY, I’d start out half-underground half-illegal with something like a pop-up at some fairs/events/community events - and an old van with a few crates full of vinyls in them (and a record player) … and rather enter the water on the shallow end instead of jumping from a cliff with a floating device made of lead 
… once you know your shit, you can slowly get into deeper water.
best wishes, but again - agreeing with LSL … you do sound a bit naïve / (dare I say “blonde”?) in the whole proposal.
I am a heavy music user (and quite connocoir of quality/audiophile music) - and am as happy as a clam to have all my music collection (600+albums) in HiRes on a medium, the size of my pinky-nail - and you couldn’t give me vinyls for free!!!
Lots of great advice here. Here’s some more:
Be where there is foot traffic.
Have a bathroom open to the public. It encourages lengthy browsing and creates a feeling of good will.
Meanwhile, as an avid music listener who loves digital streaming, I would happily take all the albums that make up my musical personality and have them on vinyl. That would be so fucking cool, and I don’t even own a record player. I never grew up with my own vinyls, but the thought of having shelves and shelves of them in my house to pick out and put on makes me giddy.
And speaking of who is buying these things, I have two Generation Alpha kids and I’ve had to buy them both vinyl records. (Once again, even though we don’t have a phonograph. And they don’t even want one!)
I would recommend getting a job at a used record store, even if it’s just a couple hours on Saturdays, so you can see what you could be getting into. You could also start out by renting space in an antique mall, or participating in weekend record fairs.
I dated the owner of a used record store ca. 1990, and while it’s a no-brainer that the business has changed drastically in those decades (they were put out of business by the now-defunct CD Exchange chain a few years later), there was one thing that NEVER changed. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME someone purchased Prince’s “Lovesexy”, they would cringe and say, “…the cover…”
I could see conflicting stories between number of record stores and total amount of vinyl sold.
People go into a record store hoping to find some cool thing, an unexpected surprise or score a great deal on an album they remember. But, as mentioned upthread, the age of people dumping their vinyl as “worthless” or finding a classic album for a few bucks is well over. If you do find something cool, it’s like $30+ on the low end (if not 60, 80 or $100+) and, quite often, the “cool” stuff was sold online anyway and you’re flipping through piles of each artists’ least popular album and other such dregs.
On the other hand, new vinyl releases are commonplace so overall vinyl sales can be going up. But you can buy those at large retailers or Amazon or other online venues so you don’t need to go to “the record store” to get an Ariana Grande album or re-release of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors. There’s a few extra incentives to go to the indie shop like Record Store Day’s small business exclusive releases but I could see a lot of stores getting squeezed from both ends: a dwindling worthwhile and affordable used inventory on one side and competing with mass market retailers on the other.
What kind of fees? Like there might be extra fees for landscaping or marketing? Or maintenance like a share of the cost of resurfacing the parking lot? Something else?
I see a lot of retail space in that area for $8-25/sf/yr with $20 the most common. Do you expect these fees would be 50% more? 100%?
Retail spaces are generally leased on a “triple-net” basis:
Triple Net Lease (NNN): What It Means and How It's Used
A triple net lease (triple-net or NNN) is a lease agreement on a property where the tenant promises to pay all expenses, including real estate taxes, building insurance, and maintenance. These expenses are in addition to the cost of rent and utilities. NNNs are one type of commercial property net lease. A single net lease requires tenants to pay property taxes plus rent, and a double net lease typically tacks on property insurance.
while I completely understand the point you are makeing - and my emotional brain-hemisphere fistbumps you gladly, my rational hemisphere suckerpunches the other half and throws out an angy “already forgot the hassle of moving from one continent to the other with 100s of CDs?”
so, yeah … the pinky-nail 512GB card for me with all the music I want and then some … and changing-discs from the comfort of my cel. (vs. getting up every couple of minutes to de-sleeve/clean/shuffle/re-sleeve disks and drop the needle) is another clear win for me…
Cathair?? Dustbunnies???.. I finally lough at them, beaming my tunes wirelessly across my house
Every few years I think how neat it would be to get a record player and start collecting vinyl, and then I think about what that would actually mean in practical terms and immediately change my mind.
I do think it’s neat that vinyl appears to have won the “obsolete physical media” wars. It’s definitely got visual and tactile appeal over tapes and CDs.
A guy in my town opened up a record shop in the last year or so. It’s his second location, one in Brooklyn and this new one in Jersey. The one in Jersey is a TINY storefront on the main drag, he’s only open 4 days a week. He has a storefront, and an online store, and thought opening a second storefront in a well travelled location was a smart business move.
Record stores exist, and they do well enough to stay in business. Vinyl sales have been growing for the last 17 years.
Despite the naysayers, this is not an inherently ridiculous business concept. That doesn’t mean you will be successful, or that you won’t lose your shirt, but to hear some of our posters every indie record store in the nation is a black hole of despair. The reality is that a lot of new businesses fail.
Compared to a restaurant, or some other retail stores or small businesses, records are dead simple. They don’t go bad sitting on your shelf, you don’t need a ton of staff, there are no special rules to follow. You buy inventory, you sell inventory, you have expenses.
I agree completely. But …
The OP seems to have no idea whether the retail store plan will require an outlay of $50K or $500K. He probably ought to find out if the fixed storefront is doable at his economic level or is simply well beyond his means / risk tolerance.
Ideally he does this before he starts his prototyping / market research effort as a pop-up or from his van at flea markets on the few warm weekends per year in Wisconsin. Even these experiments will cost time and money and if they’re proving out a concept that he can’t in fact afford to implement, to what end is the experiment? Unless he’d truly be happy as an itinerant flea market dude.
Yes. The esteemed @kenobi_65’s cites to IBISWorld define a “record store” as a place that sells vinyl, CDs, video (DVDs), and the associated electronics, or at least electronic accessories.
And the video portion of the “record store” sales is almost as big as the audio-only.
Bottom line: vinyl sales is an unknowable subset of “record store” sales, but about 30% of the total is a weak upper bound.
Yes, it could be growing by leaps and bounds. Or not.