I'm starting a record store. Help me avoid critical mistakes!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
141

I’ll never forget the list of artists my ex-boyfriend’s 1990-era store wouldn’t take. Twisted Sister, Asia, and Huey Lewis & The News weren’t surprising, but Bob Seger was!

They would get kids in who wanted to buy the most disgusting, offensive things they could find, and he loved to tell the story of the 12-ish girl who came in and wanted to know if they sold albums that had songs with dirty words on them. He had, at his fingertips, Metallica, Frank Zappa, and Prince, and decided to sell her the Zappa record because all the words were plainly spoken.

And they DID NOT sell any rap. He said, “This is a music store.”

As for problem customers, or as closing time approached, he would put on classical music, and wasn’t expecting to find out what kinds of people knew about it.

142

That’s bullshit.

I would have told that proprietor to just take those old records off the shelf.

143

ISWYDT.

I heard that song at many a wedding reception that I worked at in later years, when I finished my degree.

144

My brother was a wedding photographer during my college days. I was his sidelighter/assistant.

Same experience :slight_smile:

Plus, I grew up in the NW suburbs of Detroit – prime Seger country.

145

As a note of hope, I stopped in Normal, IL (en route to Indiana for eclipse-chasing) because in one block there were three funky record stores.

All full of foot traffic (on a rainy Sunday). Almost all buying LPs.

The guy at North Street Records was super-friendly. He said the “dollar discs” get people in the door (but it was hailing that day, so they weren’t displayed out front).
I’ll bet he was the owner, and was working there alone. Unlike Waiting Room Records, which had a staff and a large assortment of merch (a choice of different t-shirts displayed).
And a cat.

Record stores remind me of comic book shops. The manager at “my” shop (a Graham Crackers Comics) has found employees among the customers who really know their stuff. One regular said he jumped at the chance to work evenings and on call… “especially when Shawn gave me the option of working for Tons Of Store Credit!”

146

And Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream and Other Delights. I go through a lot of record collections, and each generation has its own “Frampton Comes Alive”…

.

(and what is with all those Dan Fogelberg records?!?)

He must win the award for “Guy I liked SO MUCH in the '70s that I bought ALL his albums… but then turned around and gave them all to Goodwill”.

147

Don’t forget about all the parodies of the “Whipped Cream…” album covers!

The aforementioned Bob once told me that a bound album of 78s that included something by Alma Gluck would be like a 1970s collection that included the first Boston album. (He also told me once that they have indeed purchased, or at least been given, collections of wax cylinders; I thought he was joking but he wasn’t.)

148

Sadly, I have to go with Jasmine on this one - I have a hard time seeing how you will have enough demand to make ends meet. You would be lucky to even break-even financially.

By all means, if it’s a passion of yours, you can experiment small-time first while retaining your normal day job. But with a town that small-sized, and everything digital, I just don’t think the numbers would sustain such a business. At the very minimum, you’d have to sell something else alongside of it all to draw in enough customers. Maybe books, so that you’ve got your vinyl records selling alongside of books in a bookstore. Or a small cafe.

149

I dunno (and didn’t check) if this idea was mentioned before, but it does make me wonder if you could bring in a concession for coffee drinks and lite fare.

It may not be in your wheelhouse to do such a thing (if it is, then don’t sub it out), but if it isn’t, then you could theoretically create a win-win with a barista who isn’t ready to take on a retail space of her own, but would love to get experience.

It’s done in kiosks worldwide, so it doesn’t have to be elaborate, permanent, or capital intensive.

Think of it like “booth rental” in the hair business (where they rent space to a stylist instead of employing them).

You always want space for people to run in, pick up X album that they heard you had in stock, and run out, but you could find that people lingering a while is good for (today and tomorrow) business.

Good thought, Velocity.

150

There’s a place near here that does cafe/snacks/craft beer on one side and vinyl sales on the other. Sometimes they bring in a local musical act.

I’d assume serving food (much less alcohol) opens up a whole new aspect to licenses and permits.

This came up before but it’s not a “small town”, it’ s a small Chicago suburb. He wouldn’t be serving the 90,000 people of Waukegan, he’d be serving the northern Chicago metro area. Near me, Plainfield IL has 43,000 people and supports at least three independent record stores that I can think of but, again, the regional population in the southwest burbs is significantly larger than just 43,000 people.

151

I have considered this. Think about couples – he likes to browse for an hour or more, but she’s only looking for a specific item or two. Now she can get a coffee while he’s browsing (and is less likely to rush him).

But I’m also concerned about …

152

You’d have to talk to the Health Department in your area.

It may very well be that you can serve food that’s made and packaged somewhere else without much trouble. If it’s all paper plates, plastic cutlery, and paper napkins, the same thing might hold true.

And somebody local will almost surely make pastries, sandwiches, bagels, scones, croissants, etc., and probably even deliver them to the store daily.

153

Not to harp on this, but where exactly are you going to find these at decent prices for resale?

154

My understanding is that similar to records, collectible resellers often buy other people’s collections in part or whole. At Doc’s, a long lived record/collectible store in Ft. Worth, I’ve seen the employees going through and grading/pricing the records they’ve acquired. I imagine whoever runs the collectibles and electronics sections does the same, but probably spend a great deal of their time combing estate sales.

Another record store in DFW, Growl, is on the same property, but not the same building as Division Brewing. Growl also hosts local rock shows regularly. I’ve played there in the past, and several friend’s bands are playing there this and next month. They charge a minimal cover, and everyone buys their drinks across the property at the brewery, then carries it over to the record store and drinks it while they watch the show. It seems to work well for both parties, they’ve been running it that way for at least a decade.

I don’t generally go there to buy records. I have better options nearer, and if I want to drive that far, I’ll just go a little further and go to Doc’s and revel in the selection. But they put on very good shows. if I go there for a show, I will browse some before and after, and often pick up a record or two.

155

As others have mentioned, stores buy up collections in bulk, and some of those collections will have more valuable items in them. The owners don’t know – they just want to get rid of their stuff.

And I should mention that, to me, “fun and hard-to-find” doesn’t mean “rare.” It’s just a description of my experience as a shopper: “Hey, I saw this band opening for REM in the 80s! I wonder if the album is any good. Ten bucks. Why not?”

156

I may be wrong, but my experience with auctions and estate sales tells me that those days are over. In my neck of the woods, a lot of estate stuff gets put into online auction sites - and many buyers are checking those out very carefully and bidding them up. Thrift stores have vinyl that is gone over carefully every day by “pickers”. Leaving only Engelbert Humperdink, Nana Mouskouri and Celine Dion albums.

You will have a lot of competition for buying these collections.

157

I think “they just want to get rid of their stuff” is what everyone in the second hand / antique market wishes how things would go, but hasn’t really gone since the widespread adoption of the internet.

Dealing stuff I specialize in (I don’t want to go into details), I’m invariably met with sellers who have done some online research, and quote prices accordingly. Often in the realm of “this bit here has a value of 200 bucks, I checked” to which I’ll reply that you CAN pay that much if you don’t know what you are doing, but here and here you can get that with 100 bucks."

158

I wonder about the ROI of proactively mining for product.

IOW: I doubt it’s too awfully expensive to buy a mailing list of those within your target seller demographic and within X miles of where you live.

With bulk mail rates and a mail house, it wouldn’t be too awfully expensive to send out a mailer once every [insert time interval here] to all those addresses, boldly and simply (this is where your marketing chops come in) telling them who you are, what you buy, and how to get hold of you.

Waiting until there’s an estate sale, IMO, is waiting too long. Telling people there might be cash in their attics, basements, garages, and kids’ old bedrooms … may give you a first-mover advantage.

The competition might already be doing this, but … that wouldn’t inherently mean that you shouldn’t.

And I’m thinking USPS vs. email because your customer may skew younger and more tech-savvy, but your sources for vinyl … may be significantly older and still respond favorably to snail mail.

Maybe :wink:

Somewhat separate …

I used to advise new entrepreneurs: broadly, you will need to either spend big on location or spend big on advertising. A thoughtful analysis will help you determine the degree to which walk-by traffic will convert to walk-in traffic, vs. whether you’re a “destination tenant.”

It’s a continuum. Where on that continuum do record stores fall.

There’s not much sense in paying for an A+, high-visibility, high-traffic location if people walking by will never become your customers.

Similarly, if you rent a corner of the local church basement and have zero visibility and no permissible signage, you’ll spend a fortune on advertising – maybe never enough to make the concern viable.

159

You’re not entirely wrong – the “record/CD dump” isn’t as common as a few years ago, but (according to at least two store owners) it still happens.

Another owner says he hasn’t bought a collection in years, because he gets sufficient inventory from walk-ins who frequently don’t know the value of their stuff.

A lot of great thought in your post, but I zeroed in on this. The consensus seems to be that it’s better to be a destination than to rely on walk-by traffic. Which is great, because it means I can pursue a lower lease at a somewhat out-of-the-way spot.

160

Good to hear you’re doing your research on the “obtaining inventory” side of things, as well as the marketing/sales side.