The 5 Hardest Things About Owning A Record Store

This video sums up the saying "a small business owner/entrepreneur will work 80 hours a week just so they dont have to work 40 hours a week". Glad you found your calling in life Matt- keep grinding

Nobody gets rich owning a record store.. Glad to see you’re still passionate about all this. I’ve been burnt out for years, and I finally liquidated inventory last week. Now I’m terminating the LLC, and washing my hands of this. I’ve got a great system and collection, but it came with some heavy costs.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about it....I own a record shop in Germany. I see the problems are all the same 😉

An idea for price changes is making a scrapper that is linked with your inventory, that gives you a list if price changes by % (5% threshold for example) on the record (linked to the specific pressing), scrap it every morning and change prices before you open. An idea.

Quick comment about the hold policy. My local go-to shop will hold for two weeks and because it's a 45-60 minute drive downtown, I often opt to have them ship it (free shipping after a certain threshold). Occasionally I can head down and pick them up in person. Only one time I had forgotten and at the end of the two weeks, I received an email reminder and paid immediately. I don't know how much of an issue they have overall, but I have always found this arrangement very functional; a nice compromise between the hold indefinitely, versus no hold...with the understanding that after two weeks, the record is no longer held and gets put back into the bins for sale. I enjoyed the video and its insights. Cheers!

This is an idea I see at my favorite local record store which may help you regarding your pricing issues. I know this doesn't help the price info hunt on Discogs you were talking about but this helps customers, your staff and you after that album is in your bins. So my local record guy uses medium sized information stickers that are placed on the outer poly sleeves he uses. The stickers have his logo and spaces with lines stating pressing year, quality (vg, vg+ nm) region of pressing, artists name, then a large space to write any special info pretaining to that re ord. I leave those stickers on for my own recall etc. Hope that helps.

Wonderful video! I am fortunate to have a great indie record store 8 minutes from my door. This reinforces the need to go there first before buying online. Thanks for posting this!

I sell records at fairs in the UK and would love to have a store, however the biggest problems we have are high rents/taxes, high stock costs and generally people expecting (what they think are )Amazon prices whereby you’d make next to nothing. You’d really need to sell in volume to make it worthwhile unless you could sell rarer vinyl at higher prices. Your store looks great, keep it going! 😬👍❤️

I've got a strict 1 week hold no longer than that you do have ro learn the hard way though 😂 As for what you can do to get the word out more. Maybe sponsor some local events to do with music or even do some pop ups and markets where you can bring some great records and pass out business cards etc. Also can't go wrong with a little guerilla advertising. Buy big stickers and put them in places where music lovers will be. Just some ideas you may even be doin em already but they weren't mentioned so I figured I'd toss em out. Good luck man were all in this together 🤘

my opinion in any business apart from what you have mentioned are three things LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION !!!

Newish record store owner. Can relate to most of these, except holds are rarely a problem so we still do them. We’ve brought in a lot of new people by participating in neighborhood business association events, like First Thursday type things. We advertise with the high schools and colleges and donate a lot of gift certificates to silent auctions, etc.

Take out an add on local radio. Partner with antique malls not only for space but networking. Hold for a time period that customer states and then it goes out on shelf.

Killer video for those that are considering opening a shop. I respect you for taking the plunge as it’s not an easy decision. I would love to open a shop but I am not willing to leave the security with Amazon to take the risk and fulfill my dream. If I lose my job then the option is there. Thanks for posting this

I’m aware of the small profit margins on new records. Problem is my local store never has any second hand records worth buying, as i’m fairly certain he holds the records worth buying for his other regulars, so I tend not to be the most loyal customer.

Could easily make the list ten. My pet peeve is the browser who stashes a cool rock record in the Bing Crosby section then never comes back to pick up his stash.

I just discovered your channel and I enjoy your videos -- especially your engagement with the medium (LPs or YouTube? Both!). Your store stories bring me back to my days as a small business proprietor in Seattle in the 1980s -- but it wasn't a record store, it was a little single-screen independent movie theater in Seattle's Pike Place Market (which is still there, but doesn't show movies). We played mostly indie and foreign films -- and really scored with the months-long first-run Seattle engagement of "Stop Making Sense" (in amazing then-state-of-the-art Dolby surround) in 1984. I'm also a lifelong record collector -- still working on my collection after impulsively selling most of my LPs in 1992, when they were worth practically nothing (I sold them to a guy who was opening a record store when I was about to leave town for an extended period and had no place to store them). I've been rebuilding and expanding my collection ever since because I missed my records so much during the CD era (roughly mid-'80s to mid-aughts). Anyway, FWIW: We used to have a guy who put up posters for our theater -- and whatever movie we were showing -- around town in places we thought might appeal to our regulars: other indie theaters we were friendly with, of course, but also in bookstores, cafes, bars, music venues (the Showbox was just across the street), thrift/vintage shops, galleries, audio gear retailers, other record shops, and so on. We'd also put up their posters at our place when that seemed like it might be a mutually helpful exchange. Your store has a nice logo, so just getting a poster that reflects an image of your store around town might help build awareness, especially since you're in a location where you don't get a lot of walk-ins. Maybe ask some of your customers what other places they like to frequent. Just an idea I hope you'll find useful. Next time I'm in Portland (and that does happen occasionally since I have several friends in the area), I'll try to seek out your store...

Really good video. You do put a lot of hard work into this. I enjoy every time I come into the store, not just to browse, but to also chat music with everyone there.

Thanks for posting this dude, truly insightful. 🙏

Super interesting, thank you, good job!

Glad I found out about you on Instagram! I'll have to drive up to North Portland and check you all out sometime (I live in SE). I love your type of shop. 🙂