Interview: Vinyl Revolution's Simon Parker on the opening on their Brighton flagship

In a recent study, Vinyl Revolution found that nearly half of music lovers have felt uncomfortable asking for advice in a record store. A further 25% have avoided asking for a record or artist in a store as they felt it wasn’t cool enough, and 75% have opted to go online even though they have a nearby record store.

In a bid to tackle these stats, Vinyl Revolution are taking their online shop to the streets of Brighton with a new flagship store opening next week. Ahead of the opening, we spoke to co-founder Simon Parker about grumpy sales people, supermarkets and why Vinyl Revolution is so much more than a record shop…

Hiya! How’s it going?

It’s going alright. Today’s highlight was getting to the shop at 5.30am to oversee a load in of loads of our stock. They’re long days at the moment but it’s well worth it.

I’m sure it will be. When are you opening?

Next Saturday, the 15th (July).But we’ve got the launch party two days before that so everything really has to be in place by then. It will be.

Why are you doing Vinyl Revolution? Could you tell us a bit more about the research into record shopping?

Well a lot of people have said to us outside of the survey that they struggled in record shops, and this up and down the country. People are made to feel like they didn’t know what they were talking about or that their selections weren’t good enough. We just went into it, in more detail, and half the people who went into a record shop have had a bad experience.

Do you think that’s something that’s always happened or do you think it comes with record stores, and record shopping, becoming more sort of cult and indie over the past few years?

I think it’s always happened in record shops. There’s many bands who’ve written songs about grumpy people working in record shops. Mark Eitzel from American Music Club definitely has a song about that; but about how he loves that and that attitude. And then you get High Fidelity which is very close to the truth. Jack Black’s character in particular. So it has always been around.

And paradoxically, there’s a lot of really good shops out there who have a fiercely loyal customer basis and do look after them. When you go into an indie record shop now quite often you’ll find that there’s some sort of information sheet about the record that you’re looking at. There’s charts and there’s things to make your passage around the shop a bit easier. It’ probably not that difficult to work out why people demand a bit of respect and need a bit of your time in a record shop now: there are thousands of records you could be buying.

And like you’ve said there are a lot of nice shops where people do feel comfortable. A lot of it seems to come from an assumption that the people behind the till are snobby and grumpy. How are you going to avoid that happening with your store?

The character and personality of people – you make quite a snap decision about it. With us we worked out that who we employed – I think we have about 5 members of staff – we went for personality rather than experience in a record shop. And it wasn’t as though we sat down and said it was something we were going to do, we just sat down with those people and got on really well; and they’ve become our staff. So, that’s how we’re going to combat it: they’re warm people that you could walk in and strike up a conversation with.

And in the research there was also a lot of people saying they felt record stores were a bit blokey – are you tackling that in your staff as well?

The blokey thing comes out of a lot of vintage record shops. In a lot of shops were it is vintage and second hand stuff, there does seem to be a much higher percentage of men in there. I think that’s most likely referring to that. We’re going to have a mix, and I don’t really know any other branches that are doing it, certainly not in the depth that we are. The thing is, not every shop in the world welcomes women with buggies. But when we were in our shop in Tunbridge Wells we did have three generations of people walking in together. All three generations are interested in buying vinyl at the moment.

That’s another great thing, because everyone wrote the high street off a few years ago, and everyone was buying things off the internet. And though we do obviously buy a lot of things off the internet I think people are kind of willing to explore for vinyl. They want to buy something, not download something that doesn’t really exist; they’re getting passionate about owning something that they love, about physical art. And it’s not just music: people are putting patches on things, and everything has a nice creativity to it.

But then there are issues in that: vinyl’s becoming popular again and supermarkets are starting to sell it.

Yeah, we’re not a fan of supermarkets. That for me is the soulless experience: going to buy a can of beans and putting an Oasis album in there as well. Those things just don’t belong together. They’re only doing because they think there’s a quick buck in it. They will ditch it when they work out that they can’t sell it. Rather like Amazon, what they do, they undercut everybody. I’ve got a great story actually: when I was working for Rapture in Oxford, helping them set up the vinyl division, we looked in the midweek stock sheet and there was 960 copies of Rumours by Fleetwood Mac in stock at Warner Music. So we put in an order for 2 to get through the weekend, because we don’t order lots and it came back that it was out of stock. Tesco had bought every single copy. Not because they were gonna sell them, but so nobody else could have ‘em. I’m happy to go down in press saying I really don’t like supermarkets selling vinyl.

Don’t worry, we’re all on your side! But obviously you’ve gone in quite boldly saying they’ll soon work out they can’t sell it, but on the other hand it might seem quite bold for you to be opening a record shop when independent record shops are seemingly under threat.

Oh, definitely. Not just a record shop but any independent start up retailer – 50% of them close in the first year. It is worrying. Rachel and I have put everything into doing this. It might sound like a cliché, but we really have; we’ve put everything in and more. It’s like ‘okay, that money went pretty quickly. What the hell are we gonna do now?’ And people have written high street off to a large degree, but Brighton is a law unto itself and there’s always room for interesting, alternative shops in Brighton. I’m going to bring it back to HMV: people didn’t bother with HMV because it was a chain. It didn’t renew its license and I think that says quite a lot. I think it’s a gamble, but I’m confident because it’s not just records. If you don’t have a record player, you might need a new t shirt, you might be interested in art prints, you might want one of our aprons if you’re into cooking, we’ve got mugs, we’ve got teatowels, recycled vinyl… There’s other things that you come in for as well and that’s why our shop’s designed in the way it is. It’s bright an airy: it’s not just wall to ceiling boxes of records. But you’re right, it could be a big gamble.

It doesn’t sound like it, and it sounds like you’re in the right place for it. Do you think it could expand elsewhere?

We don’t want loads of shops because then you become a chain. And then that comes with a big set of problems and you find you can’t make decisions and change quickly. What Rach and I have always said we’ll do is look at doing pop-ups in other countries, we’ll take over a building for a week, or even just a weekend. I want to go to Berlin and New York, Rachel wants to go to Toyko. She’s already made inroads into that one, by the way. Festivals, some sort of travelling road show over the summer. It will expand hopefully, the website will be important for people being able to buy stuff all around the world. But we’ll have the flagship store in Brighton and then I’m not sure. We could do Manchester, London and Liverpool… But they’ve got decent record shops already, so what we’ll probably do is wait until next summer and do some interesting things then. Even brands like Adidas are doing it, just rocking up in a town for a weekend then they’re gone.

But even starting closer to home and doing stuff closer to home like Great Escape and in stores. Are they something you’d want to do?

We’ve got a purpose-built space for it downstairs. We did some in Tunbridge Wells at the pop-up, we’ll do acoustic sets, maybe full band sets but obviously there are noise issues during work hours so we’ll see. You don’t wanna go all guns blazing. I’d like to show movies and music documentaries, we’ll do workshops… A friend of mine has a brilliant vintage drum shop in Wales and he’s sells bits all round the world, he has a lot of famous drummers in his books and he’s going to come and do a workshop. A guy called David Plumber who’s an amazing photographer. He suffers from Parkinson’s but he’s not let that stop him in anyway – he’ll crawl into a hide and wait 6/7 hours to take the perfect picture. We’re doing the Sparrow album launch. I used to put them out on my label and we’re not putting out on mine but they’re going to come and do their album launch here. I’m sure we’ll get more bands. I worked a lot a Cable Club and I still have loads of connections so I’m excited to see some old faces and some new bands.

There’s so much coming out of places like Brighton and you’re obviously so much more than just a record shop, it will hopefully be a huge thing for Brighton bands.

I was one of the promoters who always tried to put bands on the same bill where the music fitted. A lot of local nights, you might get a death metal band and then some folky solo guy. And no one’s going to stick around and watch that, it’s too disparate. It worked quite well, we had some signed bands play. I brought Kasabian down for their first Brighton gig, and The Cribs – I put on their first Brighton gig. And The Kooks who were studying at BIMM at the time. Bands seem to gravitate towards Brighton because it’s close to London, sort of London by the sea.

Hopefully Vinyl Revolution can be a platform for them, then.

I’ve got my ear to the ground about how bands can maybe make more records, rather than CDs. It’s prohibited for bands, ‘cause they don’t have a lot of money. So I’m looking into who’s making the cheapest but best pressings on vinyl these days. And then it would be great to do a compilation or something. Brighton’s Finest are doing it and we’ll be stocking those unsigned bands on vinyl, so we’ll just keep doing what we can.

Well it all sounds very exciting and I’m looking forward to seeing how Vinyl Revolution expands. I’ll let you get on with your day and getting the store ready. Thanks so much for chatting and good luck with the launch!

Thank you!

Visit Vinyl Revolution’s website and check out their Brighton flagship from 15th July.