Restocks/Represses

TheThinWhiteDuke said:
You know, this guy says they make "about a dollar" on new vinyl and no one makes money on new vinyl, but so many of the "big boy" indie record stores like Criminal and Grimey's are like 90% new vinyl with a paltry (sad) used section and a few collector pieces gathering dust behind the counter. Conversely, most of the stores I know of that are 90% used vinyl are the ones that typically go under more frequently. So which is it>
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I've been hearing "there's no money in new vinyl" since we started this store. I obviously can only speak for us, but in my experience that is total BS. There's money in new vinyl, but you certainly have to work for it a bit harder and smarter. Our philosophy behind used vinyl has always been to pay 50-60% of our retail price, leaving a 40-50% margin for us. With new, you're working on profit margins between 25%-40%, so it wasn't really too much of a stretch for us to try to figure out how to run the new business on a slightly smaller margin than used.

The difference between the two is the availability. Even with dedicated folks on staff working 40+ hours a week, we will struggle to spend $500,000 on used vinyl this year. Don't get me wrong, there's amazing used LPs passing through every single day, but it's an absolute grind between house calls, dealing with people expecting way too much, and the current market. Conversely, with new vinyl, it's not uncommon to spend $500,000 in a month for us.

If you go from there based on what our "margins" are, you can see how we easily make 10x the money on new vinyl that we do on used vinyl.

But again, I can only speak for myself. And every store has a different model. But, every time I hear the ol' "there's no money in new vinyl" from a record store owner I groan. With an attitude like that, there's absolutely no money in new vinyl. Ya gotta try to succeed.

EDIT: One other small thing. I've been hearing the same ol' "we only make $1" per new LP for a loooongggg time too. If you're only making $1 per record you're pricing wrong.
 
waruv said:
Agreed. The chains as well: Bull Moose and Newburys around me have no or ok used selections but new is constantly stocked, and they're succeeding (for now at least).

My gut says that that stores relying on new stock are those where they've built to a scale where those $1, $2, $5 profits on new records add up in volume. In the video Toad Hall cited $1 profit on some RSD titles but, on the other hand, RSD titles have to be some of the easiest of the year to rack up. Huge foot traffic, loose wallets, ability to also sell online later - yeah if you only make $1 on the Taylor Swift 7" that's not as much as you'd make on your used stock but it's guaranteed to sell. It's tougher with more obscure titles and predicting allocations but I think about 95% of my local store's RSD stock was gone by the end of the weekend this year and the number of "long term resident" titles are low. Similarly with new titles. You'll have some long term residents but I can't imagine selling a Kanye West record is a particularly risky proposition for most stores. Margins might be a lot bigger on used titles but that buyer appearing locally? My local store has a primo Tracy Chapman on the wall for high end Discogs prices, and the Twilight OST for mid-range Discogs prices (for the title). They're eventually going to make a pretty penny on that but I'd wager if they happened to repress Tracy or Twilight, the store might make just as much money on new sales of those before they find the buyer who walked into a Manchester, NH record store and drops several hundred dollars on Bella and Edward's Musical Adventure.

I also have a bit of a theory that Discogs/Ebay/Reddit have eaten up those mid-range used vinyl titles that Record Stores would actually flip well. The ones around me pay a pittance for trade-ins and when I'm looking at my box of things I might have traded into a record store, I'm still usually better off doing it myself online even if I'm offering a fairly big discount relative to the price a record store would sell at, even with shipping/fees/packaging. And if I'm seeing that and that my primary trade-in options are $1-$10 records otherwise...even if they give me pennies, there's only so much profit they will pull off of that. I just sold something like 15 records the other day. I probably gave a 30% discount off of lowest comparable Discogs copies to the buyers (when I consider fees, shipping costs, etc. of all of it)...and I came out way ahead of what a local store would've given me in credit or cash.
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There are a few shops around me that do decent trade value. I used to sell to Academy in Greenpoint and they were great because they gave a cash price, or store credit was something like 1.5x the cash price. Store credit is smart for both sides because I ended up spending most of it on used vinyl that they made 50%+ profit on anyway.

The places near me now give decent trade value. Especially for jazz--they give up to 50% the price they will sell it at. I end up selling higher-end albums myself on reddit or discogs because trade in values won't be nearly as good in any stores.
 
Plaid Room / Colemine said:
I've been hearing "there's no money in new vinyl" since we started this store. I obviously can only speak for us, but in my experience that is total BS. There's money in new vinyl, but you certainly have to work for it a bit harder and smarter. Our philosophy behind used vinyl has always been to pay 50-60% of our retail price, leaving a 40-50% margin for us. With new, you're working on profit margins between 25%-40%, so it wasn't really too much of a stretch for us to try to figure out how to run the new business on a slightly smaller margin than used.

The difference between the two is the availability. Even with dedicated folks on staff working 40+ hours a week, we will struggle to spend $500,000 on used vinyl this year. Don't get me wrong, there's amazing used LPs passing through every single day, but it's an absolute grind between house calls, dealing with people expecting way too much, and the current market. Conversely, with new vinyl, it's not uncommon to spend $500,000 in a month for us.

If you go from there based on what our "margins" are, you can see how we easily make 10x the money on new vinyl that we do on used vinyl.

But again, I can only speak for myself. And every store has a different model. But, every time I hear the ol' "there's no money in new vinyl" from a record store owner I groan. With an attitude like that, there's absolutely no money in new vinyl. Ya gotta try to succeed.
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That's right in line with what I suspected, and straight from the source, too. Thanks!
 
TheThinWhiteDuke said:
That's right in line with what I suspected, and straight from the source, too. Thanks!
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I just love having the perspective of a successful yet not-out-to-screw-over-the-customer record shop. @Plaid Room / Colemine and @Ethos99, y'all are amazing. You are who I look to first every time I need want a title, and will continue to support you guys.
 
Plaid Room / Colemine said:
I've been hearing "there's no money in new vinyl" since we started this store. I obviously can only speak for us, but in my experience that is total BS. There's money in new vinyl, but you certainly have to work for it a bit harder and smarter. Our philosophy behind used vinyl has always been to pay 50-60% of our retail price, leaving a 40-50% margin for us. With new, you're working on profit margins between 25%-40%, so it wasn't really too much of a stretch for us to try to figure out how to run the new business on a slightly smaller margin than used.

The difference between the two is the availability. Even with dedicated folks on staff working 40+ hours a week, we will struggle to spend $500,000 on used vinyl this year. Don't get me wrong, there's amazing used LPs passing through every single day, but it's an absolute grind between house calls, dealing with people expecting way too much, and the current market. Conversely, with new vinyl, it's not uncommon to spend $500,000 in a month for us.

If you go from there based on what our "margins" are, you can see how we easily make 10x the money on new vinyl that we do on used vinyl.

But again, I can only speak for myself. And every store has a different model. But, every time I hear the ol' "there's no money in new vinyl" from a record store owner I groan. With an attitude like that, there's absolutely no money in new vinyl. Ya gotta try to succeed.
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I can't imagine how exhausting it must be trying to constantly find used vinyl. And none of my locals do online shopping outside of the occasional discogs/ebay sale of some used records so that is probably leaving some money on the table too...

I really appreciate stores like yours where you guys seem to try hard to do everything right. From customer service, to packaging to interacting with us on places like this. It's why so many of us keep coming back and recommend you to others!
 
Plaid Room / Colemine said:
I've been hearing "there's no money in new vinyl" since we started this store. I obviously can only speak for us, but in my experience that is total BS. There's money in new vinyl, but you certainly have to work for it a bit harder and smarter. Our philosophy behind used vinyl has always been to pay 50-60% of our retail price, leaving a 40-50% margin for us. With new, you're working on profit margins between 25%-40%, so it wasn't really too much of a stretch for us to try to figure out how to run the new business on a slightly smaller margin than used.

The difference between the two is the availability. Even with dedicated folks on staff working 40+ hours a week, we will struggle to spend $500,000 on used vinyl this year. Don't get me wrong, there's amazing used LPs passing through every single day, but it's an absolute grind between house calls, dealing with people expecting way too much, and the current market. Conversely, with new vinyl, it's not uncommon to spend $500,000 in a month for us.

If you go from there based on what our "margins" are, you can see how we easily make 10x the money on new vinyl that we do on used vinyl.

But again, I can only speak for myself. And every store has a different model. But, every time I hear the ol' "there's no money in new vinyl" from a record store owner I groan. With an attitude like that, there's absolutely no money in new vinyl. Ya gotta try to succeed.

EDIT: One other small thing. I've been hearing the same ol' "we only make $1" per new LP for a loooongggg time too. If you're only making $1 per record you're pricing wrong.
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You guys have it down to a science and have amazing customer service. You deserve all the success and growth you are experiencing. I’ve been doing my part…3 pages of shopping history since last April. I am using your stickers to wallpaper my garage. :D
 
zdkaiser said:
I appreciate your presence here @Plaid Room / Colemine and you giving the heads up on restocks and other insider info. Also appreciate how fair your prices are and how well you package and ship albums out. Plus, you're super speedy with shipping and getting things out the door.

Only thing I wish you all would do is preorders. But I understand that likely bring more logistical challenges.
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Thank you for the kind words. We appreciate the biz over the years.

Pre-orders are....ugh they're a mess right now. With the amount of new vinyl that moves through here, it's just not feasible for us. My goal has always been to have as few cancellations as possible. I think most folks should be able to say that we have never had to cancel their order. I feel like over the years we've had less than 50 cancellations total. I'll do my best to drop-ship, source from another store, anything really before I cancel an order. Hell, one time on RSD I bought a Crow record for $200 off of eBay just to cover a customer that paid $35 for it and our last copy was mis-shipped.

One of the issues is not being able to rely on stock. Hell, we can't even rely on stock for restocks. I pre-paid for 500+ copies of Mellon Collie almost a week ago but it turns out they weren't even in stock. That check is cashed and I'm left with a fraction of my order that I had to source from other places. Sure, that check will be applied against my account and I'll get a credit so it's not the end of the world. But, if I had pre-sold any of them I'd be cancelling hundreds of orders.

The other issue is shipping. Most distributors pack like hell nowadays. See my Instagram story today for the way the Pumpkins box sets arrived. I only showed 2 boxes (5 in each box) in the story, but that's how about 25 of the Pumpkins boxes were. Another example would be the Coltrane My Favorite Things LP that comes out tomorrow. We had 40 on order, and all 40 we received were damaged.

Unless I can confirm with a distributor or label beforehand that they'll be shipping on a pallet, it's really a crapshoot what condition they'll arrive in.

All that to say, in a very long winded way, I WISH we could do pre-orders too. It used to be a big part of our business, AND it took a bunch of financial pressure off back in the day, because we'd have $100k+ worth of pre-orders that were paid for. We knew we weren't going to be stuck with a bunch of stock folks ordered elsewhere and it also helped cash flow on the front end. Nowadays it's always sort of feels like a bit of a gamble when we order 300+ of a new release and don't have any pre-orders for it.

I really don't understand how stores are doing it nowadays. But there's stores that are MUCH bigger than me so I know they know stuff I don't know and have systems they've created that I haven't yet. I hope we'll get back to doing a bunch of pre-orders sooner rather than later.
 
Damn. My order went to "In Progress" - did yours make it to that or did it stay at "received" until they cancelled?
 
Plaid Room / Colemine said:
I've been hearing "there's no money in new vinyl" since we started this store. I obviously can only speak for us, but in my experience that is total BS. There's money in new vinyl, but you certainly have to work for it a bit harder and smarter. Our philosophy behind used vinyl has always been to pay 50-60% of our retail price, leaving a 40-50% margin for us. With new, you're working on profit margins between 25%-40%, so it wasn't really too much of a stretch for us to try to figure out how to run the new business on a slightly smaller margin than used.

The difference between the two is the availability. Even with dedicated folks on staff working 40+ hours a week, we will struggle to spend $500,000 on used vinyl this year. Don't get me wrong, there's amazing used LPs passing through every single day, but it's an absolute grind between house calls, dealing with people expecting way too much, and the current market. Conversely, with new vinyl, it's not uncommon to spend $500,000 in a month for us.

If you go from there based on what our "margins" are, you can see how we easily make 10x the money on new vinyl that we do on used vinyl.

But again, I can only speak for myself. And every store has a different model. But, every time I hear the ol' "there's no money in new vinyl" from a record store owner I groan. With an attitude like that, there's absolutely no money in new vinyl. Ya gotta try to succeed.

EDIT: One other small thing. I've been hearing the same ol' "we only make $1" per new LP for a loooongggg time too. If you're only making $1 per record you're pricing wrong.
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☝️💯
 
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