32 MusicWeek 06.07.12 RETAIL VOXBOX MUSIC
21 St. Stephen Street Edinburgh, EH3 5AN t 0131 6296775
wvoxboxmusic.co.uk
www.musicweek.com
Give us a bit of background on Voxbox Music… We opened the store only last year and it’s going quite well. There’s been a big resurgence in vinyl that’s been very noticeable. We don’t have a lot of shelf space for CDs deliberately because it’s vinyl that’s selling and we’re getting a lot of young people in and a lot of families. People are still downloading
but there’s no point in downloading and getting the CD as well so they turn to vinyl. You can get something like a Hendrix album on vinyl and it’s a more tactile experience. The other thing is the sound.
Vinyl sounds so different to downloads and CDs so it’s like a new listening experience.
It’s a tough time for indie retailers. What made you set up shop in this kind of climate? Just an interest in music really. It’s two of us that have done it and we just wanted to see if we
could buck the trend. Many shops, including music stores, have closed down over the past decade but we’re actually doing quite well.
So business has been good since opening… Yeah but we’re doing things differently. We’re very much a boutique-style shop, we’re not full to the gunwales with vinyl. We’ve got a nice clean shop with a good sound system and television screens linked to computers. We’ve also got a little back room where we do everything for £1.50, which is really popular among DJs and students, so it ticks over nicely.
It seems indie retailers are being forced to do things a little bit differently… Absolutely and that’s why we get families who buy vinyl and women who represent 40% of our business whereas in your traditional, mucky, old record shops they probably wouldn’t
INTERNET vs HUMAN
Co-owners: George Robertson and Darren Yeats put their head through the door.
How was Record Store Day for you this year? We didn’t get much of the product because we don’t do a lot of new stuff. We did manage to get some, though, and we were absolutely mobbed by well over 300 people. We put on a couple of local bands but it was so busy that we did it in a pub across the road. It was spectacular. A couple of other shops in
Edinburgh kept stuff behind the counter and put it on eBay but we actually sold it at the proper price and not at the ridiculous prices they were appearing at online.
Is Record Store Day enough for indie retailers or could more be done to help? I think if it were over done it
“We’re getting a lot of young
people in and a lot of families. Around Christmas and New
Year we had families coming with young kids to buy their first record”
GEORGE ROBERTSON, VOXBOX
would lose some of its interest. There is a slight issue with Record Store Day in that a lot of companies are jumping on the bandwagon. A lot of the small indie labels are releasing stuff under the banner of Record Store Day but actually they’re just standard releases. But I wouldn’t knock it at all.
I’m happy with it as it is but maybe we could draw it back a bit with fewer but more interesting releases, maybe trying to get them into the small shops as well.
What have you got planned for the future? I think we’re going to look at getting into new releases but the problem with that is the expense because we’re not VAT registered and it’s an awful lot of money to lay out on new releases. It’s a pity that there isn’t some way they could be done slightly cheaper.
And you’d be competing with the likes of Amazon… That’s it. You can’t compete with Amazon on new releases and then there are supermarkets as well, although they don’t sell specialist jazz and blues. The internet has got new vinyl
sewn up but not secondhand stuff because you don’t know what you’re getting on the net when it comes to pre-owned. People like to see the product.
This week’s High Street Hero George Robertson takes on his digital rivals ...
WE SAID WE LIKED... AMAZON RECOMMENDED... ADELE 21 AMY WINEHOUSE Back To Black GEORGE RECOMMENDED... NORAH JONES Little Broken Hearts
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