24 Music Week 07.12.12 RETAIL


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TANGLED PARROT


Give us a bit of background on the store... We started in 2000 as a market store and we remained a market store for a year and a half. Then we moved to premises in November 2001 before moving to our current premises, which we’ve been in since April 2011. The set-up here is that we


have a gig venue below and a café, which transforms into more of a bar in the evenings. We’ve done something like 250 gigs here since we started, with some reasonable names.


How much does the shop lean on the gig venue business? Tangled Parrot is its own entity basically, that’s where it all began. I used to do gigs off the back of doing the shop. We were looking for somewhere to do gigs and it just turned out that the place we found had a top floor, so we decided to move the shop there. The basic set up is that


Tangled Parrot is mine, and myself, my wife and another partner run the venue, which is called the Parrot Music Bar.


How is the business for the shop these days? The shop seems to have evolved with the times – so, although I’ve moved to a better place, the recession has kicked in and the economic situation has shrunk. So, to be honest, it feels like I’ve almost stayed in the same place since I began. I’m not saying that in a negative way, particularly, I’m still here and the shop has grown enormously – I started off with literally an apple box of records. Business is difficult but we


seem to be getting through. I do a lot of second hand stuff now, which has definitely improved over the last year or two, possibly because it’s in a better place compared to my old shop. Obviously I do stuff online as


well, through portal sites rather than my own. You just seem to


INTERNET VS HUMAN


“We’ve talked about doing a Welsh Record Store Day. Obviously it would be limited and might not have the sales potential to make it work, but it’s a nice idea” MATT DAVIES, TANGLED PARROT


have to work twice as hard to stay in the same place.


Is the second hand stuff a fairly new strategy? I started doing it because people started bringing it in to me and it seemed like a wasted opportunity.


Do you participate in Record Store Day at all? Yeah, I think we’ve done it for four years now. It’s fantastic, it’s


a better day than Christmas. Last year I had the best day


of trading I’d had in 10 years and this year I doubled that, so it was really impressive. What was good for me this


year was that I actually ended up with not very much stock left. Last year, we’d just moved and I didn’t have a lot of time to survey what was there so it was a bit scatter-shot. I’ve still got some stuff from last year, whereas I’ve got next to nothing from this year.


Some say one day isn’t enough… That’s true but then I don’t know if you could do it more than once a year. Maybe there are options to do it in the latter part of the year. I know they’ve tried to do Black Friday, but around here Black Friday means


32 King Street Carmarthen, Wales, SA31 1BS t 01267 235511 wtangledparrot.com


Owner: Matt Davies


the Friday before Christmas when you get your wage pack and everyone goes on the piss basically. If I was to put that up on the website people would wonder what was going on. What we have talked about is


doing a Welsh Record Store Day, where we get Welsh artists to contribute. Obviously it’d be limited and might not have the sales potential to make it worthwhile but it’s a nice idea.


How confident are you about the near and long-term future? Probably about as confident as I’ve been in the last eight years. I started in 2000 and the whole thing was starting to implode. I’ve never known the golden years. I always seem to find something that makes me think this can improve. I’m optimistic.


This week’s High Street Hero Matt Davies takes on his digital rivals ...


WE SAID WE LIKED... RIHANNA Unapologetic


AMAZON RECOMMENDED... VARIOUS NOW! 83


MATT RECOMMENDED... LANA DEL REY Born To Die


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