I often get asked...
The records are flying off the shelves!
Well if the Discerning Collectors, as I like to call my customers, buy online from this web site I can only speculate! But I do have a steady stream of regular and new customers who visit my shop in Framlingham. The regular customers might start browsing the racks of vinyl looking for unusual recordings or rare first presses, all of which might lead to an in-depth conservation about record condition, value and rarity, then hopefully a sale! There is also the slightly nervous not quite sure what they are doing in a record shop, type customer, but they soon feel at home when they start to see familiar album covers and favorite artists. And the new customer GOING BACK TO VINYL, and they know exactly what they want!
It’s always nice to see the next generation of collectors and there are now regular visits from students and…. I can’t think of a better word for “young person”, this is what I got on google!.....”punk • pup • pupil • puppy • sapling • shaver • small fry • snotnose kid • sonny • squirt • student • teenager • teenybopper • urchin • young adult • young person • youth”. Anyway sales have increased in Jazz, Hip-Hop, Blues and Folk, a huge thanks, not in a small part, to these lovely people.
Moving away from the shop, which I have cautiously called Vinyl Revival, the majority of sales of vinyl records are from on-line purchases. I have now have customers in Aberdeen, Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Selling LP’s to Belfast, Cardiff, Inverness and Swansea. Vinyl has gone out to all parts of London, including Enfield, Twickenham, Putney, Hackney, WoodGreen, Stockton, Brixton and Wimbledon. I have got regular buyers of records from Cornwall, Devon and Dorset including Truro, Falmouth, St Ives, Newquay, Penzance, and St Austell, Exeter, Plymouth, Tavistock, Torquay, Dorchester, Poole and Weymouth. Not of course forgetting Somerset with albums being sold and posted to Taunton, Bath, Yeovil and Glastonbury.
The list is very interesting. Cambridgeshire is perhaps my biggest county I sell records to, places like Cambridge, Ely, Wisbech, March and Chatteris. Although probably Hertfordshire sees the lions share of records bought and dispatched, towns like Stevenage, Hertford, St Albans, Hatfield, Hemel Hempstead, Watford and Huntingdonshire!
But I am forgetting Lancashire, I have just looked at my itinerary of recently sold vinyl albums and an awlful lot have gone out to Vinyl Junkies in Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester, Preston, Barrow-in-Furness, Bolton, Warrington and Leicester.
I am based in Suffolk but surprisingly internet sales are relatively small to the surrounding area, I have had the odd sale in Norfolk where there are a number of record shops already, mainly in Norwich, there’s Soundclash records. 28 Saint Benedicts Street, Beatniks Records, 50 Magdalen Street, Fine City Sounds, 11 St Gregory’s Alley, Circular Sound 5 St Benedicts Street and Out Of Time 4 Magdalen Street, there are a few more but they do not have a web presence!
The Midlands and the North East have strong record buying links, there must be a lot of serious collectors in the area, I have sold records to Warwickshire, Warwick, regularly to Birmingham, Coventry, Newcastle and Sunderland with batched going out to Nuneaton, Rugby and Solihull. I was in the Tyne Tees area and visited 5 or 6 record shops, HOT RATS, 38 Stockton Road in Sunderland, Beat Down Records (HUGE!)1 Clarendon House Newcastle, Reflex record shop
23 Nun St, Newcastle and about 3 or 4 more, and they seem to be doing really well.
Oxfordshire is also a strong vinyl record buying county with Oxford topping the charts, as far as my sales go! Although I do get a few collectors in Kent, its mainly Maidstone, Canterbury and Dover, I do have a great customer who lives in Hastings!
Lastly I must mention Suffolk, I don’t sell a huge amount online, I suppose it could be that I get regular customers coming to my shop in Framlingham from Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, Bungay, Felixstowe, Lavenham, Lowestoft, Sudbury, Eye and Stowmarket.