the slow decline of berwick street record shops [was: reckless records]
- Thread starter mms
- Start date
Woah, that's pretty bad news. I'm presuming that sales must have dropped over the last few years essentially because of the internet - discogs.com, ebay, other rare records sites that are easier to search through than thousands of bits of vinyl. That is a shame, I've had some real goodies from there over the years.
you'd have to ask them but it's well known that rents are brutally expensive in that area, and there is pressure for 'development' ( luxury flats for the rich, the businesses of multinationals anything that makes the council lots of money) to replace certain business, like the sordid business of record shops and sex shops.
UFO over easy
online mahjong
crikey 
ramadanman
Well-known member
always used to love their 20p bargain bin!
fingers crossed shops like vinyl junkies & blackmarket pull through
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
They should all get together and move somewhere more affordable en mass. Buy a small strip mall in East Finchley or something. Is East Finchley too posh for strip malls?
Its the long tail/distribution revolution the internet has created.
What always got me was that in the capital city of the largest city in Europe there are loads of records second-hand I can't source because of the bottleneck of shops needing a physical location, and the capacity/rent problems that creates. Then I look on ebay, GEMM or whatever and I can find pretty much everything I want as they have vast, virtual distributed warehouse space, constant updating of stock and so on.
There is no way a shop like Reckless could compete. The only way physical record shops can compete is when they offer something over and above...like freshness in the case of Blackmarket (e.g. producers dropping off dubstep records to sell before they are released) or some sort of community atmosphere, an emphasis on knowledge and excellent customer service maybe.
What always got me was that in the capital city of the largest city in Europe there are loads of records second-hand I can't source because of the bottleneck of shops needing a physical location, and the capacity/rent problems that creates. Then I look on ebay, GEMM or whatever and I can find pretty much everything I want as they have vast, virtual distributed warehouse space, constant updating of stock and so on.
There is no way a shop like Reckless could compete. The only way physical record shops can compete is when they offer something over and above...like freshness in the case of Blackmarket (e.g. producers dropping off dubstep records to sell before they are released) or some sort of community atmosphere, an emphasis on knowledge and excellent customer service maybe.
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yep...
reckless was always a place i unloaded soul/funk/disco records for cash whenever i was in london... the staff ranged from apathetic to hostile... i never understood their selling policy, basically if something wasn't already in their computer, they wouldn't buy it and only about half the staff there seemed to know much about records...
so, yeah, in this day and age, not gonna cut it... i took a big stack of 70's soul/funk 45's to reckless, the surly modette behind the counter flipped thru them all and then said "yeah, i don't know these, i can't use them." i took them to Beats Working Records off Brick Lane (owned by one guy, who knows his shit) the next day, the guy gave me like 100 pounds store credit for them...
so, i sincerely hope that girl is out of a job and eating oatmeal for the next few months...
so, are the Record Exchange chains next? i hope not, the two in Camden are a mess, but the one in Notting Hill may be my fav used record store in london, out of process of elimination i guess...
yes the whole not on the computer thing was a mystery, ive dropped a few things in there that i know are worth cash only to be told, they were on the computer once 7 years ago and sold for £5 or something, so therefore we can only give you £3, so you just think, ok, i'll put it on ebay where i could on a good day get £40.
S
simon silverdollar
Guest
bunnnnnn
Well-known member
all the times i've sold records to reckless i've found 'the modette girl' has been more than generous in her offers for my dodgy rejects. i suppose the computer pricing is one way of getting round the seemingly arbitrary buying policy of the mve shops, where the discrepancy between buying price and sale price seems even more erratic.
oh well, goodbye reckless. i swear soon that the only record shops left in london will be those owned by the m&ve empire.
oh well, goodbye reckless. i swear soon that the only record shops left in london will be those owned by the m&ve empire.
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yes its a worrying time for second hand record shops for sure.
in other news - dunno if you know that virgin record shops were taken over by the conglomerate that runs woolworths and replaced all their buyers with woolworths buyers etc,
also fopp have taken over a massive chain of something like 65 nationwide shops from musiczone, a chain that went down last year, which might mean a slightly viable alternative to the lockdown on non safe bets that virgin and hmv have been forcing.
also fopp have taken over a massive chain of something like 65 nationwide shops from musiczone, a chain that went down last year, which might mean a slightly viable alternative to the lockdown on non safe bets that virgin and hmv have been forcing.
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