Ready to Open...on Friday!

This coming Friday will be a large baby-step towards what I wanted to do last year: open my own record store. I'm not sure how much of the story I've recounted here, but last May I was laid off from my job of fourteen years with Borders Books distribution. I had a severance package, a 401K to cash in, and a plan. I have a friend who is a sort of local record star. Record stars are, in record collectors terms, much like rock stars. In fact, I have another friend, the legendary Ron House, who is both a local record star and rock star. But my other record star friend and I were going to open a record store, and hoped to have it open last August or so. That plan was taken to a few steps away from fruition when we found a location in Clintonville that was affordable, but suddenly the realization that the economy was going from bad to worse really fast hit us. I cracked first and decided that we couldn't do it. By then, however, I had a garage full of records and fixtures from Sour Records, a local store that closed in April. Even with several garage sales and ebay sales I still had a full garage. My plan, over all, was to get a "real job" for a while and then try to do the store again when things were more stable.

Well, I've had two real jobs since then and I've interviewed numerous times for jobs I know I'm qualified for, but didn't get. I take a lot of the blame to heart, but there's also just a ton of people who have been laid off of similar jobs just like mine. So, my wonderful and supportive wife suggested that I give the store idea a second chance on a smaller level by renting a space in a local in-door flea market mall. The last few weeks I've gone through everything to do that: got my vendor license, leased the space for an initial six week period, bulked up on my higher value stock, and even bought a cash register from the guy who owned Sour.



So, here's how my booth at the Southpointe Marketplace looked on Friday when my friend the record star (and former prospective business partner who has since become a really good friend) helped me move the fixtures into the space.



This is how it looks with posters up and records in the bin.



By the end of the day it was about 90% done. Laura has to tell me the secrets of the cash register (she figured it all out while I was gathering another load of vinyl from the garage), and there are a few last minute polishing up things to do before we open on Friday morning but, mostly, it's ready to go. It's all records at this point, but I might bring a few more things in eventually. It's only three days a week, from Friday through Sunday, so I can get a real job part-time as well. I'm not letting myself get too carried away about thinking it could lead to a proper stand-alone store, the financial world is too difficult to predict and who knows if the trend towards resurgence on behalf of vinyl is an ongoing thing. All I can say for sure is that I had about four people yesterday, and five today, that wanted to start shopping and buying. I had to ask them to come back next weekend.



So, here's Elizabeth, hamming it up with one of her favorite records at the end of our long day today. She's excited that it's "her" record store and I'm feeling somewhat proud that all three of us (and my friend) brought it all together in just a few days (after weeks of work, gathering product and organizing everything on my own).

I'm pretty excited about Friday morning!