The longbox is completely useless as far as we`re concerned. That way, nobody steals them, and we don`t have to look in a suspicious way on customers, and it helps the atmosphere. We display the CD artwork insert and keep the goods behind the counter. And the cardboard box is just a waste of paper. That plastic box has got to be the most user-unfriendly thing. It would save an awful lot of time breaking the CDs out of boxes. Would this create problems for you as a retailer?Ī-It wouldn`t at all. Q-It has been proposed by some in the music industry that the CD longbox package, particularly plastic longboxes, be done away with as environmentally unsound. Some have been sold for $100-a few albums by Big Black, for example. You sell some rare albums for $30 to $50. A used import vinyl album in pristine condition might sell for $7.50, as opposed to $12 or more new.īut a lot of things are just plain rare. A used import CD would sell for probably $13 as opposed to $19 to $23 new. You have to try pretty hard to damage a CD, so we can sell used domestic CDs for $9 or $10, and people know there`s unlikely to be a problem with them in terms of their functioning. One thing that seems really popular is the used CD. I guess people know that the price isn`t ever really going to go down.

It has a certain rarity value: It`s not something that`s ever going to be widely available. If people really want an import and they`ve not been able to get it anywhere else, they`re prepared to pay for it. It may have something to do with the kind of market the store is in. Have you found that`s a deterrent for some customers?Ī-Surprisingly, it isn`t. Q-New import records are generally more expensive than domestic releases. They`ll pay you months late, and a lot of little record companies go out of business because they can`t get paid for the things that they press. The reputation of a lot of distributors, and I don`t want to tar them all with the same brush, is that they`re awful at paying you. Entrusting what might be the only stock you`ve got in hand to a distributor that might be on the brink of going out of business. It`s worse from the point of view of the little record label. Some stores may only be able to deal with them on a cash-on-delivery basis, and they`d need a pretty good cash flow to stock from a lot of these people. Reckless has been going a few years, so we`ve built up a trust with them and we`ve got terms with them. We can deal with smaller independent distributors. There are two ways you can talk about it: from the point of view of the retail store, and from the point of view of us as a small independent label trying to get distributors to network our albums.Īs far as the store, it`s okay. Has that created problems for you?Ī-Yeah, it does create problems. Q-Some of the larger independent record distributors have gone out of business in recent times. They`re like gold dust in England, and they`re cheap here. There are certain tracks on certain albums that are sought after. Soul albums that were never released in the U.K., things that are out of print, things we can find in thrift stores. It`s mostly hard-to-find jazz and jazz-fusion and soul bands from the `60s and `70s and very early `80s. Q-Do you get inquiries from your sister stores in London about records available here-house music or blues, for example?Ī-Not so much blues or house-(house) records like those on the Hot Mix 5 label you can get in England anyway. With that subculture there, young people in England are made aware of reggae just because there`s so much of it played on the radio, there are so many reggae clubs and it`s more often written about. That`s probably to do with the immigrant population there-there`s a large immigrant population from Jamaica and the West Indies in England. It seems that reggae is less popular in America than in London. In our London stores, it`s incredibly popular. Q-Is there anything that would sell well in London that wouldn`t sell here?Ī-In this store, nobody`s really interested in soul music. If you don`t treat people well in America, they just don`t come back. The customer is kind of an inconvenience. In England, you`re much more likely to get a bad attitude from the person who works in the store. The whole character of shopping in America is very different.

Q-Have you found any differences between American and British customers?Ī-The customers here are generally much more polite. We do have a lot of people come in and say: ''Can you get this one? I read this review about it.'' We also stock magazines and music papers from Europe, so if you come here, you can see the reviews and know what`s just been released in Europe. A-We have a service where we`ll try to locate things for people if it`s an import and nobody else has got it in Chicago.

Reckless records of london chicago