Record shops are cozy. You might need to squeeze by a fellow shopper to get to that red vinyl treasure at the end of the row. Social distancing is not an option.
Of course, they aren't all that way, but Wuxtry in Decatur has always been a tightly packed place, crammed floor to ceiling with albums. While the shop was closed, manager Richard Kuykendall and owner Mark Methe spent a lot of time creating space and a new traffic flow.
âInstead of sitting around going âoh, no, weâre gonna dieâ, letâs just work,â Methe says. âIt was somewhere to go and do, something instead of sitting around at home.â
Thereâs only so much to be done, though. âItâs always going to be cramped, but the flow patternâs a little easier right now,â he says, before pausing to ask a couple of customers entering the store â both masked â if theyâd like some hand sanitizer. Theyâd already sanitized in the car before coming in.
âWell, feel free to re-upâŚ,â he says, noting that he invites everyone to partake in the sanitizer, and if they donât, he âsort of insists.â
Wuxtry has been doing business near the corner of Clairmont and North Decatur roads since 1978, and in that time, theyâve never been closed for this long. The store shut its doors on March 24, and reopened on Monday, May 4.
âIâm not 100% certain Iâm doing the right thing, but you got to stay alive, too,â Methe says.
In opening up its doors to customers, Wuxtry is the rare exception, but it's not alone. Records Galore in Clarkston and Mojo Vinyl in Roswell have both reopened, too. But Atlanta is blessed with many record shops, and they're struggling to survive just like every other consumer-focused business in the current pandemic. Even the ones that haven't reopened are looking for ways to keep the lights on until they're ready to welcome customers again.
Mojo Vinyl is open just three days a week, for now. The shop is open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and, as their Facebook page reminds potential shoppers, they're "following current social distancing rules and wearing masks. If you can't deal with that, don't bother."
Most of the shops are concentrating on mail order and curbside pickup, including Alpharettaâs Comeback Vinyl.
âBusiness has definitely been slower without our retail store being open for in-store shopping,â says Comebackâs co-owner Alex Vernon. âWeâve taken a big hit for the last few months, but our customers have been keeping us going with online and phone orders. Weâve been doing mail order since we first started selling records in 2014, so weâve had a lot of experience with it, but itâs never been all we do.â
Some artists have been encouraging fans to support small independent music retailers, and a few have gone even further. Jason Isbell, formerly of Athensâ Drive-By Truckers, is releasing his latest album, âReunions,â to independent record stores seven days before it hits other outlets. Comeback Vinyl was among the shops selling the Isbell album last Friday.
But something is lost in picking up an album without ever leaving your car, and Vernon knows that.
âWeâve made several new efforts to allow our customers alternative ways of shopping during the pandemic,â he says. âWe uploaded âflip videosâ of our entire inventory, both new and used records, to a Dropbox folder that weâre calling the Comeback Vinyl Virtual Record Store.â
Those folders are organized just like they are in the store. You can view used records or new, and see albums alphabetized within genres. You can see the store's entire inventory at comebackvinyl.com. "Flipping through records in a record store is one of the most enjoyable things about collecting albums, and with the pandemic going on, we wanted to find a way for our customers to still get that in-store shopping experience from home," Vernon says.
Social media is another important outlet for keeping record stores afloat. GoFundMe campaigns have helped some stores maintain payroll and leases, but others have used it to keep doing what theyâve always done: sell records.
Wax'n'Facts in Little Five Points, which relied almost solely on in-store sales, has jumped on the digital sales bandwagon with encouragement from customers. But many shops have been doing online sales for many years, via the multi-vendor platform Discogs, eBay and other outlets.
Ella Guru Record Shop owner Don Radcliffe is among those who have a presence on Discogs, but since the pandemic shut down the shop to foot traffic, he's been posting select albums on the shop's Instagram and Facebook accounts, along with a price list. He's even done the occasional delivery for local customers.
âWeâve had a couple of months which are no worse than the first months we were open originally. Weâre paying the rent; Iâm still paying my part timers. Weâre not ahead of the game, but weâre keeping up without having to worry too terribly about whether weâre going to have to do a GoFundMe, or Iâll go back to running the thing myself. Itâs really been great.â
âAnd people are so supportive,â Radcliffe says, before noting that heâs put hundreds more records up on Discogs that werenât there before the shutdown began. And most of the people buying there appear to be new digital customers, too. You can tell by noting how little feedback theyâve had on their accounts.
RELATED: Vinyl fuels the indie record store resurgence
âI would say half of the people who have bought stuff from me on Discogs have got 10 feedback count or less,â Radcliffe says. âPeople are jumping on and buying records because people just gotta buy records. Nothingâs gonna stop them.â
Wuxtry actually sold a few albums in April, too, as Methe notes that he took in about $64 in April. Customers called, asked if he had something in stock, and they worked out an exchange at the door. But thatâs not a long-term strategy for survival.
âThe idea of having a table at the door and people come up and you say what do you want and you go look, like the liquor store, I donât see how that could possibly work here,â Methe says. âYouâve got to browse.â
Music is comfort, and for some of us, thereâs still something about going to a record store and flipping through the bins that can never be replaced.
Did You KnowâŚ
The vinyl album peaked in the mid-1970s, accounting for almost 63% of all music sales in 1977, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. In 2019, that number is 4.5%. But that's just 1% less than the market share for CDs last year. Streaming and downloading, with no physical format to have and hold, is the dominant way to get music these days.
That 4.5% â along with the 5.5% provided by CDs â is enough to keep record stores in business, though, and itâs an area where Atlanta thrives. Or, at least it did. Retail businesses, along with restaurants, have taken a huge hit during the current pandemic. The long-term effects are still unknown, but most of metro Atlanta record stores remain closed to walk-in business today.
Here are the stores mentioned in the story. For a more complete list of local independent record retailers, go to ajc.com/recordshops.
Wuxtry Records, 2096 N. Decatur Road, Decatur. 404-329-0020, wuxtryrecords.com
Comeback Vinyl, 1 S. Main St., Alpharetta. 678-580-0583, comebackvinyl.com
Mojo Vinyl Shop, 1058 Alpharetta Highway, Roswell. 678-534-5042, mojovinylrecords.com
Ella Guru Record Shop, 2747 Lavista Road, Decatur. 404-883-2413, facebook.com/EllaGuruRecordStore
Wax 'n' Facts, Little Five Points, 432 Moreland Ave. NE, Atlanta. 404-525-2275, waxnfacts.com
Records Galore, 4148 E. Ponce de Leon Ave., Clarkston. 404-294-5271, facebook.com/recordsgaloreclarkston
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