Support your local record dealers before it is too LATE!

Hey..Independent record dealers in Boston and the rest of the country are
having a tough time. I just wanted to ask you all read this article and tell
you to get out there and support your local before we are all forced to shop at
Virgin and Best Buy.  Thanks Tim

 Please discuss!

Boston Globe, The (MA) 


November 19, 2003 

THEY'VE TUNED IN TO CUSTOMER'S NEEDS 


Author: Vanessa E. Jones, Globe Staff 

Plenty of noise has been made by the toppling of the big trees in the world of
CD stores - HMV in Harvard Square and Tower Records in Boston. Making less of a
commotion are the quiet closings of indie record stores, which seem to be
dropping like autumn leaves. 

Biscuithead Records in the Back Bay and Other Music in Harvard Square shut
their doors last year. Hi-Fi Records in Jamaica Plain, Smash City Records in
the Back Bay, and Record Hog in Somerville all gave up the fight this year. No
wonder Mike 

Dreese, head of Newbury Comics, the largest local privately owned record-store
chain, recently predicted the death of CD retailers in the next three to eight
years. 

Hard times caused by bootleggers, a harsh post-9/11 economic climate, and
illegal and legal downloading is creating economic strife. The owner of Laxton
Records in Jamaica Plain has watched sales of his Caribbean music CDs drop 30
to 40 percent since the late '90s. At Satellite Records in 

the Back Bay, the only place in town to find a wide selection of dance music on
vinyl, sales have plummeted 80 percent in the past few years. At its nadir
almost a year ago, foot traffic had dwindled to two customers a day. 

But some local stores aren't crying "uncle" yet. To counter falling sales,
managers are cutting their staffs, strengthening their services, pricing their
CDs competitively, and expanding stock to include videos, 

DVDs, and clothing. And they're practicing the art of specialization, luring
customers to specific genres and formats of music that can't be found at a
Target or Best Buy. 

"We certainly try to appeal to more of the lunatic fringe," says Pat McGrath,
owner of Looney Tunes Records in the Fenway, which has survived the last 25
years selling used classical, jazz, and rock records. "People who scarcely have
a life are our ideal customers - someone who would eat dog food so they would
have extra record money. I swear, some of them look like they're existing
solely on Alpo. That's the clientele I cultivate. I'm a niche market." 

Michael McLean, 54, of the South End, is one of those addicts. Before the hours
of his job changed, he'd visit Laxton Records weekly to snap up old-school,
lovers-rock 

reggae CDs. He stops by the chains occasionally, but he prefers Laxton because
of the service. "They know the type of music I like," he says, peering into the
glass counter at Dwight Pinkney's "Jamaican Memories by the Score." 

"You probably have that one," says Junette Henry, the store owner's wife, who
attends to Laxton while her husband is at his day job. But McLean doesn't have
Pinkney's "More Jamaican Memories." 

As he peruses other CDs, Henry pops "More Jamaican Memories" in the stereo,
playing a good minute or two of a song before fast-forwarding to the next. She
does the same with Marie Pierre's "Love Affair" and Richie Stephens's "Covers
for Lovers." By the time McLean leaves, he has purchased those and two other
discs. And he's not done. He'll be back the next day to pick up a CD by Sanchez
that is temporarily sold out. 

It's clients like McLean that Laxton owner Forster Henry believes will help his
store survive this rough patch. "We have an average of 3,000 customers that
support us regularly," says Henry. He opened the shop, which is loosely named
after his birthplace of Claxton Bay, Trinidad, with money he made as a singer
and saxophonist in the 1980s. "If I can get enough customers to spend $120 a
year, I will be all right," he says. 

But specialization and service don't always ensure longevity. One of the
reasons Biscuithead Records closed last year is that the college students who
flocked to the store for underground hip-hop discovered they could get the same
songs on the Internet for free, says Biscuithead's owner, DJ Bruno, a veteran
of Boston's club scene who would not divulge his birth name. He was also
battling Massachusetts Avenue neighbors who didn't want a store catering to the
hip-hop crowd in their midst. "[They] were complaining about the music," says
Bruno, "complaining about the clientele that was coming in there. There wasn't
really anything wrong with the clientele. . . . It was just the black
stereotypes." 

When he tried to find a new space in neighborhoods near college campuses, he
encountered similar perceptions. "As soon as they would find out that we were
going to be a record store, or more specifically a hip-hop store, we weren't
granted a lease anywhere," he says. He finally decided to let the record store
die and focus on promotion and DJing instead. 

Pat Fontes, 23, the manager at Satellite Records, has experienced a different
problem in the Back Bay. He finds himself preaching the gospel of dance music
to college students whose musical tastes run toward Ludacris and other hip-hop
artists. 

"It's harder when you're dealing with a music that a good majority of the US
don't have an idea about," he says. Dance music thrives in Los Angeles, New
York, and Chicago, but here, says Fontes, "there's a lack of education. . . .
Kids aren't being turned on to anything new. They're just listening to
whatever's on the radio." 

Things aren't as bleak as last year, when so many dance-music labels,
distributors, and stores closed that Fontes began each work day "thanking the
Lord and kissing the floor," he says. Sales have dropped around 60 percent
since Satellite's glory days. 

How did Fontes turn things around? He doled out the pink slips, shrinking the
staff from 13 to four. He now puts in 60 hours a week merchandising, cleaning,
replenishing the stock, and doing the payroll. "Sometimes I work here by
myself," he says. And Satellite no longer advertises, relying instead on word
of mouth and the promotional skills of his employees. 

Fontes believes the store evaded extinction by being part of a chain that also
includes stores in Atlanta and New York. But these days, the main office in New
York no longer orders records for him. He does it himself, he says, to spread
the addiction to "the black crack," what dance-world denizens call vinyl. 

"We know what they buy," says Fontes, "and we're going to promote what we bring
to the store a lot more. I can give a record I play to a kid quicker than
something I got sent from New York that I believe is crap." 

The store will soon stock clothes by Karmaloop, an urban streetwear line that
sells Urban Outfitters-style items. He even plans to carry what he calls
"girls' stuff" - T-shirts and bags. "Maybe it'll open up our market a little
wider," says Fontes. 

Fontes isn't the only one moving beyond selling his core products. Half-price
videos, DVDs, and CDs have infiltrated Looney Tunes. On a recent afternoon two
people wandered in to browse the bins. One, Bob Clerico, 40, was lured by a
sign touting dance classics for $1. He left with two 10-inch LPs and an "I Love
Lucy" video. Total cost? $4.20. 

"[This business is] such a fringe," says McGrath. "Other stores couldn't
tolerate the small sales of certain things. 

But in the indie record world, "a few sales mean a lot," says Laxton's Henry.
So Henry carries Sheryl Crow, Coldplay, and Jay-Z CDs to satisfy the diverse
tastes of his multicultural neighbors. He sells Caribbean flags and T-shirts.
Four months ago he started renting DVDs and videos despite the fact that a
Videosmith sits a few blocks away on Centre Street. "People don't like big
things," says Henry. 

"They like to come where people know them." 

And they like to go to stores that sell products at affordable prices. With its
hefty number of retailers, Boston is a buyer's market, says Angela Sawyer of
Twisted Village, a Harvard Square store that specializes in obscure jazz, rock,
and folk. "If consumers are willing to shop around and take a trip to a wide
range of places, they'd be able to come home with a really decent stash of
records for not a huge amount of money." 

Like many indie store owners, Henry monitors the bigger stores, keeping an eye
on prices. He sells his CDs for $14.99 or $15.99, but can't compete with
first-week sales at a Best Buy or Target. "Sometimes what they have on sale,
that's what we [pay] for the wholesale price," he says with a rueful chuckle. 

While plenty of fanfare accompanied Universal Music Group's September
announcement about slashing suggested retail prices to $13 from $17-$19, the
cut affects only retailers that buy in bulk. Now smaller distributors are
stepping in to help mom-and-pop stores. New York-based reggae specialist VP
Records offers a 5 percent discount if a client buys 10 CDs rather than five.
The price drop can give Laxton an edge over bootleggers such as the one Henry
sees roaming Dorchester and Mattapan selling reggae and soca discs for $5. 

Franklin's CDs, on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain, survives by charging the
same prices for its salsa, bachata, and merengue discs that it did when it
opened 10 years ago: $11.99 and $12.99. The store has been hit by illegal
downloading and a rocky economy, but on a recent afternoon two women walked in
within the space of five minutes to buy CDs. 

"As long as you don't boost the prices up high," says Ernesto Pena, the
manager, "you don't scare people away."