THE RECORD EXCHANGE
Pandemic and product.
Both presented challenges to our success on Black Friday. The former was unavoidable. The latter could have been.
Were it not for a lack of adequate quantities to sell to our customers – heavy allocations on over 30 titles, no-shows on Chris Cornell and War (still waiting on War) – we would be reporting another smashing Black Friday success at The Record Exchange. Instead, the day was colored by the frustrations of a store dealing with under-filled orders and missing product on what should have been a huge day, and head-scratching customers who had grown accustomed to the rewards of getting up early to get what they wanted only to be shortchanged on Friday. For the first time in years, we were down on Black Friday (-4%) even with a 10% increase in our sell-through rate, and we’re only left thinking what could have been had we had enough product to sell.
The allocation numbers speak for themselves: 3 copies of the Rolling Stones (12% of our order); 7 John Prine box sets (23% of our order); a quarter of the Uncle Tupelos we ordered; 1 – a whopping 1 – of the 20 copies of Ice-T we ordered. We got halved on Kids See Ghosts and the Charlie Brown Christmas 7-inch, received a third of our Motorhead “Ace of Spades” order. Even with the relative obscurity of a Beat Farmers live record, we couldn’t get anywhere near the 8 copies we ordered – we got 1. When Volbeat finally showed up on Friday, we also got 1. And so on. Imagine the sales day we would have had without these allocations.
The frustration – among the stores, among our customers – is palpable. Our core customers, the uber-fans, our people, the ones you want to be excited about Record Store Day and Black Friday, are starting to get shut out. These customers don’t want to hear excuses. They don’t care about under-produced titles, allocations and delayed shipments. All they care about is getting the music they visit our stores expecting to get, and guess who gets to be the bad guy when they don’t get it?
We get that there’s a pandemic raging, and we’re grateful we even got to have a Black Friday this year. But these problems aren’t new – Record Store Day quantities were set long before there was a pandemic, and allocations proved to be an issue during the RSD Drops events. Even a once-reliable event like the Rocktober reissue campaign was marred by allocations this fall.
These events have gone mainstream to a certain extent, yet the pressings remain niche, and in some cases regressive. Only 900 units of a Rolling Stones piece? (No one wants to hear how precious the process of each individual vinyl pour is if they can’t count on taking one home.) Only 1,000 units of a long out-of-print mainstream rap classic from the likes of an Ice-T? A mere 2,000 for a John Prine (RIP) box set in a year where fans and newbies alike are clamoring to revisit his catalog in the wake of his passing? From our view, it’s wakeup-call time: Is this a sustainable model for the success of our stores and the labels and distributors investing in these physical goods? Do you really want us to be running out of your releases by 8:05am and pissing off our loyal customers?
It’s time to start treating these precious goods a little less precious – or at least realize that the demand for exclusives has eclipsed previous standards for “limited edition.” It’s time to recalibrate before we kill the goose that laid the golden egg, because 1,000, 1,500, even 2,000 pressings just aren’t cutting it any more. We hope you take our observations to heart as you begin planning for Record Store Day 2021.
As for the rest of our weekend, we saw our first drop in Small Business Saturday business in years, which we largely attribute to the pandemic based on the feedback we received from our customers. While we saw an encouraging amount of support on Saturday, and our first foray into early-morning appointment shopping yielded positive results, we knew that several of our customers were choosing to stay away and that some saw the line out front – we kept our limited capacity limited – and decided not to wait to get in. The end result was a 19% decrease in business after seeing 15% growth for two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019.
Fortunately, Sunday saved our weekend. Several of those customers who walked away on Saturday returned on Sunday and told us they made a point of coming back when it was less busy so they could still support the store. We also got a nice boost of support from TV viewers who saw The Record Exchange featured in holiday shopping news stories on two of Boise’s network affiliates. That, coupled with online sales of exclusives to customers across the country, resulted in a 118% increase in Sunday sales, which miraculously put us 1.7% up over 2019 for the three-day weekend.
Below you will find our Top 50 exclusive sellers and some photos from the day. In spite of our grumbling, we do thank you for your support in this strange year. The fact you helped make the RSD Drops events happen (and allowed us to revisit orders); that you convinced your artists to release records early in our stores and provide us with virtual concert events; that you continued to send us promotional goods and raffle prizes … it did not go unnoticed, and we're grateful for all of it.
We wish you a happy holiday season and look forward to a new (and hopefully less-strange) year of working together for the love of the music.
Chad Dryden
Marketing and Promotions Director
CACTUS RECORDS
Here are details of Black Friday at Cactus.
We continued our successful ticketing method that we have used during previous RSD Drop events. This ensured minimal interaction between customers and our staff while maintaining our standard of fairness and calm. Our many customers who frequent our store for events are now accustomed to the new procedures and seem to be appreciative of our efforts. While our sales have been concentrated in the morning hours for the 2020 RSD events, non-stop rain resulted in customers visiting throughout the day and into the next day, whenever rainfall was lightest and potential flooding was not an issue. We were down 6% for Friday, but ended up flat for the weekend. Considering the health crisis, we feel very fortunate to have posted these numbers. That said, we are not optimistic about the holiday shopping season as our city's positivity rate has quickly risen to 10%.
Our sell through, at only 60%, was not as successful as the RSD drops. We bought long on the Black Friday stock, as we usually do, with plans to have these unique items in stock for the holidays.
All in all, we were pleased with how it turned out and it was remarkable to see so many music fans at our store including many that we had not seen in some time.
Be well, Q
Some #’s and additional info:
We were missing six titles due to late arrivals or damaged shipments.
There was no movement on the 11 of the titles.
31 titles sold out.
Allocated, needed more: Elliott Smith, Kids See Ghosts, Stones, Tesla, Uncle Tupelo, Anthrax, Bill Evans, Ace Frehley, Milla Jovovich, Aimee Mann and John Prine,
Non performers: Norma Jean, ODB, Beastie Boys and a few others.
DEARBORN RECORDS
Black Friday sales were down 15% mostly due to the initial line being down 50%. The weekend sales were even from 2019 to 2020. Overall our customers very happy they were able to shop. With everything going on the weekend was a big surprise.
Stay safe and well and have a wonderful day too!
Kevin LeAnnais
Dearborn Music
22501 Michigan Ave.
Dearborn, MI 48124
HOMERS
hey everyone,
big thanks to RSD for all the effort this year.
Homers Black Friday 2020 recap-
We really weren't sure how the day would turn out.
Unsure how the virus exploding around here would affect
the weekend.
About 30 in line on a cold morning.
Customer traffic was down for us and our area, the Old Market.
Numerous tv stories about how light consumer traffic was
everywhere.
For the day we were down 23% and for the weekend 20%.
Sell-through sits at 47%.
The most allocated of all RSD/BF dates so far.
Jazz and Hip-Hop continue to be big demand along with
hair Metal
top sellers include;
Kids See Ghosts, G Harrison, Fountains of Wayne, Uncle Tupelo,
U2, Tesla, Willie Nelson, V Guaraldi, D Gilmour, Puscifer,
Lou Reed,
under-performers; DMX, Garcia, Weeknd, G Washington, B Lavette
Hope our friends who are dealing with much more difficult
situations in their state/city had as good of weekend as possible
--
Mike Fratt/Homers
General Manager/Head Buyer
1210 Howard St
Omaha NE 68102
402 346 0264
www.homersmusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/HomersMusic
#cimsmusic
STREETLIGHT RECORDS
Greetings, and Happy Post-Black Friday!
We are thrilled to report that both Streetlight locations had great success on Black Friday, especially considering some extra obstacles thrown in our path. Most notably, the power company decided to shut down power to our Santa Cruz store 90m minutes into the day to change out a power pole. As a result, we were closed for several hours. While that made for a lower sales day than last Black Friday, our Santa Cruz store still had a decent sell-thru rate and will take it as a win.
Our San Jose store was up 12% over last year. The appointment system went smoothly and the customers seemed happy and very appreciative that we were still hosting the event. San Jose’s first day sell-through rate was 66%. Santa Cruz's was 53%, with lower sales than last year due to the power outage. All in all, a great success! Much thanks to all of our partners in this amazing effort.
We’re extra appreciative of the successful day, as by the end of the weekend, San Jose's county that mandated retail shopping go down to 10% customer capacity. It will be an interesting holiday shopping season.
Best seller reports for each store are below. Much luck and health to all during the holiday season!
--Paige
Santa Cruz:
1 823134006614 JUST DROPPED IN JONES,SHARON
2 602507321253 KIDS SEE GHOSTS KIDS SEE GHOSTS
3 759656067911 ELLIOTT SMITH ALTERN SMITH,ELLIOTT
4 602507458218 SOME OLD BULLSHIT BEASTIE BOYS
5 602435051345 MY SWEET LORD HARRISON,GEORGE
6 093624895589 LIFE ON THE MURDER S MY CHEMICAL ROM
7 602507193508 LOVE IS GONNA RAIN O JONES,BILLY & T
8 664425134216 HERBIE HANCOCK TRIO HANCOCK,HERBIE
9 051497174972 LIVE AT LOUNGE AX - UNCLE TUPELO
10 194397868715 LOU REED LIVE AT ALI REED,LOU
11 602507496272 BOY - 40TH ANNIVERSA U2
12 712758040510 LIVE AT RONNIE SCOTT EVANS,BILL
13 4050538636338 APOCALYPTICAL / ROCK PUSCIFER
14 4050538639681 COSMIC DANCER CAVE,NICK
15 826853455275 SOME VELVET MORNING SINATRA,NANCY /
16 089353501822 FIRST CENTURY DEMENT DR DEMENTO
17 194397846614 SAP ALICE IN CHAINS
18 5050159834006 JARVIS COCKER RECORD COCKER,JARVIS
19 848064010968 LIVE IN PASADENA JUL BLUE OYSTER CUL
20 728706340519 DOGGYSTYLE (RSD) SNOOP DOGG
21 712758040596 ROLLINS IN HOLLAND: ROLLINS,SONNY
22 989327004215 PARDON MY FRENCH JAHARI MASSAMBA
23 194397934113 RED HEADED STRANGER NELSON,WILLIE
San Jose:
1 602507496272 BOY - 40TH ANNIVERSA U2
2 823134006614 JUST DROPPED IN JONES,SHARON /
3 602507321253 KIDS SEE GHOSTS KIDS SEE GHOSTS
4 602435051345 MY SWEET LORD HARRISON,GEORGE
5 194397846614 SAP ALICE IN CHAINS
6 602507458218 SOME OLD BULLSHIT BEASTIE BOYS
7 051497174972 LIVE AT LOUNGE AX - UNCLE TUPELO
8 4050538626711 ACE OF SPADES MOTORHEAD
9 712758040596 ROLLINS IN HOLLAND: ROLLINS,SONNY
10 888072114258 CHRISTMAS TIME IS HE GUARALDI,VINCE
11 194397868715 LOU REED LIVE AT ALI REED,LOU
12 194398003610 NO BUSINESS: THE PPX KNIGHT,CURTIS /
13 093624895589 LIFE ON THE MURDER S MY CHEMICAL ROM
14 190295264666 ON PAROLE MOTORHEAD
15 759656067911 ELLIOTT SMITH ALTERN SMITH,ELLIOTT
16 880882416010 GARCIALIVE VOLUME TW GARCIA,JERRY
17 194397934113 RED HEADED STRANGER NELSON,WILLIE
18 888072205291 JAZZ DISPENSARY: ORA VARIOUS ARTIST
19 711574899722 I WALK THE LINE CASH,JOHNNY
20 4050538639681 COSMIC DANCER CAVE,NICK
21 634457276871 BEATLES VS. STONES LOS STRAITJACKE
22 4050538636789 DREAM EVIL LIVE 87 DIO
23 698519000217 BACHELOR NO. 2 (OR T MANN,AIMEE
--
Paige Brodsky
Store Manager, San Jose
Marketing Coordinator
408-292-1105
#streetlightrecords
#cimsmusic
LOONEY TUNES
Good Morning All,
WHAT A WEEKEND!!!
First let me give thanks to everyone involved in RSD.
We were closed for 3 months with in-store sales at $0. For any mom and pop like us…you can imagine just how difficult it has been. BUT after we reopened we had 4 months in a row all with one massive day. IT HAS BEEN A GOD SENT! I heard that maybe some people may be saying it was overload. I disagree strongly. It has been a blessing…And it is one of the main reasons we are still alive and kicking. I can not be more grateful. No customers complained or felt overloaded. Every person I have spoken with has loved the way RSD has been handled this year. So…thank you RSD from the bottom of our hearts.
Black Friday started with about 125 people on line when I got to the store at 7am. First job…FREE BAGELS and COFFEE for everyone! We get about 500 mini bagels with butter or cream cheese and coffee. People love it. We also handed out Looney Tunes Hand Sanitizer bottles. Which still are a big hit! The first person on line lined up at 11pm Thanksgiving night! He wanted 1 of the 2 Rolling Stones Lps that we got. SUCCESS! He was super super excited. And we were excited that it went to a true fan! (license plate # RSTONES1). The line was very orderly as we allowed 20 people into the store at at time. We had all the titles in one line around the store that everyone went through. Very very smooth. Having the online sales start on our website at 1pm was also really helpful! Saturday was strong and so was Sunday.
Overall #s
Black Friday weekend was down about 5% over last year. But we are super happy with that.
2020 VS 2019 total RSD sales (all 4 dates compared to last years 2 dates) UP 11%!!!!
time to go ship some online orders!!!!
Karl
Karl Groeger
President
Looney Tunes &
Brookvale Records
31 Brookvale Ave.
West Babylon, NY 11704
www.LTCDS.com
RECORD ARCHIVE
Greetings everyone~
So, like everything else Black Friday didn't look or feel like anything else this year. We had a nice modest crowd of 50 people at 7:30, First customer arrived at 2:30 am ( wanting Let it Bleed).
By the time we opened, there were approximately 100 people coming in the doors. We had the entire Backroom Lounge dedicated to shopping RSD titles, with the rest of the store open for regular shopping. It was easy, efficient and swift. We did not have any live music, or food trucks or the bar open. So it was a little on the somber side as it should be since this pandemic is really taking it's toll~
So the bad news is we were down 21% in the store. The better news if I factor our online sales for the weekend , we are only down 6%. Nonetheless, even though I am a little disappointed, I am not unhappy as it is quite remarkable we did even that! In NYS, specifically in my region we are broken into different ' zones'. We are located in an area that many businesses ( gyms, hair salons) had to close but we remain open. Customer confusion ( and lots of phone calls) have convinced me that many people have thought we were not open, or simply decided to stay home and heed all the warnings.
Either way, I am grateful once again to all those who have made this day possible; first my staff who have poured their all into making theses days as successful as they can be, to all the heads of RSD for wrangling all the labels and artists on our behalf, to the suppliers who make sure we receive all the product ( and shippers!) and mostly to the artists who create the music that is so highly coveted.
Here are some of the specifics:
Best sellers ( LPS);
Kids see Ghosts
Alice in Chains
My Chemical Romance
U2
Sharon Jones
Beastie Boys
Alanis Morissette
Herbie Hancock
Bill Evans
Sonny Rollins
Lou Reed
Snoop Dogg
Anthrax ( NEEDED WAY MORE THAN WHAT I RECEIVED!)
Best Seller 45s:
George Harrison
Vince Guaraldi
David Gilmour ( plenty of stock left)
Nancy Sinatra
Hank Williams
(Of course Rolling Stones sold out in the first 5 minutes and I heard was going for $600 online....ugh)
Best to all and Happy Holidays~
Alayna Alderman
VP Record Archive
33 1/3 Rockwood St
Rochester, NY 14610
585-244-1210
est.1975
recordarchive.com
#recordarchive
The first record store in NYS to serve beer and wine daily!
MUSIC MILLENNIUM
Hello All -
Black Friday started with the normal thunder that it always does. It’s never like RSD but it has grown to 1/2 what a normal RSD is for us. We had 55 people in line
at 5:15 when I arrived and handed out a total of 120 time assignments by out 8am opening. It was 34 degrees out but clear and dry. Everyone was glad to see me so
they got a chance to go warm up some place before their time slot appeared. I agreed with their sentiment as I stood out till 7am giving away time assignments till
the morning crew arrived and I was able to get warm feet again.
I was happy to see that 1 in every 10 people through the door wanted the Fountains of Wayne release. I was not as smiley when people asked for titled that were highly
allocated or titles that that did not arrive due to late shipping or shipping carrier issues. 1 Beat Farmers, 1 Ice-T, 1 Sunn-O, 1 Tesla. 2 or 3 Fred Neil, Anthrax, Dogg
Pound, Fraggle Rock, Milla Jovolish, Painted Shield…..and the most requested of the day, Kids See Ghost which we only received 4. And somewhere out in America
are our Best Coast, Volbeat and Dave Brubeck. The Black Friday was the highest allocated slate of titles we’ve seen since the inception of Record Store Day.
We brought in 30 people people per 1/2 hour and that went smooth with once again people thanking us for the system we had in place to get people through. Many would
love to see this model in place post COVID and expressed it. Customers were only able to shop Black Friday titles during this time. The morning thunder did dissipate at
10:15 and at 10:30 we went back to our COVID limit of 10 people in the store at a time and regular shopping of the entire store.
Our totals for the day were only 60% of last years Black Friday titles. This effected our sell through of just selling 50% of what we had in stock. And there were a number
of disappointing performances of titles including Curtis Knight, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen/John Hurlbut, DMX, Karen Dalton, Grand Puba, Zella Day, James McMurtry,
Comet is Coming,Norah Jones, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Lil Wayne (both), John Batiste, Corey Taylor , Drive-By Truckers, Baroness and some others. Again, if we had done the
business of last year, some of these may have not been on the list. I’m sure the State of Oregon’s Pause that was put in effect on November 18th due to heavy spike in COVID
in the state may have effected how people shopped on BlackFriday this year. It had not effected our every day business but when you are encouraged not to celebrate Thanksgiving
with anyone out of your household, then you may have thought twice about exposing yourself to a crowd of shoppers on Black Friday.
We did make plenty of people happy which is what the day is all about. We thank you all for making all these fine releases and all the effort that was put in to making this day
possible. I look forward to the day we can do these events post COVID. Thank you Michael and Carrie, Andrea and Eric for what you have had to do this year. And if anyone hears of a Beat Farmers floating around, I might look like one of those smiley face emojis if it showed up! I could not take that 1 we received.
Now here are the sales results.
Full Length Vinyl
1- Alice In Chains - Sap 30 (Sold out and allocated)
2- Elliott Smith - Alternative Takes 28
3- Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings 25
4- Beastie Boys - Some Old Bullshit 23
5- Bill Evans - Live At Ronnie Scott’s 23
6- Aimee Mann - Bachelor No, 2 20 (Sold out)
7- Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger 20 (Sold out and allocated)
8- My Chemical Romance - Life On The Murder Scene 19
9- Jazz Dispensary 17 (Sold out)
10- Herbie Hancock - Herbie Hancock Trio 17
11- U2-Boy 17
12- Lou Reed - Live At Alice Tully Hall 17
13- Sonny Rollins - Rollins In Holland 16
14- Jerry Garcia - Garcia Live Volume Two 16
15- Fountains of Wayne - Welcome Interstate Managers 16 (Sold out)
16- Vince Guaraldi - Christmas Time Is Here 15 (Sold out and allocated)
17- Little Richard - Southern Child 13
18- Drive-By Truckers - Plan 9 Records Live 13
19 - Uncle Tupelo - Live At Lounge Ax (Sold out and allocated) 11
20- Studio 1 - Afrikan Blood 9
21- Alanis Morissette - Live At London’s 02 9
22- Bettye Lavette, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone - Original Grooves 9
23- John Hurlbut/Jorma Kaukonen 9
24- Norah Jones - Playdate 8
25- Bangles - Doll Revolution 8
7 Inch
1- George harrison - My Sweet Lord 15
2- David Gilmore - Yes I Have Ghosts 10
3- Hank Williams - 1952 Radio Auditions 9 (Sold out)
4- Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood- Some Velvet Morning 7
5- Nick Cave - Cosmic Dancer 7
Happy Holiday to you all!
Terry
DARKSIDE
That's a wrap! With Black Friday and Small Business Saturday now complete, we've finished the seemingly never-ending cycle of RSD this year with a sigh of relief and a longing to do it again next year. If you don't care about my synopsis, our easily digestible stats and top sellers are included on the right hand side. For specific distributor information, please reach out to me directly.
I said it last month, but it certainly bears repeating again- our customers absolutely love the multiple dates of RSD. They're freely admitting to us that they're spending more money than if it had just been the two traditional dates, and they're happy to do it. To borrow a phrase, take my money, please.
Friday did feel a bit more tepid that the previous drops in the morning, but by the end of the night the results are hard to deny. Between the media coverage of traditional holiday shopping being down and and the heightened anxiety of COVID spikes in the area again I think that finishing the day up 2.7% is a great win for us.
Our online sales in the evening were stronger than ever, even over the past Drops. We close at 8pm and launched our remaining stock on our own website and had over 100 orders in the first hour. As of this writing, my staff is still busting their asses to get all the orders out the door to happy customers, new and returning.
I think it's worth bringing up here that I feel that there should be a minimum entry for a title to be an official Record Store Day piece. There are pieces for every event that are under-pressed and we're all leaving money on the table. It is my opinion that the minimum entry to play on this national stage should be 1,500 pieces. That's still less than 1 per pledged store and I understand that not everyone brings in every title- but that just means there might be one more copy for the rest of us who do bring in everything, generally in more than 1 quantity. Record Store Day is a serious event with a national platform, with serious people ultimately working toward the goal of making people happy by guessing correctly at the things they want. I think we need to recognize this and try to serve the people who support us a little bit better each and everytime we ask them to give us their dollars.
The first person in our line was at 4:46pm on Thanksgiving, a new record! We also made a slight change this year- usually they camp out in the freezing cold, but between the cold and the pandemic we decided to number parking spots as the places in line. We made it clear you had to stay in your car and didn't have to worry too much because we knew the die-hards would keep each other honest. At open, we have continued allowed two people in at a time to go up to the registers and get their RSD exclusives. Afterwards they were free to shop the store and check out a separate non-RSD register, then exit from our side door, so no one ever crossed paths. As always, we partnered with our favorite local coffee shop The Poughkeepsie Grind to to keep everyone caffeinated.
The earliest titles with the highest demand included The Rolling Stones, Blue Oyster Cult, Sonny Rollins, My Chemical Romance, Sun O))), Ace Frehley, Uncle Tupelo and Fountains Of Wayne. There were other titles that we had lower quantities on that also sold out quickly.
Sadly, our Chris Cornell 7"s did not arrive until Monday evening, or this would have been included in the top sellers for sure.
A few titles we were surprised to see slow movement on, such as Curtis Knight, Corey Taylor/Dead Boys split, Little Richard, Brian Wilson & Van Dyke Parks among a few others.
We always like include a charity element on RSD to give back however we can, and this time around we did a raffle/donations to benefit Angels Of Light Hudson Valley. We're helping out a family who recently lost their 33 year old father to stage 4 cancer. All the money raised goes to provide them with gits for the holidays and other household essentials in their time of need. We raffled off the Mastodon Medium Rarities prize pack, Gorillaz hoodie w/ a bag of locally roasted coffee and several other items. Thank you to everyone involved for helping us get awesome prizes to raise money for a great cause!
Many thanks to all the labels, distributors and reps who worked to give us great product to produce these awesome results. These days aren't possible with all of your efforts and we're truly thankful for all of you. If you have any more specific questions, please feel to reach out directly. Scroll down to see a couple pictures from the weekend.
Justin Johnson
Darkside Records
845-452-8010
Darkside Black Friday Stats
- First person in line at 4:46pm on Thanksgiving
- 58% First Day Sell Through
- 65% Sell Through for whole weekend
- Sales up 2.7% over BF19
- Received 17% less BF stock vs 2019
- Combining all Drops + Black Friday, total sales up 39.33% over LY
- Online sales for Black Friday product particularly strong this year, presumable driven by the pandemic
- Small Business Saturday sales very strong, up 48.76% over LY
- Total weekend sales + 17.32% vs LY
