Everything and Everybody’s Getting Older (part two)

The original plan had been to have a presence in the Tron Church when it reopened in September and work that in tandem with our shop in St Mary’s Street. Unfortunately the Tron market had a change in their own plan and decided to not open until November and have a Christmas market. It was also decided that selling music wasn’t Christmassy enough though obviously given the delay we had already started to look at alternatives.

The high street has changed beyond recognition in the last decade especially with regard to spending patterns.There was a time when students would be in as we opened at 9.30am killing time until their next lecture when of course now they would spend that time on their phones. Again while before people came in the shop at lunchtimes to get out of the office and away from their computer screens they now spend that time in the office on social media. Most business is now often squeezed into an hour or two after 4pm as people leave work and uni. Even the many visitors we get from the UK and abroad seem to choose this time to visit.

Now while this leaves time to deal will online orders, emails and social media as I said in the last post I really have to look at how my time can best be used. It is great to have time to chat with customers who have travelled half way around the world to visit the shop and lovely to chat to the many other record shops that visit when in Edinburgh but I have to consider how sensible that now is. We had more students in this year than we have had for a few years now and the posters were incredibly popular but for all the vinyl revival they seemed to show little interest and those that did whereas before they would tell me of their local record shop by far the majority now spoke of visiting HMV which is understandable given the number of stores they have and their new found love of stocking vinyl.

I’m looking at a couple of possible things leading up to Christmas but all things considered I’ll be pushing any decision making forward more of which later today.