This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Retail
Edinburgh’s Avalanche Records to close
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 30 March 2016
Earlier this month, Edinburgh record shop Avalanche announced that it would close at the end of March, saying that direct-to-fan sales and the resurgence of HMV and its Fopp subsidiary have made it too difficult to operate as an independent record seller in the Scottish capital. This follows the shop’s decision to withdraw from this year’s Record Store Day.
“My original intention had been to assess how we moved forward after RSD, but with that decision made [ie, not to participate in RSD any more] it seemed sensible to decide on the shop’s future now”, wrote manager Kevin Buckle on the shop’s website. “Given all I’ve said, it is clear that there is simply not enough business left after everybody else takes a cut for Avalanche to do what we have done for the last 30 years and consequently I will shut the doors by the end of the month”.
On how Record Store Day has developed over the years, he added that the size of the list of exclusives now made it impossible to know what to buy in, saying: “Collectors will still buy the artists they collect, but it is no wonder so many shops are asking what people are looking for, as it is impossible to guess what these once-a-year customers will buy”.
In a second post this week, Buckle laid into HMV and Fopp more, arguing that it is they who have really made operating an independent record shop more difficult. Favourable rent terms agreed with landlords after HMV was saved from administration by Hilco “made a level playing field impossible”. Then came the more favourable trading terms negotiated by Hilco with the labels, he says. And then finally came the major retailers’ decision to ride the wave of the vinyl revival.
“Truth be told new vinyl sells very slowly”, writes Buckle. “Even when we had the market almost completely to ourselves there was little beyond the Arctic Monkeys and White Stripes we could be sure to sell each month. And, of course, what we get one month we have to pay for the end of the next … HMV/Fopp’s new trading terms meant they only paid for stock when sold, so worrying about how much to stock was no problem at all”.
Pre-orders managed by artists themselves, or labels and services like PledgeMusic, have further reduced the number of people who would traditionally have patronised an independent shop. “Even the much lauded ‘indies only’ releases were, with a few honourable exceptions, available also from the indie label often months, never mind weeks before the shops even knew about it”, he says.
“You can not underestimate the decline of sales in the independents”, he concludes. “The new Primal Scream album available from PledgeMusic sold less in the 300+ independents in its first week than the Avalanche shops would have sold [alone] in our heyday in the first couple of weeks. Indies now do best when taking a small slice of a large pie, as happened with the Bowie album. The second hand market is strong but new indies selling new music with a few exceptions has almost gone”.
