Cardiff Record Exchange, Cardiff’s newest record store has successfully opened coping with the difficulties of Covid-19.
Avid vinyl lovers are thrilled when Cardiff Record Exchange opened on last Friday, although many record stores closed after a big pandemic.
The process of preparing the record store has been relatively smooth, despite the impact of Covid-19 on the industry.
Ed Daw, the owner of the store said: “I’m not expecting it to be busy for a few months so that sort of built into my business plan is going to be quite slow.”
“A part of my business is selling classical records that I shipped over to China, so I’m fine sort of doing that I can continue to do that,” he said.
He explained that he doesn’t expect to make a lot of money in the first few months, and it’s just nice to be able to get his name out there and have this shop to use as an office to do his business.
The record store has a wide variety of genres ranging from high quality jazz, DIY and soul, to reggae 45s and psychedelic punk.
“Most of my records are sort of post 1960s, and I have new things – Lady Gaga and things like that but mainly secondhand records,” said Ed.
He said: “I think I’m accessible. I’ve got lots of good sort of clean well sorted stuff.”
“Quality control is about sort of being quite selective what they sell. It’s one thing to provide a nice experience to people coming and buying records,” said he.
Ed has been successfully selling records for the last 15 years while simultaneously working for the NHS. He left his job three years ago so that he could focus on selling records.
Due to the pandemic, he hasn’t been able to set up the record fair which has been his primary sources of income.
However, Ed is optimistic about the UK record industry as the sale of records is increasing especially amongst young people.
He said: “I think it’s nice to own an artifact. Sitting down and listening to a record that focused attention is very different to the sort of feeling of having something playing in the background.”
“And I think there’s something about the sort of sleeve art and discovering, looking and finding the whole thing is quite magical and enjoyable in a way, but just searching on your phone or whatever is isn’t,” said he.
Ed said: “Pop’n’Hops, which was a record and craft beer shop. He was moving out of this premise and moving next door, so he suggested that I maybe take over this shop which I’ve done.”
“It was a bit of serendipity felt like a good move at the right time. The shop is sort of nice. It’s a good size and in a good area,” said he.
The store is open from 10:30am to 5:30pm on Tuesday to Saturday.
To find out more about Cardiff Record Exchange, visit https://twitter.com/CardiffRecords