In North West Wales there are two main outlets for Welsh product: Cob Records in Bangor and Porthmadog. James McLaren talks to their managers about their unique selling points
Two record shops, linked by name and history, one in Bangor, one in Porthmadog, will be familiar to anyone who lives in North West Wales and anyone who has ever visited the area on holiday or business. The Porthmadog shop, especially, has developed an international reputation as one of the most comprehensive dealers of secondhand records in the UK, mostly through the history of its mail order service.
PORTHMADOG
Set up in 1967, this flagship store began by simply selling ex-jukebox singles, but quickly developed into a purveyor of secondhand, deleted, and new stock. They then hit on a novel idea: selling off dead stock from major labels, and purchasing back boxes of dead stock from other small shops. They hit on a novel idea, selling off dead stock from major labels and purchasing back boxes of dead stock from other small shops, and buying in huge quantities of deleted vinyl from around the world. Their reputation for rare and unusual items grew, and the mail order side of the business exploded.
One year after opening, they had enough secondhand stock to enter the world of mail-orders. In those days, a simple advert in the New Musical Express or Melody Maker could generate a lot more sales and a lot more international trade than a lot of markets international-ly, and Cob were able to capitalize on this.
Within four years of starting, they were mailing 7500 records a week to 25,000 customers from all over the world, and employing 20 staff to manage the demand.
The mail order service saw a peak in its existence where turning over £60,000 per annum, through that mail order service, about $420,000 was export sales.
“I remember we sent three orders of thousands of pound value each to a seaside souvenir shop in Port Stanley for the troops during the Falklands War,” says the store’s manager, Tony Hughes. “Although the Soviets saw a boom for the area in business, the internationalisation of releases and various other factors have meant that the mail order business, although still a substantial part of Cob Bangor’s operation, at Cob Porthmadog over the years.”
“We also suffered the effects of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia where we had some 5,000 regular buyers and export market was severely affected by the UK joining the EC with us having to abide by new customs regulations also the strength of the pound against other world currencies did us no favours. Consequently, our sales and have diminished substantially, but we still have a strong mail-order business within the UK shipping about 80,000 CDs annual-ly.”
So there’s been a necessary shift into in-shop stock, but Cob Porthmadog is ideally placed to capitalize on its strong customer loyalty and its position in one of Wales’s best hotspots.
“We are fortunate to have built up a huge and invaluable range of customers,” says Tony. “We advertise materials for the mail order for peoples’ unwanted CDs, LPs, DVDs, and videos, and we always have in stock around 200 second hand CDs, 3,000 LPs, 4,500 cassettes, 10,000 videos and a few hundred DVDs.
“Porthmadog, not being a large town, doesn’t allow us the luxury of being able to stock a vast amount of brand new stock, but we do carry some 2,000 new CDs, LPs, few 7”s, cassettes, DVDs, and videos; but whatever we don’t have can be ordered and obtained within a day or two.”
On a local level, Cob Porthmadog stocks records from Welsh bands and labels, “only on a sale or return basis. We do as much as possible to help local bands because if either Cob or not give them support they have virtually no other outlets in Gwynedd to introduce their material.”
BANGOR
Owen Hughes, manager of Cob Bangor, was in the late-seventies, a religious customer of the Porthmadog shop, while working for local government in the fire service up to September 1979. He opened the second shop in partnership with the Porthmadog firm, with a different remit and emphasis, dictated by the social make-up of the university town.
“We opened in the same week as This World by Pink Floyd was No.1,” says Owen. “Our mail-order was a different kettle of fish altogether – so we had two good sellers in the first six months, then two years of down. Bangor is, we’ve always done it on that basis, a small town, so local people here demand more new stock and we emphasize new releases and the current side of things. The Porthmadog store does mostly secondhand.”
Starting on three storeys and moving to a two-storey format since the Bangor store has averaged a far lower turnover since its founding. “All in all it’s about the money as far as selling goes,” says Hughes, “but just a different shape.”
“In the last 25 years, Hughes has noticed a lot of changes in the music scene and its impact on the stock that his shop carries. “The way we used to keep all the CD taking over from what was almost exclusively vinyl, with a lot of second hand DVDs now coming in on a pace too, which is a recent development. The era of the importance of the single too, as far as we’re concerned, those things have never been that big on singles, it’s definitely taken a dive in recent years.”
Has Hughes been affected by the media hype about illegal downloads on new music sales? “Yes, but it’s hard to put them exactly. It’s inevitably going to have some impact, but it’s maybe not as bad as a lot of people think. Some people as we’re never really concentrated on sales and all that, but do fill in things which fit in with the back-catalogue stock we’re doing anyway.”
“Owen’s own interests dictate a lot of the shop’s general stock. We stock a wide, but it’s unusual in being able to cater for lots of different kinds of things, because that’s where my real interest is I suppose. We have a lot of classical, blues, jazz, country, gospel and a lot of world music.
“We do a lot of back-catalogue rock and indie - it’s a university town so that’s very important to us. And the Welsh stuff as well.
“Bangor is a good print, because although it has students, the Welsh population is a transient student one, as the Welsh-speaking population is more of an established, local community. We know there are others doing quite well for themselves in the area, and the wider Welsh-language music scene does well. We have made an effort to stock the Welsh titles, and it’s something we’re happy to stock. It’s still proving important to the older customers, to a supposed golden age in the eighties, but we deal with Sain, Ankst and so on, plus the stuff which comes through other smaller distributors. We do sale or return for local bands and that’s fine. We support it, and it’s been there's a fair bit which doesn’t do well, but a lot of it which do well too.
“It’s important for us to support the local scene to make sure they can access us through sale or return, so the bands that can get their stock on the shelves. We have a free noticeboard in the shop where people can put items for sale or advertise for free. We’ve found drivers for whoever it is they're looking for. We encourage that for sure. The area is a good mix of community, and the different part of the community that we’re trying to be incredibly cool or anything.”
CONTACT
Email: cob@cobbrecords.com
Web:
Cob Records 53 Britannia Terrace Porthmadog Gwynedd LL49 9AR Tel: 01766 512170
Cob Records 320 High Street Bangor Gwynedd LL57 1YA
