It can’t have escaped the notice of anybody even vaguely connected with music in Oxford that there will be a new record shop opening up in Oxford soon. “What’s the big deal about that?”, you may ask. Well, Oxford used to have a pretty healthy selection of independent record stores – Avid, Polar Bear, Vinyl Frontier, Massive and so on – but over the past few years they’ve slowly died away, the victims of shifts in music industry behaviours and rising property costs. For a while Witney’s Rapture Records has been keeping the indie entrepreneurial flame alight, and doing a frickin’ good job of it too. So it’s an undeniably good thing that it’ll be them launching a new branch on Oxford’s Cowley Road on 10 February.

We thought you might like to find out a little about Rapture, and so they were kind enough to answer some questions. Hopefully their answers will confirm why they are the right people for the job, and why it’s important that independent shops exist.

MIO: Can you give a brief history of Rapture – how long it’s been going,
 what you were doing before starting up, etc?
RR: Rapture opened in Witney in 2004 at a time when the music retail industry was really only just coming to terms with the changes and challenges it faced. We opened with the intention of creating a shop that would return to the fundamentals of music retailing; essentially great customer service and a passion for music. We believed then and believe even more firmly now that there is still a place on the high street for a really good indie record shop! Gary and Mark, who set up the shop, had both been managing record shops for decades, most notably with the Our Price and Sanity chains. When Sanity went out of business, Gary saw the opportunity to open a shop that combined the clean and welcoming image of the Sanity stores with a much more local feel. Over time we expanded to two stores, with a small shop in Carterton, then three when we opened up in Evesham. Since then we’ve closed the Carterton store, but Evesham is still going strong and this year will see us open another shop in Oxford (but more on that later!) Alongside the shop we’ve steadily become more involved with the local music scene and have a great working relationship with Fat Lil’s in Witney, promoting their gigs in-store and putting on our own nights. During the summer we take Rapture out on the road and set up stalls at local festivals like Cornbury and Truck.

MIO: How are you finding running the shop in the ‘current economic climate’ – with HMV closing down 60 shops this year, and general financial gloom?
RR: The economic climate is certainly always in the back of our minds and we’re not going to rest on our laurels, but on the whole we seem to be doing pretty well. HMV’s recent announcement is a worry though, despite them seemingly being our rival it is vitally important that a large chain like that is strong, to keep a presence for specialist music retailers on the high street. In the USA virtually all physical entertainment product is sold through chains like Best Buy or Wal-Mart – if something like that happened in the UK it would be disastrous for the music industry. My main problem with HMV is that they seem to have forgotten what their unique selling point is. Music should always be at the heart of any record shop, it certainly is with us, yet HMV seems to have pushed music into the background. Instead their shops are a mess of clothing, games, stereos etc… all things you can buy elsewhere on the high street. They seem to have re-branded themselves as a ‘lifestyle’ store, a dangerous game and one beholden to the fickleness of fashion! Most hardcore music lovers will always buy some music no matter how skint they are, these are the people who will keep you open even in the harshest of times so they should always be taken care of, something we always strive to do.

MIO: Is your independent/single shop setup a help or a hindrance, compared
 to big retailers with central stock buyers, shared resources and so on?
RR: There are benefits and drawbacks. Obviously we don’t have quite the same buying power as the big players, but the record companies tend to be pretty good to shops like us as they can see the importance of getting their artists into our racks – so they do try to make sure we get the deals to be competitive. The main problem we find is with DVD companies who are just not set up to deal with small accounts, leaving us with no option but to deal with wholesalers and thus lose a fair amount of our profit margin trying to be competitive with supermarkets and online retailers. There are very few indie stores who sell as much chart stock as us, particularly chart DVDs, but it is important in a small town like this to provide everything people want! We just have to be very careful with stock levels! The main benefit of being a small outfit is our flexibility. We can quickly pick up on trends and buying patterns and are thus able to tailor our shop to our customers. For example, when a key album from a local artist comes along – this year saw Little Fish release their debut, we were able to get extra stock in, organise an in-store performance and be the best place around to buy the album. I believe HMV in Oxford sold out their small allocation on day of release and took weeks to re-stock, one of the drawbacks of being part of a big chain. As we have two stores, of course, we are able to spread stock around and can keep our spending down by transferring stock between the shops. Interestingly, in the same week HMV announced their closures Rough Trade announced their takings were up 5% (for the same period HMV were down 14%).

MIO: Does Rapture sell only music – or do you carry any of the other things
 like games, clothing that other music retailers have diversified into?
RR: DVD is a very big part of what we do and we’re as passionate about film as we are music. We stock every major new release and have a healthy A-Z, TV box-set section and specialist genre sections (kids, music DVD, war films etc). We are also able to offer a very quick ordering service on both DVD and CD so although we don’t have the space to stock every film we’d like to, we can usually get our customers what they want within a couple of days. We have also recently started selling some merchandise, however this is still a relatively small part of what we do. Music and film is absolutely central to the business.

MIO: What are your feelings about the Oxfordshire music scene? How much of
 your overall sales are local music?
RR: Oxford has always been blessed with a wealth of excellent bands, we’ve known this for years, but it seems the word is spreading far and wide! Oxford is a fundamentally creative town and has a rich network of promoters and venues to help bands get their music heard. Add to this the support available from the likes of Nightshift, MusicInOxford.co.uk and other local music websites, plus the opportunities provided by the Truck organisation, and you realise that Oxfordshire bands can reach really high standards on a purely local level. The success of bands like Foals and Stornoway and Jon Spira’s upcoming documentary Anyone Can Play Guitar will hopefully turn the attention of the media in our direction and they’ll soon stumble upon a great band on every corner! 2011 should really be The Epstein’s year!

MIO: You’ve had a lot of in-store appearances – how do they come about, and
 are they enjoyable/successful?
RR: There are two kinds of in-store, really. One the one hand we get offered acts through the record companies, and the in-store becomes part of a specific promotional tour… for example, the recent Scouting For Girls in-store was an attempt to push their CD single to reach the Easter number one position (which it did!). They may not be the coolest band on the planet but seeing the shop packed full with smiling families amazed such a big band were in Witney is a brilliant feeling! Personally, one of my favourite in-stores was one of the earliest, when Richard Hawley came down and played a beautiful unplugged set, sadly the turnout was pretty poor, but those of us that were there will never forget it! We went out for a pint with the man after the gig as well, which was rather cool! On the other hand we have events which are entirely of our own creation, and are usually done in the spirit of altruism to help a local band! We’re all big fans of The Epstein, so were over the moon when they agreed to play an in-store back in November. The fact that it took place in the same week we’d had a queue of teenage girls stretching halfway round Witney to meet McFly just shows the range of events we’re involved with and the importance of both sides of the business.

MIO: Do you sell online? Do you find enough people interested in shopping in
 a real, physical store?
RR: We do sell online, through Amazon Marketplace, and find that this is a useful way to reach new customers all over the world. We often find that we’re sending product out to people in towns that haven’t got an indie record shop and who are buying from us because they can see we are a real shop and are passionate about what we do. While the fundamentals of the business will always be to prioritise the face-to-face interaction with customers the Marketplace sales certainly help!

MIO: How can local bands, musicians and promoters sell their wares or
 promote their activities through Rapture?
RR: We’re always keen to have local bands bring their CDs into to the shop for us to sell. For many bands it’s often their first chance to see their work on sale somewhere, and we’re happy to help! We are also happy to put up posters for local gigs, so don’t hesitate to drop any in with us! We’ve recently re-launched our website as well, and are keen users of Twitter and Facebook – so there are plenty of opportunities for us to help local acts promote their activities!

MIO: What are the future plans for Rapture?
RR: As I mentioned earlier, the big plan for this year is our new Oxford shop. This will be a joint venture with the Truck organisation, and will take the name Truck Store. As part of the OX4 festival in October, we set up a pop-up shop at 101 Cowley Road, formerly the bastion of independent spirit that was Videosyncratic, and had an excellent response from the people of Oxford. I mentioned earlier the extraordinary levels of great music coming out of Oxfordshire, yet the missing piece of the puzzle was always a thriving indie record shop at the heart of the scene. With our stock knowledge and customer service, coupled with the promotional skills and local connections of Truck, the store should be a roaring success. We’ve always tried to promote local music as best we can through the Witney shop, so the chance to be let loose in Oxford is absolutely tantalising! Bring on the 10th of February! As for Witney and Evesham, we’ll continue to provide the great service we always have, there some exciting new releases on the horizon from groups such as Elbow, The Decemberists, Adele, Iron & Wine, PJ Harvey and many many more. As long as there’s great music around we’ll keep selling it!


Rapture Records website / Rapture Records on Facebook / Rapture Records on Twitter / Rapture Records on Amazon Marketplace