We’re on the side of record fans in the vinyl price war - Kevin Buckle

We regularly get asked at Avalanche about our prices, thankfully in a good way, because we are often considerably cheaper than elsewhere. The irony is that compared to the old days of selling vinyl, I wouldn’t say our vinyl albums were cheap at all.

We inhabit a strange retail world these days in which we may be selling an album for £40 but are being told what a good price it is because it is£10 more elsewhere.

I’m always clear that we don’t discount prices, we simply take the cost of the album to us, allow for any discount we might get and then multiply by what has been the industry standard for as long as we have sold records.

I know that industry standard margin hasn’t officially changed because a little higher margin is allowed for Record Store Day and that means shops are allowed to charge no more than twice the dealer price of a release.

That is understandable in that the big day does involve a lot of work and while some stock may sell out on the day a lot of shops actually take longer than normal to sell all they have. After all these years experience we don’t get left with a lot of Record Store Day stock, though we never get it exactly right.

Now I do know how such a difference in price first started to appear when vinyl made its comeback and that was because not only did HMV not allow for the discount they received, saying that extra margin paid for their head office, but they also added an extra amount on top that could be as much as a fiver, saying that vinyl was a premium product attracting a premium price.

What I can’t explain is why any other independent shop would charge so much. In terms of overheads Avalanche has never been anywhere as expensive as where we are now in the Waverley Market, but with that expense comes the extra footfall that helps pay for the large rent and business rates a shop in a prime location attracts.

We had the new Fontaines D.C. album Dopamine Chamber in five formats. There was a limited indie exclusive blue marble vinyl, a limited blue vinyl, a black vinyl, a cassette and a compact disc. While the marble vinyl was quite limited we decided to charge the same price as the more common blue vinyl as it cost us the same.

Even I was surprised, though, to see that the black vinyl and blue vinyl we had at £22 and £25 were selling for £27.99 and £31.99 in HMV and £25.99 and £29.99 in another big indie. The cassette and CD followed the same pattern, showing a two or three pound difference.

I don’t think there is any doubt that HMV are doing well now after seeing their business collapse twice, but the closure of their flagship Oxford Street store should remind them they should never take their customers for granted.