Record shop ready to lower the stylus

VINYL enthusiasts are in for a treat when the city’s newest independent record store opens this Saturday.

Regular attendees of the Sunday Showgrounds markets would recognise Bendigo Vinyl co-owners Paul O’Farrell and Sam Edmonds, but now the pair are preparing to take their business to the next level at 333 Hargreaves Street.

“We’re feeling nervous, we’re gathering all the stock so that we’ve got plenty on offer for day one,” Mr Edmonds said.

“We really hope that it’s a safe place where people can come and hang out. There’s a lot of little shops like this now coming up on Mitchell Street and it’s really exciting.

“We hope that we can fit in there and be another option for people to come and hang out, talk music and buy some music. People are really enjoying the vinyl revolution, so we want to help them with that.”

As well as weekly appearances at the market, the co-owners also run an online store, but Mr Edmonds said they’ve been wanting to open a shopfront for about a year.

“The dream was always to have a physical shop and the more that we were having conversations on the vinyl market, the more we thought that this is really viable,” he said.

“We had some really good help and connections with other regional vinyl stores who gave us a ton of help in the early part of the process.”

At this stage the shop will sell only new records with stock including a range of genres, new Aussie music, back catalogue reissues and remasters. Plans, however, are growing.

“We’re hoping that pretty soon we’ll be running coffee and we’ve got a lot of space upstairs,” Mr Edmonds said.

“We’re playing around with ideas of making it more accessible but being able to have people come in and play a bit of music, whether it’s a local artist or people coming in and talking about their latest releases.

“A lot of artists come through Bendigo to tour their new album and we want to be a stop where people come and do record signings.”

The shop will be open from 10am to 5pm.