Calgary shop handles vinyl growth
Canada Boy one of only two plants in Canada tackling demand for LPs
Vinyl has regained its musical crown and Dean Reid can’t see it giving up the throne any time soon.
That’s why the Calgary musician and entrepreneur is investing in three new record pressing machines to boost production at his northeast manufacturing plant.
New presses are rare in the vinyl world, where usually decades-old machines are kept going through a nervous mix of love, care and faith.
Reid’s company — Canada Boy Vinyl — now relies on Swedishmade presses dating back to the 1970s, which he retrieved from England before plunging into the vinyl world last September.
When he opened his factory it became the only such plant in Canada — and although a competitor has emerged in Burlington, Ont., the booming demand for Canada Boy’s vinyl records is rising.
Which is why he’s buying the three new modern presses from a Toronto company, Viryl Technologies, which Reid hopes to have running within six months.
“Three years ago there was no option to get new record press machines.
“Back then it was a nightmare trying to find pressing equipment. We were literally on a global search and doing the craziest type of detective work you could imagine — trying to research into Africa to track down a rumoured press,” said Reid.
Canada Boy Vinyl opened last September but Reid had been working on his dream for several years earlier. After decades working construction he plunged into a brave and initially crazy new business world.
“I was going through a typical mid-life crisis. I’d been working construction in town for 20-odd years. My daughter was going to art school and my son was graduating high school so the pressure of putting food on the table was less, plus my wife had a great job, so I wanted to do something where I was getting out of bed each morning because I wanted to and not because I had to,” he said.
As a musician — he plays in the band Resurrection Joe — he knew vinyl records, once dismissed as a thing of the past, were coming back. He was ahead of the game.
“It didn’t take much to see where vinyl sales were going. It was trending even back then when I was looking for investment capital, though people were saying ‘vinyl records? Are you crazy?’ Lo and behold, maybe I wasn’t so crazy after all.”
Canadians, in fact, bought 517,400 vinyl LPs last year, up 30 per cent over 2014 and it’s now the fastest-growing music segment in the country. That trend’s accelerating — in the first six months of 2016 sales are up another 39 per cent.
At Canada Boy Vinyl the old presses manage to run 16 hours a day producing up to 3,000 LPs.
Reid wants to run 24 hours a day. That could happen with the new equipment.
“By putting that type of pressure on equipment that is so old, we’re in a perpetual state of fixing the machines. It’s a day-to-day battle. We have so many orders to get out the door but we’re putting the machines at such risk that if we blow them out I’m dead in the water. It’s all about balance,” he said.
While the new equipment will help, such an expansion faces other drawbacks. Finding qualified people in what was recently a dying art is difficult. New hires need lots of training.
The company has 18 full-time employees and, if running 24 hours a day, would require another 10. In order to hire so many new people, Reid has been searching for an equity partner to fund that growth.
Despite the province pushing diversification his hopes of getting provincial grants have fallen flat.
“It is quite frustrating. I’m an Albertan, born and raised, and we have all worked very hard to build this thing and then you hear how the government is trying to diversify the economy and release $250 million dollars. OK, well I’m diversifying and I’m creating 18 new jobs. And I could hire on 10 more people if I could cover that sort of payroll — well, who’s getting all that money then?” said Reid.
Instead, he said, he’ll expand slowly, though Reid has no doubts the vinyl resurgence will continue.
“Vinyl never really went away; that’s a great misconception. It just went underground for a while. All these new technologies have come and gone but vinyl has reclaimed its crown and I don’t think it is going to be giving up its throne any time soon,” he said.