THE MUSIC GOES ON
Former employee takes the helm
Mike Spindloe, longtime owner of the Vinyl Exchange, above, has sold to employee Adam Harrison. Spindloe says he was ready for a change, and Harrison says he fell in love with the shop the moment he walked in and bought an album years ago.
Adam Harrison bought his first record from the Vinyl Exchange — Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” — more than seven years ago.
He fell instantly in love with the charmingly no-frills store, but never imagined he would own it one day.
That changed late last year when Harrison, who wound up working at the Second Avenue shop while finishing his degree at the University of Saskatchewan’s Edwards School of Business, realized longtime owner Mike Spindloe wanted to sell.
“Records aren’t getting any lighter and my back’s not getting any stronger, and as most people probably know I’ve lived in Vancouver for many years — I have family out there — and the commute was just getting to be a little much,” Spindloe said.
Added Harrison: “I told Mike I was going to start looking for a job, and he said he’s looking to sell the store, and said if I could scrape up the money he’d be willing to sell me it. Nine months of scraping up money later, here we are.”
The deal — the terms of which are not being disclosed — was signed on Saturday, almost exactly 25 years after Spindloe opened the store in the space next door, which now houses a skateboard shop. The Vinyl Exchange moved to its current location four years later.
“It’s like an extension of my living room,” Spindloe said of the store, with its many boxes of LPS and CDS, racks of heavy metal band T-shirts, faded posters on the walls and an impressive collection of pipes and bongs lined up behind the glass counter.
“It’s a library. It’s a cultural resource. It’s a place I know people have deep affection for, and that’s really what makes me happy. Obviously, if you’re running a business you have to make it work financially, but the money has never driven it. It’s really just been about the music.”
Thought to be the second-oldest independent store on Second Avenue’s 100 block, the Vinyl Exchange has weathered storms — from the decline and subsequent revival of vinyl to the rise of online music streaming — that forced plenty of other record shops out of business.
The store has faced other challenges in the form of two legal battles, one over the sale of smoking paraphernalia and the other over bootleg CDS, but through it all the customers kept coming, and they’re still walking through the doors in search of a record or two.
“When it comes right down to it, the customers decide if you’re gonna make it. All we can do is listen to what they have to say,” Spindloe said.
Harrison chimed in to note that online streaming appears to have fuelled a move back to physical media, including albums.
“It’s almost an extension of yourself. You collect the albums that you love. … You see younger kids, teenagers and people in their early 20s very much into the vinyl thing now.
“Hopefully that continues into the future, and we keep those customers,” Harrison said.
Spindloe said he doesn’t remember the first record he sold at the Vinyl Exchange, but he and Harrison expect to sell many more. There’s no plan to change much in the shop.
Asked what he’s looking forward to, Harrison laughed. “Freedom,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Working in a bank never really appealed to me. I was just elated that we were able to get this deal done, and I’ll be able to do this for as long as I want to do it, hopefully.”