Features
Rocking Horse: ‘The Sums Have Got To Add Up’
By Matt Shea
Brisbane’s Rocking Horse Records might not be closing tomorrow, but is their uncertain future symptomatic of indie music stores nationwide? MATT SHEA reports.
The digital age hit home with a thud for many people earlier this week when a Courier Mail report suggested Brisbane’s Rocking Horse Records was on the verge of closing shop. For 36 years Warwick Vere’s humble record store has been the place to go in Brisbane to buy rare and used vinyl, cassette tapes and CDs. Suddenly, Twitter was ablaze with the news, and before the day was out a “Save Rocking Horse Records” Facebook page had been established, attracting thousands of followers. (At the time of writing it’s just gone beyond 6000.)
Since then it’s been all hands to the pumps, with Rocking Horse flooded with punters determined their physical music buying experience won’t go the way of soulless multinationals or grumpy clerks with sailor tatts. When M+N stopped by the store to chat to Vere about his plans for the store, it was total mayhem: the silver-haired owner himself running about the place, serving customers, restocking CDs and fielding phone calls.
Wow Warwick. It’s crazy busy up there!
It’s like Christmas Eve, isn’t it? We’re having a [half price] sale and it’s amazing that people have turned up in such large numbers to support the shop. We’re very grateful for that and obviously they’re getting a bargain as well. As I said to somebody the other day, it’s a bit like [Lewis Carroll’s] The Walrus And The Carpenter: they’re walking the oysters along the beach and picking up the biggest ones, but crying all the time as to how awful it is for the oysters! But that’s life. We’re looking to find somewhere else a little more affordable and we’re looking at all sorts of things at the moment, but in order to achieve any of that we need a monster sale. We’ve been going for 36 years and we’re a bit like squirrels: we put things away downstairs. A lot of the boxes come out and I say, “What on earth is this doing here? We’ve had it for five years.” They’ll respond, “You could only get that one box-set. It’s not available,” and I’m like, “Sell it!” Anyway, we’ve arrived at that attitude – that we should really clear out the pantry and the storerooms, so it’s been fantastic, the response. It’s been terrific.
So you were a bit surprised after The Courier Mail article at how many people were flooding into the store?
I think The Courier Mail article and then somebody started the “Save Rocking Horse” Facebook page: that I think is being disseminated onto Twitter-land and Facebook-land and it’s certainly shows you how the social network is such a powerful tool. Back in the old days you had to stick a postage stamp size ad in The Courier Mail saying, “HUGE SALE!” and pay for it, but now you can circumvent all of that very successfully.
Well I guess the digital world hurts a place like this but then it can help as well.
Well, you read all sorts of scary things. The blogger from the States who I get every day, Bob Lefsetz, he’s been decrying the traditional model for years and delights in pointing out that at a conference there will be CDs on the back wall for people to take on the way out and they’re still all there after everybody’s filed out – nobody bothered to take one. He says, “There you go. They don’t even want them for nothing.” But having said that, the growth industry is vinyl; the kids have woken up to the fact that it’s a better sound and it’s an analogue sound and it’s limitless and it’s as good as your stereo is. That’s where the future lies, bizarrely enough. It’s back to the ’75, when we opened.
In terms of what you’re selling upstairs, what are the percentages, media to media, vinyl to CD?
As I said the other day, if we could convert everything to vinyl we would be very, very pleased. At the moment we’re selling an enormous amount of everything, but the CDs obviously are things that are selling. It’s probably about 75 percent CDs, 25 percent vinyl.
Bloody hell. That’s a lot of vinyl.
It is a lot of vinyl!
I know a lot of people who would be disappointed to lose access to your selection of vinyl.
Yeah, well we’re hoping they won’t be that disappointed. [Laughs] Obviously, when we opened here we had 500 square metres including the downstairs area. The dance vinyl was enormous then, but it was largely killed off by [vinyl emulation software manufacturer] Serato probably about 12 or 18 months ago, and has dwindled ever since. It’s funny. I’ve spoken to DJs who would still like to play vinyl but they can’t because many of the club booths are no longer set up for it.
Well, some of the clubs are now demanding that the DJs do have their own vinyl.
Is that right? It’s coming back.
The purest clubs. The good ones. [Laughs] Anyway, that tanked at that stage, but really only for the 12” records; album sales were still strong. Hip-hop albums and stuff like Massive Attack albums we couldn’t keep in stock. But the 12”s being such a big part of the business we’d been set up for, plus upstairs with giant supermarket aisles full of CDs. It’s nice to have a great library but unless it’s turning over all the time you can’t sustain it. So, downsizing is a really sensible option.
“We’re looking to find somewhere else a little more affordable and we’re looking at all sorts of things at the moment.”
And it is an option?
Oh yeah! We’re looking all over the place, although the city seems to be obstinately expensive – I don’t know why but it’s twice as expensive as Sydney or Melbourne for absolutely no reason, other than the fact that it’s a tiny CBD. If you want to put your shingle out, you have to pay for it. Unfortunately, the city’s just going to become this homogenised nothingness of telcos, medical benefits places and Pie Faces [bakeries]. The city fathers have done us a very bad service because it’s so hard to get into the city. Everyone who comes here complains that they’ve been ripped off for parking, or they’ve been deceived and booked, and people are voting with their feet – they’re not coming into the city. I don’t care what they say, but every trader will tell you that they’re way down.
The retail conditions. How have they been?
Well, after the floods they did not pick up at all. We felt extremely fortunate that we didn’t get flooded – we didn’t even lose power – but having said, the council were telling people to keep out of the city unless absolutely necessary. We had no trade for a week. You can’t do that with a big rent, with a lot of wages to pay. That sets you back on your bum and it’s very hard to get back up again. But as I said, we couldn’t really complain because there were people who were absolutely devastated, and here we were high and dry, open but with no customers. [Laughs]
So would you say it’s more of a reflection on retail conditions in Brisbane city rather than retail conditions in physical music sales?
I think retail conditions are tough all over. Just about anywhere will testify to that.
What about the high dollar?
Well being an importer the high dollar should be in our favour. It’s absolutely wiped out our competitiveness as far as being an exporter is concerned. We’d be selling 50 or 60 items a day on Amazon – funny kinds of stuff like Ice House CDs and Goanna CDs and a lot of interesting Australian stuff that being a store of 36 years standing we had in our archives. But it’s very hard to compete when the dollar climbs above the American dollar and you don’t get any break on postage. In fact, Australia Post have just put their charges up again, so the globalisation scenario doesn’t really work for us, in that respect at all. You’ve really got to give things away to sell them.
Tell me a little about the early days of Rocking Horse. The store is 36 years old. Did you start it yourself, Warwick?
Yeah, I did. I was a Sydney kid, and I came to Brisbane. Brisbane in the ’70s was closed on Saturday, everybody took off for the coast and didn’t come back until Sunday afternoon; everybody had themselves or knew somebody who had a weekender down the coast, or up the coast, and that’s what happened. Brisbane basically emptied out. I knew a girl who had a record shop and she was bored with it and wanted to go overseas, and basically that’s how I got started with a new store. She closed and I got some second-hand records and some fittings and a cash register and some carpet and opened up a little store in an arcade. We traded getting imports in on vinyl and we always had a little second-hand section, and that blossomed, as did the store generally.
On Saturday mornings, people had to basically wait outside until somebody left so they could get in. So we realised we needed bigger premises. We moved in about 1980, I think – or ’79 – to what we thought was a palace, and it was probably about 60-square metres over on the other side of the road in Adelaide Street, near Coles, which is now Queen’s Plaza. We were there for 12 years. We did really well, then we moved again up towards King George Square in 1990, and that took off. Then we needed more space and the landlord offered us upstairs. We also opened our second-hand store in Elizabeth Street near Elizabeth Arcade and that was a roaring success. It was a great shop. I’d do trips to America quite frequently to get stock, because there was no stock; CDs here were $30 and that was it, and there was no second-hand market in CDs at the time. So that’s why we’d have to go to the States and get stuff, and vinyl as well, of course. Vinyl was shrinking, and at one stage we sort of looked at one another. I think it was when The Ramones Mania album was keenly priced at about $10 or something like that by Warner, and we couldn’t sell it.
You couldn’t sell it on vinyl?
Yeah. We’d used to sell three or four copies a month or something like that, and then there was one month that went by and we didn’t sell it, the next month went by and we didn’t sell it, and I said to the kids, “I think vinyl’s finished.” But some of them talked about dance vinyl taking off, so we opened the upstairs area on Adelaide Street in about ’97 to ’98, and that had 400-square metres upstairs – it was like a crazy giant basketball court on one side. We had some wonderful in-stores there; we had all sorts of people playing there.
Yes! I remember seeing Grant-Lee Phillips up there.
Yeah, Grant-Lee Philips! I missed that one. Lots of people played up there: Powderfinger launched The Internationalist there and we had some very big shows and signings. Then in 2004, we moved around here [to Albert Street] because it made more sense, and this current store took off and everything was rosy probably until about 18 months ago. That’s when things started to plateau out and slowly decline, and it was very, very hard to beat. We’ve been looking around for a while and fortunately our lease ran out so we can move at any time, but it’s just finding something suitable and making the sums add up. We’ve never seen ourselves as being anything other than a city store, so you have to get a different mindset and sort of transport yourself into some kind of new world, and try and get a grasp on what all the limitations are. Of course, the upside of it all is that you don’t pay anything like the same amount of rent.
The premises here, are they bigger than the ones around the corner on Adelaide Street?
Yeah, well we’ve got 300-metres square on the ground floor. We only had 100 around the corner, which included a staircase. [Laughs] It was like a mushroom, the other one: it had a skinny stalk and a great big canopy. Round here it’s been terrific – it was a no-brainer moving around here, really, because the rent was similar. However, it has crept up and I don’t think the extension of the mall has helped us at all.
Why’s that?
This end of the mall has basically become a repository for everything they don’t want anywhere else, including the street kids, I’m sad to say. It just has that feel about it – I don’t think any of the businesses along this strip are doing well. We probably did a lot better when it was a bus tunnel, and everyone who was sitting on the bus would go, “Oh, there’s Rocking Horse!” [Laughs]
Because you lost Krispy Kreme from over the mall, didn’t you? I thought those places were taking over.
Krispy Kreme were very ephemeral. They disappeared without a trace, and they opened with much fanfare. But the closing of King George Square for such a long time, and then the reopening with such an atrocious result – that hasn’t helped at all … In summer, that [grey] paving generates 50-degree heat which then blows down Albert Street and nullifies our air-conditioning at the front of the shop. It’s appalling; it’s absolutely appalling. Whoever’s responsible for it – they need to be removed form planning decisions forever more. [Laughs]
It just doesn’t seem to be thoroughfare anymore, either.
It’s a shocker, and it’s not in sympathy with the city hall. It doesn’t work at all – they can say what they like and put ice skating rinks in there and make people come there, but we’ve lost an amenity and I’m yet to find anyone who likes it. It’s a shocker, it’s an absolute shocker.
What kind of areas would you consider moving to? I’m thinking about Fortitude Valley or West End, I guess.
I’ve always had a bit of disrespect of the Valley as a daytime place, and I was really pleasantly surprised to see all of the little funky areas growing up around Winn Lane – that’s very appealing. There’s nothing really that we can easily slip into there, or we would have done that. But as I said, there are a few options and people are talking to us on a daily basis, pretty much. I guess the good part of it is that the Rocking Horse name must mean something to people. [Laughs]
Indeed. How would you retool the store if you moved?
Look, we know exactly what we need stock-wise. There ain’t no problem there. We know what to do, it’s just having the readies to be able to restock. The wonderful thing about this sale is that we’ve got lovely museum pieces here and we’re going to turn them into money that we can hopefully use to do precisely that.
So, we’ve talked about Fortitude Valley. What about West End: does that sort of place appeal to you?
Well Ric Trevaskis from Egg Records [who used to work at Rocking Horse] always liked West End. He said that he did OK there. West End’s a funny one, but we’d look at anywhere if we thought we’d be able to make the sums add up. The inner-city suburbs are obviously the next place you look when the city doesn’t stack up, and we’ve been trolling around doing that.
The whole Facebook thing. I left the house and there were close to 6000 people signed up to the “Save Rocking Horse Records” page. Does that spur you on?
Sure, it’s been phenomenal. In my wildest dreams I didn’t think there would be such a response. I thought people would say, “Oh well, big deal, it’s a commercial operation. What’s so special about that?”
“I think a couple of years ago was probably our highpoint, before money matters started to grab at our throats.”
People aren’t that cynical, are they?
Well, obviously we’ve struck a chord with people and over the years I’ve not really made any money out of the place other than to put money back in, and my charter was always to have the best record shop, and I think we achieved that. I think a couple of years ago was probably our highpoint, before money matters started to grab at our throats. But we were always trying to be ahead of the pack, and it’s extraordinary when people come in and they have a list of things and you have everything, and they’re so shocked and surprised. But, it’s been increasingly difficult. We face not one JB Hi Fi, but three JB Hi Fis in the city, and it’s just gotten silly, really. They’re probably responsible for the demise of The Music Shop and Skinnys. When they started they poached all of the good operators from the independent stores and changed stores around, and I don’t think the promise has been borne out. A lot of those people left, and the area they devote to music is demonstrably shrinking, so I don’t know what’s left, really.
What about you, Warwick? At least before this massive response were you almost resigned or ready to move onto something else?
We’ve been looking and looking and looking, so I guess not, really. Certainly, it’s a wonderful fillip to get so many people who express such fond sentiments about Rocking Horse. I hope when we can find a place, they’ll troupe in!
Do you have any other going concerns? If you weren’t in this business what would you be do?
Play golf. Retire. Put my feet up. [Laughs]
It really seems that you guys are determined to keep things going, though?
Yes, but as I keep saying, the sums have got to add up. If the sums don’t add up, you can’t do it, and this is why we’re basically in the situation we’re in here, we have to have a big sale and get out of this spot. Our rent is probably at least three times of what anybody in Sydney or Melbourne’s paying. Yes, we’re on a mall, but that mall came to us. We didn’t ask for the mall, we didn’t want the mall! [Laughs] We don’t like the mall.
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Rocking Horse Records is located at 245 Albert Street, Brisbane. More information here.
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