Nominated Best Record Shop for the People's Choice Awards 2004 within 6
months of being online, UKRecordShop.com has grown from strength to strength &
is now considered a key player within the industry.
Young Entrepreneurs AJ 26, & Adz 22 started an online record & CD shop at a
young tender age with a aim to be a market leader in the online music retail
industry, with nothing but a vision, marketing ideas, some knowledge of how to
make a online shop, they went out, bought a domain name and started
http://www.ukrecordshop.com . Established in February 2004, UKRecordShop.com
quickly grew into a strong market leader within the UK Underground music
industry as a leading outlet for artists to sell their music online.
Nominated Best Record Shop for the People's Choice Awards 2004 within six months
of being online, UKRecordShop.com has grown from strength to strength & is now
considered a key player within the industry.
So what make's them so different & why are they so popular? We managed to pin AJ
& Adz down, co-founders of UKRecordShop.com for a exclusive interview and take a
closer look into their business methods & ingenious marketing ideas.
A business normally takes 1-2 years to establish itself into a market before
they can even think about taking on the major competitors in their industry, one
question that needed to get answered, what was it that gave them such a boost
when they first launched. "Evaluating the market & noticing the outrageous
prices other competitors were charging for records & CDs, we felt our pricing
strategy was one of the key issues that needed attention before the launch,"
said AJ, co-founder of UKRecordShop.com. "It's important not to rip the
customers off, we can offer a unbeatable service at sometimes 50% less the price
of our competitors, so we did."
UKRecordShop.com have employed some lucrative marketing skills in developing the
business, one of the most popular being a record giveaway with no catches. It
was a simple giveaway with no catches, we wanted to give a item away, not buy
one get one free etc., a real promotion that had no catches whatsoever, we could
have spent thousands on advertising during the early periods of our business but
chose to give those thousands back to the customer, we felt a completely free
popular record would generate more word-of-mouth advertising then any magazine
advert and decided to use some of the advertising budget and give it back to the
customer" This proved very successful and increased their customer base by
thousands overnight.
They later thought about advertising on Black Taxi Cab's in Central London to
give them more localised marketing but after discovering the cost, they decided
to go one step further and actually bought a rare Piaggio Ape 50 which to put in
layman's terms is an Indian style rickshaw, they painted it bright yellow &
blue, stuck a light box on the top with their website and paid someone to drive
in around London everyday. "It actually worked out better value for money & has
a much better impact on the public, the amount of people that look at it, take
pictures and generally laugh at it is astonishing," said AJ. "To this day, it
can be seen around Central London, I love it."
One of the shocking discoveries I made was that the artists themselves actually
support & endorse the shop, UKRecordShop.com actually have a page dedicated to
singers & musicians giving them audio shoutouts, by the artists themselves
endorsing the shop as the best outlet for their music, it clearly gives them the
edge over a lot of other online shop's in the eyes of the public. I know if I
was a fan and the artist told me to buy it from UKRecordShop.com, I would buy it
from there and no where else.
The standard aspects a lot of businesses tend to forget is the price, service &
after sales care, after spending a day with UKRecordShop.com, I have no doubt in
my mind that they have got these aspects down to perfection and the only way now
for them is up.
"UKRecordShop.com announced today that they are now in the world's top 50,000
websites according to Alexa.com," Adz continued. "Starting from just a small
internet website in 2004, two years later, UKRecordShop.com now receives over
80,000 unique visitors per month."
So what's in store for the future? "We have got a whole bag of idea's that will
take UKRecordShop.com to a higher level, I can't reveal them yet, but you will
hear about them soon," said AJ.
UKRecordShop.com has now established themselves as a key player in the UK
Underground Music industry, keep your eyes peeled to
http://www.ukrecordshop.com for updates on their ever growing business.
YOU CAN NOW ORDER FROM UKRECORDSHOP.COM
BY FREEPHONE (UK ONLY)
0800 310 2000
PLEASE REMEMBER, YOU CAN STILL ORDER ONLINE AS USUAL AT UKRECORDSHOP.COM