Rough Trade is “assessing opportunities” for new stores, MD Lawrence Montgomery has told Music Week.
The indie retailer has been expanding as the vinyl market grows in the UK.
“We are selling more than double the number of records and CDs so far in 2024 than we did five years ago,” said Montgomery. “As long as labels and artists continue to value the role independent record shops like ourselves offer, we believe this growth can continue.”
Rough Trade Liverpool (pictured) opened in April 2024, joining stores in London’s Soho (2022), Bristol (2017) and Nottingham (2014), as well as the longstanding East and West London sites, the US New York City record store and a branch in Berlin.
With overall physical sales now on an upward trend amid signs of a turnaround for CD, it makes sense for Rough Trade to seek new outlets.
“We always keep an eye on opportunities in the UK but we are respectful to the great indie stores around the country, so we are very specific when looking at opportunities,” Lawrence Montgomery told Music Week. “We are assessing a couple opportunities in London, where we have a strong team and operational set-up, and also growing other parts of business such as third party sales channels and vintage vinyl.”
Rough Trade Liverpool marks the retailer’s first opening in the north of England. It is located in the Hanover Street district of the Liverpool One shopping complex. The Liverpool store opened just ahead of Record Store Day.
“The initial reaction has been extremely positive,” said Montgomery. “Every time we open a shop, we take on the responsibility to serve the local community and Liverpool has a wonderful history and present when it comes to music culture.”
With 6,500 sq ft including a venue space, Rough Trade Liverpool is the retail chain’s biggest store.
“The next step for us is to get the quantity and quality of shows in the live venue,” said Montgomery. “We took the decision to invest more heavily into the live venue –it is 300-capacity, high-quality production and looks great. For our model to work, having this dual purpose – retail and venue– is important and Liverpool is the most ambitious we've done in terms of the capacity and quality of fit out.”
At the half-year point of 2024, physical sales across the market were up 3.2% year-on-year. Breaking that down by format, vinyl sales were up 12.4% year-on-year and CD sales were down 1.5%. That’s a considerable slowing of decline for CD – and the Q2 fall was just 0.8%.
“The continued growth of vinyl combined with the slowing decline of CD sales means we are seeing net growth in the physical market which is encouraging to see,” said Montgomery. “When you combine this with streaming numbers, it demonstrates a maturation of the market. The drop in physical sales have plateaued and we are seeing the important role physical plays in relation to streaming.
“This dynamic is interesting – in historical terms, the physical numbers selling in 2024 are low, however the value per unit is much higher and – more importantly – the role physical plays in the overall marketing strategy of an album is as important as ever.”
With physical sales now increasingly complementary to streaming, Montgomery suggested that Rough Trade is playing a key role in week one results.
“We see this with the impact our week one activations have on chart positions,” he said. “Every week, we see albums that we are hosting events or have an exclusive variant drive strong week one sales, which in turn drive chart position.
“Furthermore, the marketing plot around this drives engagement across all channels. What's more exciting than seeing Charli XCX pulling up to the front door of Rough Trade East in a Brat green Tesla to sign your record, or to see English Teacher play an intimate in-store show? We appreciate the investment from artists and labels to create these activations and we work hard to maximise their impact – when done well, they drive the broader campaign of a release.”
It's our mission to make the experience of buying vinyl open to as broad a demographic as possible
Lawrence Montgomery
Rough Trade recently published its list of Albums Of The Year so far, including releases by Chari XCX, St Vincent, Peggy Gou, Beth Gibbons, The Smile, Ibibio Sound Machine, Jessica Pratt, Idles, Idles, Sprints, Khruangbin, DIIV, The Last Dinner Party, Kamasi Washinton, and more.
The retailer is now looking ahead to new releases including Fontaines DC’s Romance (August 23). But the vinyl audience has expanded beyond indie, rock and niche genres.
“The audience buying vinyl continues to broaden year on year,” said Montgomery. “One interesting thing to note is that when we look at our demographics online, there is a direct correlation between age range and gender split – the 18-24 vinyl audience has a much more even gender split than the 55+ audience. We find this encouraging as it's our mission to make the experience of buying vinyl open to as broad a demographic as possible.
“In stores, we see a broad demographic, from our regular customer who might place a pre-order online for a more specialist item through to a more casual weekend crowd that might pick up a classic album, book or piece of vintage vinyl. We see a significant amount of social engagement in and around our stores and this fits with our aim for our stores to serve their local community.”
However, the Rough Trade MD added a word of warning about the retention of this customer engagement.
“We need to be cautious about the accessibility of vinyl – the average retail price is now £27 – this is too expensive for some people,” he said. “We work hard to ensure we have a promotion campaign that ensures we always have some great records at accessible prices. In addition, our product diversification helps with this.”
Rough Trade reported that CD sales are up 7% for the half-year, although the five-year growth is flat compared to a 150% increase for vinyl.
Nevertheless, Montgomery confirmed plans for Rough Trade to target sales growth with more support for the CD format.
“CDs remain extremely important to us and we see strong demand for box sets, compilations and limited editions,” said Montgomery. “We took the CD catalogue out of our stores last year but we are trialling a new range and merchandising style for these and we hope to bring them back to most stores by the end of the year.
“To keep CD growth steady, we would suggest similar tactics to that of vinyl. How can we make the CD format unique with exclusive artwork or signed copies? From a catalogue perspective, CD has an advantage over vinyl if price is a factor.”
At a time when superfans are one of the hot topics for the industry, Montgomery stressed that Rough Trade is focused on serving customers’ needs.
“Ultimately, the format is secondary to us – we want to delight customers whether that is a record, CD, book or piece of merchandise,” he said.” All of them share the same dynamics in that customers increasingly want a unique experience around a physical purchase, whether that means exclusive content, a great in-store shopping experience or access to events.”
PHOTO: Tom Griffiths
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