How much capital did you have?

My friend Chris and I had less than $10,000 to start with and had tried to get a bank loan, but neither of us owned any property so that was not an option. It was 1993 and we were on our own with no retail or business experience between us. The amount of stock we had was nowhere near enough to fill a shop but we had signed a 3-year lease so thought it best to open the doors and see what happened.

I had a friend design a logo and we got the windows painted and an A-frame made to put out on the street. That was about all we could afford.

When you opened in 1993 there was no such thing as digital music. How big an impact did that have on your business when it came along?

By the late 90s the internet had become a serious competitor to all retail outlets. eBay in particular gave people more options. The warning bells were ringing and the next few years were tough. The thought of just going back to trading at fairs certainly crossed my mind. It doesn’t matter how quiet the shop is you still get all the bills at the end of the month and I was struggling leading into the early 2000s.

Around 2003, a thing called iTunes appeared and this made trips to your local music store redundant. This new technology certainly had an effect on us, but nowhere near as much as it would have hit the major chain stores.

I still stand by the fact you can’t download a record and, with that in mind, I concentrated on having a diverse range of titles and getting new stock as often as possible to keep things fresh.

Rather than battle technology, I thought it best to embrace it so I started selling on eBay and did very well out of selling unique Australian products to a worldwide audience. New things are always daunting, especially the older you get, but in order to survive you have to acknowledge them or at least decide what may be a fad and what is here to stay.

There is usually a honeymoon period for anything before it becomes the norm so there aren’t many surprises. I don’t consider myself a technically-minded person but I’ve forced myself to keep up. Trying to get my website up and running the first time almost reduced me to tears but, in retrospect, that was due to choosing a poor company. So I advise people to choose carefully when making this kind of important decision.