Rekkids Manchester - We do things differently here.
We recently checked in with our pal Scott Hallam, owner and founder of Rekkids, an online store based in Manchester that specializes in Acid, Electro, House, Techno, Balearic and Disco vinyl releases.
Tired of feeling frustrated with other online record stores and their lack of passion and customer focus. Scott decided to turn his love for digital crate digging into a cool online record store that is constantly looking for new innovative ways to improve, grow and change for the better but without ever forgetting the needs of the most important people in any business...the customer.
I was always interested in music and from an early age I’d started collecting vinyl with the first record I bought was the 7” of Father Abraham - The Smurf Song and still have it somewhere.
My late father used to work for the council as an estate management officer and would inspect properties to make sure they were ready to let again and when clearing houses he’d often bring home records and tapes which fueled my interest.
At school I always felt like I was one of the odd ones out as the majority liked pop and rock and there were only a handful of kids that liked the Hip Hop and Electro that was emerging at the time. I’d found Stu Allan’s radio shows on Key 103 a massive inspiration and later 808 State’s radio shows on Sunset 102 which by that time I’d got into Acid, House, Balearic and Techno.
I’d started Djing in and around Manchester at that time and later went on to start producing my own stuff and releasing it under Grey Matter and some years after my own name and am still releasing stuff now.
I’d been buying records online from around 2004 as I found it easier than going to physical shops and used to get records delivered to workplaces much to the annoyance of the bosses and colleagues "oh, look, more records!"
I decided to combine my experience of working in sales for 15 years with my passion for music and wanting to be better (not bigger) than some of the places I bought from as certain things annoyed me about their processes and lack of attention to detail so I wanted to get that part right as it was of importance to me.
So, I registered the domain and built a platform online and launched it last year – Rekkids was born.
There is a do it yourself spirit in Manchester and we do like to do things a little bit differently.
I still have a diverse taste in music and only stock stuff I’d buy myself which keeps it free of clutter and many people have commented how good they think the stock is which is nice as it means they have the same tastes too!
Customers shopping at Rekkids have the choice to either have the items sent now (postage and items paid at checkout) or can choose to 'combine orders' that removes the postage cost and they just pay for the items in the basket. They can then create several orders and choose to have them sent as one at a later time. This was useful as I have in the past ordered some records online only to find out later there was another release I missed and have had to order that on it's own with extra postage cost as the terms for some online stores are that orders cannot be combined.
UK customers placing an order of £50 or more qualify for free shipping which is a nice touch.
My love for Acid/Acid House releases means I have an Acid section on the site where a lot of other online stores don't and they place those releases under 'Deep House' or 'Techno' which was something that really annoyed me as often you'd miss a record as it wouldn't be in the correct category, I have contacted them in the past but their response was that they didn't think that category should exist!
I also offer a record finding service 'Requests' - some people may not have a PayPal account or wish to spend their time searching for a record, I take that stress away and offer that service and if you prefer to pay by debit/credit card that option is available too.
I’ve just added a Pre-sales section where people can register their interest in a particular item which also helps deciding on quantities to buy in and where a certain release is restricted to only 100 or 200 copies helps massively.
I’m still continuing to develop the site and plan on adding a Digital platform to sell music that isn’t available on vinyl and offer a better deal to the artist or label that submits the music and also implementing a referral service where you can recommend a friend and both get money off.
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