As part of our ongoing Navigating Tough Times coverage, the Business Times asked a handful of small business owners to talk about how they are coping with the volatile economy.
Navigating Tough Times: Jerry Weber struggles to keep sales spinning in tough times
Pittsburgh Business Times - by Tim Schooley
SOURCE: http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/
Jerry Weber’s Squirrel Hill business has 1 million to 2 million albums for sale. He says the future of his business is online.
It’s an ongoing economic indicator about as subtle as a long, grinding scratch across pressed vinyl.
Jerry Weber is used to seeing people come to his Jerry’s Fine Used Records store on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill looking to make a customer out of him rather than vice versa.
“Not only are they not buying records off me, but they want me to buy records,” he said, of the 10 calls or more he gets each day. “I hear this a lot: ‘I’m streamlining, Jerry. I’m cutting back.’”
Such is life for Jerry’s these days.
Weber’s business has accumulated between 1 million and 2 million records, many of which are stacked floor to ceiling at his 13,000-square-foot retail store.
Now in business for “33 and a third” years and decades after LPs were replaced as a standard music medium, Weber recently turned 60.
He understands that many of his customers are his age and have bought all the records they’re likely to buy, and that his business model of buying 2,000 records each week and selling 200 to 300 would make any business major wince.
Last year, Weber grossed between $170,000 and $200,000. This year, he expects about $20,000 less.
More than the record owners looking to empty their attics, Weber is concerned about buyers from overseas, who visit his store to buy large quantities of records to take home to Europe and Asia and resell.
Those foreign buyers have been cancelling their trips lately because of the economy. He received a fax just the other day from a buyer from Europe cancelling a trip.
“This is a guy that would come over and spend $200, $300 or $400 dollars, it hurts losing him,” Weber said.
He sees limits to the adjustments he can make. Jerry’s already operates with only a few people. Running discount sales only prompts existing customers to come back for lower prices.
Last year, Jerry’s devised a plan to bring two other businesses — Dave’s Music Mine and Heads Together, an independent DVD rental shop — in to his store to share his space, reducing costs for all of them.
Yet Dave’s dropped out, unable to support a single employee, and Heads Together is struggling, Weber said.
Weber plans to work for a few more years and then turn the business over to his son, Willie. He expects the future of Jerry’s Fine Used Records to come from pursuing demand for its product on the Internet, selling to buyers throughout the world.
“That’s the only way I’ll be able to pay all the bills,” he said. “I have to change my whole outlook, and I’m not really looking forward to it.”
