Today we’d like to introduce you to Dave James.
Hi Dave, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Soon after high school, I got my first record store job in 1988. I opened my first shop – Noise Noise Noise Records – in 1991. I had been collecting since I was about 10 years old. I was a paperboy and was up to deliver newspapers early on weekends, so I’d hit local garage sales when I was done. Noise Noise Noise was a huge success. In the early 90s, there was the Nirvana-led grunge and indie rock explosion, followed by pop punk and third-wave ska. Also, DJ culture blew up: rave culture and the golden era of hip hop with so many old records getting sampled. Those scenes were massive, and we were an early shop to embrace all that. The shop was doing great, but I got strung out on drugs in the late 90s, and Noise3 shut down in 2006. I was spending all my money on heroin and meth instead of paying rent and utilities. I got the boot, and that was that. I got sober in 2007 and spent a few years working with a band, doing merch and promotions, and seeing the United States at 55 miles per hour in a van full of dudes. In 2010, the opportunity to open Factory Records arose, so I’ve been plugging away, running a 4oo square foot independent record store for the last dozen years.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Aside from being a junkie trying to maintain a drug habit and keep a business open, I guess the biggest challenge was adapting to music going digital: Napster and iPods, and now streaming. I’d pretty much given up on vinyl being a viable source of income, but someone decided vinyl records were here to stay, and they haven’t just stayed. They’ve grown in popularity. The pandemic, of course, was a challenge, too. I thought we were just flat-out screwed when everything shut down, but it was the opposite: Everyone got their stimulus money and was sitting at home doing nothing, so people just started shopping like crazy online. And records got super popular. So I had to learn how to do a pretty solid mail order business – I had always been almost completely brick and mortar sales – which I did use Instagram as a platform. This was done using an upstairs loft at a house my wife and I had just moved into. I was selling and wrapping records while my wife did her job via laptop downstairs. And it worked. The business was great, and the store is still alive and well.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I run a 400-square-foot indie record store. It’s an old-school vibe and offers record shopping the way I grew up doing it – in a dusty brick-and-mortar location stuffed with boxes of vinyl and CDs that you have to dig through to find what you want and hopefully more than what you want, in hopes of expanding your musical tastes. It’s me and two employees holding things down, one person per shift since the shop is so small. We specialize in vinyl records, new and used, from all sorts of genres, priced from a dollar each to collectibles that are hundreds of dollars each. We truly have something for everyone. I guess I’m most proud of overcoming very public drug addiction, getting back into the same type of business I did back then, succeeding in my career again, and being accepted by the community.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc.?
I’m 53, so I’m a dinosaur tech-wise. I still read a physical newspaper every day. I guess Instagram is my guiding light these days. It’s how I promote Factory Records and stay connected to what’s hip and slick in the world. TikTok is probably where it’s, but I think I’m too old for that scene. And it doesn’t say movies or TV here, but I live and breathe Star Wars. I cannot get enough of that franchise, and I get life lessons from a bunch of those movies and shows the way some people do from the Bible. Aside from overhearing my wife’s chosen podcasts, I’ve never listened to a podcast. I just learned of a Star Wars one that sounds interesting – the Thank The Maker podcast so that I may get a little more modern soon.
Contact Info:
- Website: factoryrecordsshop.com
- Instagram: factoryrecordsdavenoise
Image Credits
Dave James
