We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Haley Mustak. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Haley below.
Hi Haley, thanks for joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?
Being an avid record collector myself, owning a record store had always been a back-of-the-mind fantasy. As vinyl has skyrocketed back into the spotlight over the last decade, the stars seemed to align. I began with testing out whether I would enjoy opening a business by utilizing third-party selling services like Mercari. Luckily, this was fairly simple to do given the used/vintage nature of records; however after a year or so those outlets weren’t as practical given my volume of inventory and the direct competition taking up space on the same platform. What really made my dream a true reality, was investing the time, money and effort into creating my own ecommerce site that catered specifically to modern capabilities needed for providing a seamless record-buying experience. This required several months of preparation, including digitally creating each product in the current inventory (which with thousands of unique albums, is no small task!), photographing products in a professional and accurate setting (essential for used goods), creating all of the data needed to provide a seamless shopping experience (such as product category hierarchies, individual album information, and tagging), and outfitting the site with modern capabilities to differentiate our business as well as making the purchasing experience easy and enjoyable (writing blog posts to educate on proper cleaning and storage methods, embedding album streaming to preview music, and creating algorithms to recommend other albums based on a specific record’s genre and artist are just some of the few ways we try to provide value to our users). There was also general ecommerce setup that needed to be done, including integrating with payment and shipping processors, determining tax nexus as well as any thresholds that would need to be disclosed and the proper accounting and inventory tracking that needed to be put in place.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Ominous Synths Records initially started as a way (excuse) for me to continue buying copious amounts of records for my own personal collection without things getting too out of hand. If I sold all of the albums I ended up not liking the music on, I could perpetually discover new music and grow my hobby at a good pace. A perfect blend of a passion for music and a background in business and technology has resulted in one of the first digital-only record stores with a primary focus on ease of use in the modern ecommerce age. Our record store provides accurate and consistent grading and utilizes modern digital capabilities such as waitlists, complex sorting and filtering, and product photography that showcases the actual albums you will receive in order to take as much risk and effort out of buying used vinyl as possible. We’re proud to ship anywhere in the U.S. and Canada, allowing music lovers access to their favorite records no matter where they are. We take our customers’ experience very seriously and put it at the forefront of all we do; some of our most popular features (like showcasing repress information, providing free shipping for our newsletter members, and even adding entire countries to our shipping map) began as requests from our customers.
Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?
Our business started out on Mercari, and now operates on its own independent website built on the Squarespace ecommerce engine. A third-party marketplace platform such as Mercari or Etsy is a great way to get your feet wet in kickstarting a business in that it removes a lot of the complexity, upfront costs, and time commitments. It also provides a ready-made customer base of thousands or even millions, which reduces the amount of marketing and brand building needed. However as your business grows and scales, I’ve found that branching off onto your own independent site is essential in order to scale. Third party marketplaces will not be able to provide specific capabilities and features that may make the shopping and browsing experience for your users easy to navigate. You will also find that merchant/selling fees on third-party marketplaces are significantly higher than payment processing fees, which will result in larger profit margins. Finally, establishing your own ecommerce site allows you to take full control of your brands’ image and marketing, and though building a following from the ground up can be a daunting task at first, the level of customer brand loyalty that is able to be gained is well worth the effort.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Our customer base is one that prides themselves on knowing bands, artists, and their genres inside and out. We would not be able to achieve the momentum and trust with our audience that we have today without a knowledge of music that goes both deep into the discography of countless bands, and wide across the entire spectrum of genres, from Country to Conscious Hip-Hop, Lounge music to Death Metal. Being avid record collectors ourselves also helped us stay grounded in identifying the major pain points our customers have today with purchasing records, as well as anticipating their needs and essential details and information that are missing from the industry as it exists online.
Contact Info:
- Website: ominoussynths.com
- Instagram: @ominoussynths
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ominoussynths
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ominous-synths-records/