We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachel Gardner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Rachel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We believe kindness is contagious and so we’d love for you to share with us and our audience about the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

It is hard to pick just one act of kindness as it pertains to my business as I feel that starting my own record store was a project fueled by the kindness of others. At the beginning I had friends, new and old, who would come by the shop and help me grade and price records, help put fixtures together and keep me company. The more the word got out in the community about the shop, the more music lovers stopped by and offered to help. I had several donations of records and CDs to help get me started by wonderful friends and community members. I even had a musician let me borrow his platinum record for a wall decoration and another musician let me borrow a prized signed poster. Looking around the record store I see little signs of all of the people who came together for this shared vision and made it happen.

It is hard to choose one story as there truly have been some really amazing people and moments since opening the shop and I struggle to select one as “the” greatest act. I think sometimes it is truly the small gestures and connections made when working with customers directly that leave an impact on me long term.

The most recent act of kindness that really stood out to me was with a new customer. In addition to selling records we also consign instruments. There was a customer playing with a bass guitar that was for sale. We talked for quite a while about music and performing and playing bass (my chosen instrument). I learned a lot about the projects they were working on and listened to some music. The customer asked if they could put a deposit to hold the bass. I offered to reduce the price by cutting my consignment piece and just having them pay what I needed to pay to the original owner so they could take it home that day. It wasn’t an issue on my end as long as the consignor got their portion. They left happy with their purchase and I felt happy about the exchange.

Shortly after, the customer came back with a beautiful bouquet of flowers they had bought earlier in the day. They wanted to thank me and this is what they could offer. It was such a true act of kindness for them to come back when nothing more was owed and the transaction was complete.

I try to lead with kindness as much as possible and to recognize and show gratitude when it comes my way. I believe kindness in a world that often focuses on competition and one-upmanship is a small act of rebellion. I think kindness is pretty rock and roll!

Rachel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have been connected to the music industry for all of my life. Growing up around professional musicians and my parents having a music store when I was very young gave me a lot of compassion for individuals who dedicate their lives to making music.

I did not follow the path of music right away. After finishing college I built my career in corporate retail. A lot of irony there as my grad thesis was about how consumerism and mass media were the reasons people were losing their connection to the natural environment, but that is a different story for a different day.

I had dreamt of having my own shop for most of my 20 years in retail. I had drawn up imaginary business plans and names and ideas for years. After the kindness and mentorship of a friend who owned a boutique in my town I decided it was time to finally make the leap.

I opened Musicology Co, a mixed-use space for vinyl, CDs, boutique music merchandise, live music, and supporting local musicians, one year ago. I am most proud of the community that has found the space and embraced it. There are so many talented musicians in our area and getting to see them play on our tiny stage fills my heart with joy. There is a monthly songwriter open mic that is run by musicians in the community that has grown into something pretty spectacular. It is such an awesome thing to walk into this little shop I started and see it full wall-to-wall with people there to experience songwriters sharing their creations with each other. It is so cool to see this group who had made this their own experience. This wasn’t something I created, I made the space and some other brilliant minds made it into something so much more!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Something that has been an important “unlearning” for me is to really detach my personal expectations about the business. The more flexible I can be to respond to what customers are wanting the more I can adapt and grow.

I am unable to be at the shop all the time which means I put a lot of trust in the team I have hired. They are there responding to customer requests and they have ideas on how the business can be improved. I love to give their ideas a test and learn from them and not attach too directly to what I personally would want.

This is so important when it comes to buying inventory as well. I bring in a variety of music merchandise and it’s such a big learning curve to see what people actually buy. I have brought things in that I thought would do great and they sat on the shelves, and I have brought things in that I wasn’t sure of that sold out immediately. And then it shifts. It’s an ongoing adventure of learning and adapting to the customer.

It’s so important to unlearn seeing yourself as the customer and focus on what your customers are actually buying and requesting. I want people to feel like they can see their own musical taste when they walk into the shop. Ideally it feels curated to their taste. This means carrying a lot of different genres and finding ways to really get to know who is shopping at our store.

Thankfully there is an amazing team of people working at the store who are passionate about having a welcoming space.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

When I opened the business one of the first things I did was sign up to be a Record Store Day dealer. Unfortunately I got my business license in January which meant I had just missed the cutoff to be considered for the annual Record Store Day (RSD) exclusives. This is the biggest day of the year for the industry and is something that customers expect of you.

The first employee I hired (who now manages the store) had a great idea. Let’s do a whole New Record Store Weekend and make it clear that even though we can’t carry those releases we have a lot to offer. He created an exclusive poster (my favorite piece of art hanging on my wall now) and we put together a bunch of promotions for the weekend. I brought in branded tote bags to giveaway and we had other freebies.

For the promotion we made sure to be very clear with customers that even though we didn’t have the specific releases we had a lot of other stuff going on. In addition we gave information on which stores customers could go to get those releases. In this instance we were telling customers to go to our competitors, which seems counterintuitive, but we wanted to build trust and not have individuals disappointed if they couldn’t find what they were looking for.

The weekend went great and although we didn’t have an early line out the door like the shops in nearby cities we had a lot of traffic later in the day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.musicologyco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/musicology_co_

Image Credits

Karen Mason-Blair