Wholesale Record Distribution

The Beatles on Vee-Jay?

 

YES!! It took us 3 years to break even on that one, and another 3 years to sell it all. I believe the last 1,000 went to another wholesaler for almost nothing.

 

What happened to Bobby Marshall?

Frank G

 

He left the company in the '90s. Here are a few pics of some of us from a previous post. We were visiting a Capitol pressing plant...
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=68851

 

Actually, I thought more about it and I think on my temp job we were actually sorting through returned cut-outs. A perk was that we could buy anything we wanted for a buck - I got 5 or 6 perfect copies of the Tetragrammaton issue of "Two Virgins", undoubtedly returned because the purchaser felt they were being cheated, even at $1.99.

 

Ahh The wonderful world of perks & consumers

 

Obviously the Beatles' "Let it Be". Those younger than maybe 45 don't understand that for years you could find this title in just about any cutout bin in the country!

Those Sutton Pre-Packs were hit and miss. You'd frequently find stuff like Badfinger albums on Apple and things like that. But you'd also get copy after copy of stuff that would be hard to sell...

When I was managing my school's record department (end of the '70s), I just LOVED getting the cutout catalogues from the major cutout distributors...I'd go wild ordering a few of this a few of that (I'm sure the guys who had to pull the copies hated me ). Then thousands of records would arrive and get put into a special cutout sale that ALWAYS did well for us...

It was amazing the number and variety of cutout titles you could order from the places that specialized in them. Sadly, when CDs took over the golden age of cutouts was over. The CD cutout catalogues I've gone through have always been extremely lame.

For our current titles (and some cutouts) we used the one-stop Mighty Fine Distributing in the Bay Area, who also owned the Record Factory chain. Those were weird times, with labels starting to get on board with multi-tiered pricing for older catalogue ("The Nice Price", etc.) You'd have strong selling catalogue titles that would inexplicably go out of print, only to discover that they reappeared as part of a budget line (with a new catalogue number) a few months later.

It's also hard for many people to remember that there was a time when a LOT of classic music was not available in any form. I remember someone coming in and asking for Roy Orbison and basically getting into a shouting match with them because they didn't believe me that there was NO Roy Orbison title in print in the US. They thought I was just being lazy and that I didn't want to bother to order one for them. I finally found a Canadian overstock/cutout copy of the 2LP Monument set from one distributor and got that for them.

(If you want an idea of just how little back catalogue was in print, take a look at the original Rolling Stone Record Guide [with the red cover] and look at the discographies of people like Miles Davis, remembering that they only listed albums that were in print when the guide was printed...)

Kwad

 

Cool thread.
I worked for a company in the '80s that had both a wholesale and retail operation, so I got to see both sides of the evil that was the record business up close and personal.
'Course there were a few perks...

 

Of course, why didn't I think of that? "Let It Be" was out of print from 1975 to 1979 when United Artists lost the distribution rights to the album. Their record division pressed up 4,000,000 copies of it on it's initial release. I'm surprised it took pretty much the entire decade for them to sell through.

 

Very, very cool thread! I remember selling tons of LP cutouts when I was with Peaches in the very early 80's. Something I would love to know now is "how come we never see CD cutouts"? Obviously there aren't nearly as many copies of a CD printed as there was for LP's but still, I find it interesting that I never come across any and don't even know any companies that even sell them. Is there really no such thing as CD cutouts? If such an animal does exist, who even sells them?

Bruce

 

Bruce,

There are millions of CD cut-outs. Every CD that's out of print is a cut-out (even if it's not drilled). There are many reasons why they aren't being marketed as budget items, like in the old days. One of the main reasons for this is a fundamental change in the way that major distributors now handle deleted titles. For many decades the distributors would send out "deletion lists" and give notice that those titles would soon go out of print. These titles had to be returned by a specific date to get credit. Under this system, massive amounts of "soon to be dead" records ended up in the distributors' hands. They would have to destroy the product, or dump it on the budget market by selling it as non-returnables. An example of this old policy is below in the 1993 WEA letter.

The second example shows the new way that deletions are being handled. BTW, WEA's date is wrong on that letter. Their new policy went into effect in January 1999. As you can see, this changed the whole dynamics of the process. These titles are now left in retail outlets to sell off. Meaning fewer returns, and thus it's less likely the distributors would bother selling them as budget items.

This type of return policy has become standard practice now for most distributors. It's certainly not the only reason for fewer budget CDs, but it is a significant change in the system.

One downside with the new way (at least for collectors)...is that there's no warning that a title is about to be deleted. Once the list goes out, the titles are already out of print. Under the old way, you still had several months to order something before it became obsolete.

 

Hey Wilkie, Thanks a bunch for your answer. I honestly didn't know about the change in Return Policy since it's been years since I was on that end of the business. That definitely explains why there aren't many if *any* cutout CD sections in stores. I know I'm always looking for a source for this kind of stuff and there pretty much isn't one. Hey, great thread by the way!
Bruce

 

A few more random thoughts about cut-outs/non-returnables, which were always less than 5% of our total sales...

Companies, like Sutton, that supplied non-returnable budget titles (especially in their cheapo pre-packs) not only had a mixture of true cut-outs, over-presses, and budget labels as previously mentioned...but also often contained imports and dumped record club releases. Usually these weren't drilled or marked in any additional way. Anyone in the US distribution chain would notice the foreign address on imports; and the record club markings. These would be clear signals that these items had no return value in the regular distribution chain.
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When we would buy box lots of titles (either directly from the manufacturers or through a budget wholesaler), they would arive in original unopened factory-sealed boxes. That is to say, that the entire box and its contents had the corners cut (or sides saw-cut...or drilled) all at once. This always surprised people who were visiting our non-returnable room for the first time. Sometimes the person sawing the boxes would cut at an angle...resulting in a box of LPs with sliced vinyl on the top, and no cut at all on the covers of the records on the bottom. Whenever we found a non-marked over-press, we could always get full return credit from the manufacturer, but a deleted title had no return value...whether marked or not.
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I had almost forgotten that back in the 60s we also carried cut-out 45s. We handled them both in loose bulk and sealed bags. The bagged ones only showed one side of the front record, and one side of the back record. In other words, if it was a 3-pack, you didn't know what you were getting with the middle record, and the 2 that were visible only showed one side each. I think we sold these as 3, 5 and 10-packs. They came drilled through the labels. We could buy pre-bagged, or make our own using one of our shrink-wrap machines. We gave up on cut-out 45s. It wasn't worth the effort, and took up too much valuable real estate in our rack account stores. Maybe I should get into the rack-jobbing part of our business next, assuming we're finished with cut-outs.

 

Wasn't One Way Records named for the nickname for non-returnable product?

BTW - anybody remember House Distribution, out of Olathe Kansas?

Cody

 

Uh-oh. I was waiting for someone to bring up House Distributors.
I worked for the outfit from 1980 until around 1988 (mostly for the retail side, PennyLane Records and the newspaper, "The Pitch").
Can't wait to hear all the stories about "Horrible Hal."

 

LOL!
I worked at the Lawrence store about the same time. I learned a lot about music from the time I spent at Pennylane/House. It was one of those places that ended up hiring a lot of people who were *really* into music, and I soaked up everything I could from them.

Cody

 

I always assumed it might have something to do with that. We carried both One Way, and Terry Wachsmuth's next label, Wounded Bird Records. Ironically neither were non-returnable. Maybe naming the label, One Way Records, was just being optimistic.

 

Not to go off topic Wilkie, But do you still spin any of your spoils?

 

Yep. I started at the Kansas City warehouse, which was then in the basement of the retail outlet. We were all so totally into vinyl it bordered on being diagnosable. We all had "hold stacks" that kept growing rather than shrinking, so it was sort of like owing our souls to the company store.
Probably scored a third of my present collection during those days.
Great memories though.

 

Great thread! Those old CBS album boxes brought back some memories. I worked at Southwest Wholesale in Houston from 79 to 2001. I used to be real bitter when they closed but now it's mostly really fond memories. I had some of the greatest times of my life and met the greatest people. I still haven't recovered (financially) from their closing. In the early days, I used to go to at least one free show a week, not to mention all the promos.

 

Sure...at least the formats that I still have hardware for. I think I have some of every audio and video format we ever carried:

I can still play these: Phonograph records 16, 33, 45, 78 RPM -mono, stereo, quad (QS, SQ and CD-4); cassettes; CDs; SACDs; DVD-As; VHS; DVDs

I still have these, but can no longer play them: PlayTapes; 4-Tracks; 8-Tracks; Quad 8-Tracks; Reel-to-Reel; Digital Compact Cassettes; Beta; CED; CAV; CLV

I've probably forgotten about a few other formats we may have carried. Actually I get a lot of pleasure from rediscovering music that has been hiding around here. Recently someone on another forum tried to tell me that there was no such thing as a White Label Promo Quad LP. So I had to pull out my Dennis Weaver album to prove my point. But by doing so I noticed that one of the songs, "Hubbardville Store" was written by Larry Murray. I had completely forgotten about that. Being a big fan of Hearts and Flowers since 1967, I had to put One More Road in my pile to be played again. Great fun to find these little surprises.

 

Actually I keep some of my recordings in old shipping cartons. Here's a CBS box that originally held 200 Cherrelle 45s "What More Can I Do For You" (Tabu ZS4-68904), one of their distributed labels. Most of our CBS product came from the Pitman plant.

 

Here's a 200 lot 45 box from WEA's Philly Branch (then located in Marlton, NJ). It is from March 1983, and contained Patrick Simmons singles, "So Wrong". They were pressed at Specialty in Olyphant, PA. WEA had owned Specialty for 5 years at that time, but they still were using the old Specialty boxes and sealing tape. Examples of the old and new "WEA" sealing tapes below:

 

This box contained 100 45s. Since it has our old address, it can't be any later than 1970. It came from Eddie Davis' Faro Productions, and since there were 6 cartons with this shipment, I guess we ordered 600 singles of Gordo 703, which was the original release of El Chicano's "Viva Tirado". (Later reissued on Kapp.)

I also keep some of my Beatle recordings in original Beatle factory boxes, and much of my Linda Ronstadt collection stays in original Ronstadt boxes.

 

Here's a box of WEA CDs from 1998. Viewed from end; and bottom view. They were part of a drop shipment from the Olyphant, PA plant (formerly Specialty Records Corporation). Note "SRC" still appears on the box ID sticker. The new sealing tape differs from the earlier paper stock with embedded fibers. The new tape is a more efficient, self-sticking type, while the old tape wouldn't stick without adding water.