A popular Edinburgh record store, specialising in extremely rare records from around the world will host a live music event in their shop this weekend to celebrate their first year of business.
Umbrella Vinyl in Brunsfield opened its doors on August 5 last year, and owners - Josh, Laura and Nick, say the in-store party is a way to thank their loyal customers and welcome the local community.
Umbrella Vinyl in Brunsfield opened its doors on August 5 last year, and owners - Josh, Laura and Nick, say the in-store party is a way to thank their loyal customers and welcome the local community.
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00:00I can't believe we're here at a year already. We're one year old and that's really exciting
00:17for us. It's been an amazing journey. We've got a lot of beautiful regular customers who
00:21come in and we've also been expanding our customer base recently, particularly because
00:26of the festivals, more and more international visitors coming in. We've also managed to
00:31create a little bit of a community as well because obviously we're second-hand records,
00:33that's what we sell, that's our speciality and people are really excited by that and
00:38they sort of follow us for that reason. We've decided to sort of open our decks if you like
00:42to our regular customers. So on Sunday it's the birthday celebration and we're going to
00:47have ourselves, so Nick, Josh and myself will all be DJing. We've also invited our regular
00:51customers to come and play some of their music that they've brought here so they get a little
00:5620-minute slot. So we've got quite a few people lined up and we'll just have refreshments and
01:00balloons and it'll just be a nice sort of open event for people to come along and listen and
01:04enjoy and obviously come in for a dig and buy records. It's sort of been quick and not quick
01:12at the same time. I can't imagine a time when I wasn't working in a record shop and yet it does
01:17seem like yesterday we were sitting around cleaning records, no shelves up, no bins, nothing.
01:23It's been fantastic, it really has. We've been so overwhelmed by the support we've had from our
01:30customers and the local community here that it's been quite extraordinary. We didn't
01:37know how well we would fit into the landscape. There are lots of other record shops in Edinburgh
01:41but we felt we had something different to offer and I think the fact that we're here and full of
01:48the joys of owning a record shop a year later is testament to how it's worked out for us. We've
01:53absolutely loved it. In the very beginning we started doing these daily videos with our
01:58recommendations so the three of us will have a little video, we'll do our daily recommendation
02:02and say something. Good morning, delightful people, yes the gang is back together. Umbrella
02:10Vinyl is open for business until 5pm and yeah you know it we're stacked to the brim full of sweet
02:16sweet soul like this incredible record by Eddie Holman. And people seem to really like that we've
02:22got this sort of regular following and people kind of comment on that or we're talking about
02:26the weather. Josh regularly comments about the weather on the daily videos and people love that
02:30kind of thing. The weather outside is cruel and unusual. It is an extraordinarily lovely day
02:37here in Edinburgh. The weather is a horse's ass. Good morning, the weather here in Edinburgh is
02:43absolutely disgraceful but we don't care because we own a record shop. It's been a really good year
02:49for us and we're just so humbled I think by the welcome we've had here. We've gotten to know our
02:55regular customers and we know where they're going you know we know what kind of stuff they want to
02:58have. I really like that process about introducing people to something that's completely new and
03:04I'm going wow I've never heard of this it's amazing. A couple of things that I've really
03:09really enjoyed are having musicians performing in store. We've had that happen a couple of times
03:16now and I think that we're confident that we can do more of those that are particularly record
03:20related or local musicians or something like that. I've really enjoyed that because that's when the
03:25shop is you know really packed out with people and it's what it should be. It's a community space if
03:31you like and being part of this community whether it's the music community or the local independent
03:37retailers community or the specific record shop community we've really found our place there and
03:42it's quite nice it's quite a privilege to be part of each of those and be you know increasing the
03:48reach of those little networks. Having those conversations and being able to really recommend
03:54and share the joy of the records in here and the different music that we have you know obviously
03:59we've got certain genres so jazz, funk, disco, soundtracks, global sounds so I think what we
04:05have here is definitely different from anywhere else in Edinburgh and people can see that and
04:09that's what we want to champion that kind of different music perhaps that you'd find anywhere
04:13else in Scotland.