Skip to main content

The past has caught up with the future, or maybe it's the other way around, on the sweaty factory floor of Independent Record Pressing just off I-295 in Bordentown.

 

Most of the workers there weren't born when what they're making today was big. General manager Sean Rutkowski, 46, was, though he came of age in the era of cassettes and CDs.

But in a surprising return from near-death, vinyl records are back on the turntable, in demand by recording artists and music consumers alike after years of relegation to flea markets and used-record stores.

At Independent Record Pressing, or IRP, that means a paycheck, and pretty cool - if also exacting - jobs for 25 full- and part-time employees at the Burlington County start-up.

IRP has been steadily adding machines since turning on the first of its presses in August. Having just added a sixth press and a second shift over the last month, it is making about 5,000 records a day, with plans to ramp up soon to 8,000, or close to two million a year, and $4 million in annual revenue.

The market is most definitely there, said founding partner Dave Hansen, who spends his days in his native California as general manager of Epitaph Records, which puts out close to 400,000 records a year. Seventy-five percent of them are made at IRP.

Of the estimated dozen U.S. vinyl-record plants, "many are backed up for six months," Hansen said. More than 12 million vinyl albums sold in 2015, Nielsen, the global consumer-information and measurement company, reported.

As its name suggests, IRP is out to serve the independent-label community. That's the specialty of Hansen and his partner in the record-making business, Darius Van Arman, co-owner of Secretly Group, an Indiana-based independent-label company. Together, Hansen said, they have invested "a couple million" dollars in IRP.

How they settled on New Jersey for a record factory had a lot to do with the plant manager, Dave Miller, 62, a South Philadelphia native and descendant of a couple of generations of record makers who has a special relationship with IRP's presses. They came out of Hub Servall Record Manufacturing Corp., started by his father, Paul, and an uncle near Cranbury, N.J., in the 1970s.

Nationwide, the current record resurgence is largely being pressed, stamped, and trimmed on equipment from the 1970s - when Pink Floyd, Kiss, and the Bee Gees were hot, and record players were as relevant as, well, record stores.

"There are people out there finding old machines and trying to bring them back to life," Hansen said.

Miller, who now lives in Middlesex County, is a veritable press whisperer, coaxing into working order machines Hub Servall sold to F.A.B. Distribution in Montreal after Hub shut down in 2007.

He was part of the package deal, accompanying the machines to Canada to set them up before returning to New Jersey to work outside the industry.

Until, that is, the investors in IRP came calling and Miller expressed a willingness to get back into the business, as long as he didn't have to move.

"It's like a crazy, hot ex-girlfriend," Miller said of rejoining an industry he thought he had left for good. "You only remember the good times. You never remember the freakin' roller coaster."

What also made sense about locating IRP where it is, Hansen said, was that a supplier of vinyl pellets is just 20 minutes away, and the manufacturer of the metal stampers to press the records is only about an hour away, in North Jersey.

Another point for the East Coast: The company that supplies IRP with press parts is in Connecticut, a doable round-trip drive in a day.

For general manager Rutkowski, joining IRP meant relocating without his wife and four kids, age 10 to 19, who are in Atlanta. The allure: the chance to do something new. For more than 20 years, he had been first a music buyer, for Blockbuster, among others, and then a seller, for Warner Music Group to Walmart and Target. From 2010 to 2014, he was a general manager for Alternative Distribution Alliance, an independent distribution arm of Warner Music Group, where he had done work for the two men who went on to found IRP.

"I figured I'd learn things I'd never done before," said Rutkowski, whose office- window curtain is made from 42 album covers fastened together.

His work began in January 2015, driving around New Jersey with Hansen scouting potential sites, ultimately rejecting Newark and Trenton because commercial space was cheaper farther south.

IRP's move into its local digs, a former warehouse, started in February 2015, with the relocation of the presses from Canada. Build-out followed that spring, with the presses turned on in August, using steam to heat the dyes to mold the 12-inch LPs and high-pressure water to cool the dyes and set the records.

Making a record takes 30 to 40 seconds, Miller said. But unlike in the past, the vinyl-record business is not about mass production, Rutkowski said.

"The appeal of vinyl is the boutiqueness of it," he said. "If you mass-produce it, I think it takes away some of that special feel. It's a fine balance between art and commerce that can be tipped very easy."

Rutkowski credits the digital revolution for vinyl's revival, in that it served music lovers' needs but only to a point.

"There's no tangibility," he said of downloading and streaming. "People want something to touch and hold."

As hands-on businesses go, few have more touch points.

"It's an extremely manual process," Rutkowski said. "Every single record gets touched by human hands along the process." Which explains why he and Hansen both cited employee recruitment among IRP's biggest challenges.

For the presses, where variations in water temperature can affect record quality, IRP needs people who are "mechanically inclined and willing to learn an ancient technology," Rutkowski said.

For assembly - which involves inspecting records for scratches, rough edges, and missing or poorly positioned labels, as well as putting records into sleeves and jackets and shrink-wrapping each one - the need is for workers who will remain sharp and discerning despite their duties' repetitive nature.

Supervising the entire assembly-and-packaging team is Dawn Scheideler, 46, of Bordentown, whom Rutkowski lured away from her job as a bus driver for the Bordentown Regional School District.

"I have very high standards," Scheideler said, standing near the sleeving table. "I care what people are buying [for $20 to $35 an album, on average]. These people can get this for free online. I'm going to do everything possible . . . to make sure they're getting the best quality for their money."

The discs that occupy her day remind Scheideler of her youth, when she listened to Barry Manilow on a record player while helping with the laundry at her grandparents' Wildwood motel, the Twilight.

Jeff Davis was tapping into that sort of nostalgia 14 years ago when he started Vinylux, a Germantown company that turns vinyl records - predominantly 331/3s and 45s - into home-decor items such as bowls, clocks, and coasters.

He did not foresee records coming into vogue again as an entertainment medium. But that hasn't hurt his business one bit, he said, reporting gross sales last year that surpassed $500,000 for the first time.

"If anything," Davis said, "it brought our products into much more mainstream national stores because of the strong sales of new vinyl."

dmastrull@phillynews.com

http://www.philly.com/philly/b...vinyl_s_revival.html

____________________________________

The SPL Rocks!

Prego che tu stia danzando con San Pietro alle porte perlacee del cielo





Pulled up to my house today
Came and took my little girl away!
Giants Stadium 8/28/03



Oats

Original Post
Post
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×