Vinyl Revival and the Shops that Made it Happen

O ne sales rep who called into HMV and who did not ask us to fix the chart was a man named Alan Whittaker. He worked for a company called SP&S who specialised in selling deleted records. Alan would travel the North West in a large Mercedes van full of CDs, LPs and cassettes, visiting the record retailers and offering product that was ideal for promotions and sales. Record companies deleted product when it was no longer worthwhile keeping it in their warehouses, so that on Alan’s van would generally consist of titles from between three and twenty years ago. When companies deleted product they would sell them off cheap to companies like SP&S, then in turn SP&S would sell it on at a bargain price to the shops, who, in turn, would sell it cheap to the general public. All in all it was a very green system, which meant that most records would be recycled. Unfortunately there were a couple of major record companies who preferred to crush their unsold...