Indie Record Store Profile: Bull Moose in Maine & New Hampshire

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Two years ago, aft a regular lawsuit with a postulation of 5,000 DVDs died, the man’s sister showed up astatine the music, movie and publication store Bull Moose successful Lewiston, Maine, and told employees: “I conscionable don’t cognize what to bash with this, but helium loved this place. Can you assistance me?” They could. Soon they were sifting done the man’s collection, past observing the titles arsenic they filtered done the store and ended up with caller buyers.

“We’d person radical coming successful to spot this collection: ‘I saw this connected TV erstwhile successful 1979 and person ne'er seen it since!'” says Renee Clermont, the 11-store chain’s retail operations director. “You get small moments similar that each day.”

The 35-year-old Bull Moose is unsocial among determination grounds chains: Instead of dominating 1 big-city determination with a flagship store, its outlets anchor aggregate tiny towns, from Portland, Me. (population 68,000) to Plaistow, N.H. (7,800). “It’s benignant of aged world,” says Michael Kurtz, Record Store Day’s co-founder. “You get a consciousness they look retired for their neighbors.”

Brett Wickard‘s 2022 determination to merchantability the institution to employees done a stock-ownership program follows this communal philosophy: “I’m the laminitis of Bull Moose, but it wasn’t built by me,” helium says. “It was built by everybody.”

The South Portland, Maine-based chain, taking vantage of a prolonged vinyl income boom, including a 4.3% summation successful 2024, according to Luminate, is having what Wickard says is its “best year-over-year income successful astir apt fractional a decade.” In summation to amusement media, Bull Moose sells collectible toys, which retail enactment manager Chelsea Berry says are the lone products truthful acold that person endured tariff-related terms bumps — and those are negligible. “We are seeing immoderate of our vendors having to rise prices quickly. But they whitethorn beryllium like, ‘Oh, we’re raising our prices 20%!'” she says. “But it was a $4 item, and it goes to $4.50.”

The stock-ownership program took employees by astonishment erstwhile Wickard unveiled it successful a 9 p.m. worker meeting. “They announced, ‘Hey, guys, you’re employee-owned now, enjoy.’ We were each successful shock, almost,” recalls Alex Smith, who manages the Lewiston store. “It’s a small funky. We’re inactive figuring retired what it means to person it beryllium ours.”

Wickard sold the institution to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) trust, which vested those who worked astatine slightest 1,000 hours per twelvemonth for 2 years. It functions similar a status plan, arsenic opposed to short-term profit-sharing.

“It’s much semipermanent thinking, which tin beryllium pugnacious erstwhile you employment younger radical who are not reasoning astir their status astatine all,” Berry says. “Our margins are not that good: If we wage retired everything to employees each month, we won’t beryllium capable to put successful it.”

Wickard, 56, is simply a “math and subject nerd” who opened the store successful 1989 with hardly a concern plan. He leafed done the Yellow Pages to find a distributor, past ordered 1 transcript of each record. As the store’s popularity grew, Wickard and his unit paid attraction to their customers’ buying habits, incorporating them into a high-tech information system. One lawsuit was truthful attuned to amusement trends that aft helium bought anything, “tons” of others coiled up buying it a week later, according to Wickard, prompting the institution to bid aggregate copies of immoderate the lawsuit purchased. “It wasn’t rocket science,” helium says. “That was my large breakthrough.”

Bull Moose endured the CD roar and the Napster-induced crash, past benefitted from the vinyl resurgence. Around 2002, his squad began penning bundle for retail income and analytics and selling it to different grounds stores. This concern evolved into FieldStack, a 2013 tech institution that specializes successful retail-management software. The thought was to relieve employees from engaging successful “annoying tech s–t,” Wickard says: “Nobody starts a grounds store saying, ‘I privation to combat with networking and machine infrastructure and enactment connected EDI documents,'” helium says. “You commencement a grounds store due to the fact that you f–king emotion music.”