Gary and Wayne Johnson, owners of Rockaway Records in Silver Lake, started out buying and selling old records at swap meets, then graduated to mail-order and CD sales. Then came the dual assault: eBay eviscerated their mail-order business, and online downloads cut into CD sales. The brothers, Wayne says, have survived by relying on their old favorite records.
“My brother and I went to a swap meet where they sold old records and it opened us up to a new world. We started going to garage sales looking for records. A really big turning point was when I found an Elvis Presley record at a garage sale for 25 cents and we sold it for $100. Today it would probably be worth $1,000.
“We started selling at the swap meet and it just started growing. Then we started selling mail-order. By 1981 we were one of the biggest mail order vendors in the world. We were selling mainly records and some posters and memorabilia. Our phone started ringing off the hook.
“In 1982 we bought our first retail store right down the street from where we are now in Silver Lake. The building is called Rockaway Plaza and we lease some of the space out.
“We’re kind of going full circle. We started with records and collectibles and then got into CDs. Now the CD business is dying and it probably only has a few years left. We’ll cut back on the CDs and put out more records, memorabilia like original Beatles lunch boxes and dolls and stuff that came out in ’60s, books, magazines, guitar picks, gold record awards anything to do with music.
“You can come into our store and find a few records worth a couple of dollars and some on the wall for $400 or $500 each. There are 15 employees and we make about $2.5 million (revenues) per year.
“We’re very, very selective. We have some of the best records in the world and we have a reputation for paying really good money for a good record. One time we had a kid come into our store with a pile of records he tried to sell at a garage sale. They all had ’25 cents’ stickers on them and we gave him $100 for one. He almost fainted.
“With the way the music industry is going, a lot of people are getting laid off and some have a record collection worth a fortune. They think, ‘I have $1,000 worth of stuff in my basement’ and we’ll give them $500,000, and that word spreads. I pulled most of the advertising because we can’t keep up with what’s coming in to us. Even so, we reject 90 percent of what is offered.”
Kim Holmes
