![]() ![]() With hindsight, I would have built a more sophisticated feedback loop into the system, that took into account what the value of someone's intended ordering would have been had all the items they'd ever wanted always been in stock, and placed more of a premium on attracting new customers. Which meant they still didn't get access to the better stock the following month. Grade 2 and 3 customers would often try and order items that were already sold, and would not therefore be able to improve their customer grading. Since it went to the grade 5 customers first, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that the grade 5 customers bought the rarest and most expensive items - since they got first bite at the cherry. Not least of which was that since trading in rare records is a 20th century form of trading in antiques, Reckless generally had only one copy of any item listed in the mail shot. Whilst it was an excellent system for ensuring that we drove revenue from all of our biggest customers on the first couple of days of the 'mail shot month', it certainly had its flaws. Once the '5' customers had got their mail shots, we would then mail the 4 & 3 grade customers with the mail shot, and after that, depending on how much remained unsold, we would do further mail-outs. The theory was that they would hopefully hit everybody's letter box at the same time, and give all of our best customers a chance to get the best items from the list each month. first, then to Europe the next day, and then to the UK. I used to carefully pack all of the mini-catalogues, and then post them in a staggered fashion, sending those to Japan and the U.S.A. Grade 5 customers had spent the most, and were the first to be issued with the new catalogue each month, since they were the most regular repeat customers with the highest spend. We kept records on customer's names, addresses, spend, and the major artists whose records they had purchased - and all, at that time, without a concept of how the Data Protection Act might apply.Ĭustomers were graded according to how many mail order transactions they had placed, and the total value of money they had spent with Reckless via mail order, on a scale of 1 to 5. We tracked customer interactions using a Microsoft Access database. ![]() Reckless had invested in a hand-built specialist Loricraft record cleaning machine.īefore the idea of simultaneously publishing the current stock of the shop on the internet arrived, the production of this catalogue was the main monthly focus of the mail order business. I must have spent at least four hours a day, nearly every day for two years, inhaling a weird top secret mixture of distilled water, alcohol and other chemicals used for the record cleaning machine. In the mail order department my job was basically laying out monthly mail shots using PageMaker desktop publishing software, serving customers, and cleaning really rare records. ![]() Measured by the standard of the student grant I have been receiving whilst at University the previous three years, that was an incredible three whole months money earned in just the one. I still remember very clearly getting my first payslip, and walking down the street ecstatic to have received just over £700 for a month's work. My initial job there was in the mail order department in the Upper Street branch in Islington. It was brilliant news though, as it turned out that I didn't, after all, have to decide what to do with the whole of the rest of my life as soon as my final exams finished. She said she didn't really know what the job entailed, but that my soon-to-be-boss had said that the mail order department had its own neon sign, which was clearly an important detail to him. She had received the job offer on my behalf, from someone I previously used to work with in two different record shops, Note For Note in Walthamstow and then at Rockin' Sarah on Berwick Street in Soho. In my last week of studying at Leeds, I got a phone call from my mum. I first started working for Reckless full-time 13 years ago, in 1994, just as the World Cup was starting in the USA. The store I managed had unsuccesfully tried to branch out into secondhand DVDs and Games alongside the record, tapes and CDs of yesteryear, but didn't have the muscle to hire the additional specialist staff we really needed to do well in those areas. At the same time the original Napster format was beginning to take file-sharing into the consciousness of serious music fans, whilst eBay had provided a one-to-one market for secondhand CDs, rather than a one-to- Reckless-to-one relationship that the shop relied upon. Even when I was still there - up until December 2000 - the store was feeling the pinch of the near constant sales of back catalogue CDs in HMV and Virgin between £4.99 and £6.99. ![]()
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