To be honest, I never expected to be running a record shop! As a teenager, I started working at the local comic shop, Chaos City Comics, and spent the next 11 years there. This was definitely where I developed my musical taste, with all the staff contributing to the soundtrack and new albums introduced all the time, it was where music really became a part of my life. When I left, I found a job at HMV which was another shop that allowed me to work around yet more of my favourite things and really build up a knowledge of music retail. When the store I was working in closed it turned out that Derek, the owner of Chaos City, where I had remained a customer, had quietly been watching the rise of vinyl over the years and was planning to open his own record shop and very conveniently for me, would need someone to manage it. From there we threw ourselves into it, both having histories in retail, but discovering that running a record shop was its own beast, and in 2013, Empire Records was born. We slowly grew the shop, building up both our stock and our knowledge, and getting to know all the music fans in St Albans as word spread about us, a lot of who are still valued customers to this day. Sadly, Derek passed away in 2015, so he hasn’t been able to see how the shop has developed, but we continue in his spirit, and I think he would be proud. The shop really means a lot to me, and I think we play an important role on the high street (or just off of it), keeping physical music alive!
