A record shop that stopped selling the same LP twice
A used-vinyl shop in Glasgow listed every record on Discogs and on its own site, and kept refunding the losers. One inventory now owns each physical copy.
This shows the kind of work we do. It is not a client engagement, and the business in it is invented.
- 0double-sold records in the first three months, down from about four a week
- 1 entryper record, where listing used to mean typing it twice
- 60 secworst case between a sale and the other listing coming down
Where it started
The problem
A used record sells once. That sounds obvious until the same pressing is listed on Discogs and on the shop's own site while the record itself sits in a crate by the till, and two of them sell it on the same Saturday.
The owner spent Sunday mornings refunding people. About four a week, each with an apology email and a dent in the shop's Discogs feedback.
What changed
What we did
We built a small inventory service with one row per physical copy. Discogs and the web shop both read from it, and the till app writes to it.
Sell it anywhere and the other listing comes down inside a minute. When the Discogs API is slow (Saturdays, mostly) the shop's own listing gets pulled first, because a refund on your own site costs less goodwill than one on a marketplace.
Grading notes and photos are entered once, on a tablet behind the counter.
We've never been to Glasgow. It hasn't mattered. Their four in the afternoon is our nine in the morning, and support runs by email at hours that suit them.
Built with
- Discogs API
- Shopify
- Go
- SQLite
- Litestream
Services in this job
Application Development
Any stack, any server, start to finish
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