INTERVIEW: Lincoln Stewart & Toronto's Word of Mouth Record Shop (Volver)

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Originally, there were only supposed to be two interviews in this issue of Running Man, but after a brief exchange with Volver owner Lincoln Stewart, it was clear that he needed to be involved as well.

RMP first reached out to Stewart to ask if he would like to advertise his record store in the paper. Stewart thanked us for reaching out but said that he refrains from paid advertising and social media and relies solely on word of mouth. He added that it “may be stupid, but I like the challenge.”

Stewart runs a record store out of his loft on Dundas Street West in Toronto. On his website, he thoroughly explains his business model and the steps that one must take to do business with him. If you would like to buy a record, you can browse online and pick up your chosen record in person. There is a no shipping policy.

If you would like to sell a record or a collection, Stewart will offer you exactly half of what he intends to sell the record for, no exceptions.

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RMP: What drew you to the record business in the first place?

STEWART: I fell into it. When I was fourteen (1982), I shopped at the city’s best used record store, Vortex, and befriended the owner, a great guy called Bert Myers. When I was seventeen, I was managing a video store and applied for a job at Vortex and heard nothing back. Years later, Bert called and said, “I’m just looking at your resume. I’m opening a video store next year. Are you still looking for a job?” So from 1993 - 1998, I ran his video store called Art & Trash. We had the best collection of foreign and arthouse films in the country. Bert took ill, and when I declined to purchase the store because I was busy with other projects (I was also working as a web designer and I owned a film distribution company and had directed a feature film in 1994), he closed the video store.

We remained friends and one day in 2005, I mentioned to him that I was bored with web design (I’d left film in the late 90s) and he asked if I wanted to work at Vortex one day a week just to get my eyes off the computer screen. I agreed and within a year or so, was managing the place. In 2013, another shop in the city (Penguin Records) came to us and asked if we wanted to buy their bins and fixtures as they were closing down. I asked what was happening with their space and they connected me with their landlord. I left Vortex and opened my own shop, Good Music. I stayed there for 2 years or so and got tired of the 40-minute commute, so I moved the shop to four blocks from my loft on Dundas West. A year and a bit into that, I had a small stroke and a few months later, I sold my inventory to a competitor and fucked off to Spain to live on the beach with a cat named Blanche.

RMP: You mention that convenience has led us to companies like Amazon and Netflix, which kill off independent video and book stores as well as the real-life interaction between customer and merchant.

STEWART: Convenience has many benefits, especially for those in rural places. But it can also become addictive. If everything is easy, then it requires no effort. I’m old enough to remember what it was like to want something (to see a film or hear an album) and not be able to do so without some serious work. You could literally go years with something on your wantlist, based on nothing more than a review or word of mouth, and have no idea if it was something that clicked for you. If/when you finally found it—wow, that left an impression, good or bad! There is no “hunt” anymore.

When I worked in video stores and music stores in the 90s, it was a big deal to have things no other shop had. I once spent a month in 1995 driving around Australia looking for movies that weren’t available in North America, buying them up, shipping them back to Toronto, and then converting them from PAL to NTSC (AUS standard to NA standard). Art & Trash was literally the only store on the continent with those particular titles.

RMP: What should locals/consumers be focusing on rather than convenience?

STEWART: Community. It’s no secret that people are becoming more alone. In the passage on my site that you’re referring to, I am specifically talking about convenience as a “guiding star”—as a reason for choosing not to interact, whether that be when buying records, groceries, or your evening meal. Buying local is a very easy way to connect with the world. I know that many people shop online because they want to avoid people. It’s what they love about shopping online. But finding the good people and places and learning to deal with the bad ones is one of the ways we can become better people for our own neighbors. As the poet David Whyte says, “Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.”

Connection is a much better guiding star than convenience. That may be an odd thing for a self-described hermit to say, but my reclusiveness is my personality’s default. It’s just the way I’m wired. Intentionally interacting with the world is how I spin against my drive. I’m almost always thankful for having done it. Whyte’s poem goes on: “Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation... everything is waiting for you.” Indeed.

RMP: How has your quality of life changed since swapping the brick-and-mortar business model for your current one?

STEWART: It may be important to understand that the swap was somewhat accidental. When I’d taken off for Spain, I literally expected to die there. Doctors hadn’t gotten to the bottom of my stroke and warned me that if they didn’t, I’d probably have a full-blown stroke within 18 months. After a year of tests and no answers, I figured I’d rather go down swimming in the Mediterranean than while lifting another crate of records. I stayed there three months, and my visa was up, so I flew to Los Angeles and lived in Beverly Glen with two boxers, Rolo and Bailey. Though I’d sold Good Music’s inventory for a decent amount of money, it was getting low, and my full-blown stroke never arrived. I was gonna have to figure something out.

I flew back to Toronto, and a bunch of former customers reached out to say that, since I’d closed down, no one in Toronto was paying good money for records anymore. What do I recommend they do?

Coincidentally, though I did not and do not sell records on Discogs, the site had heard that I was a trustworthy record seller in Toronto and reached out to me to say that they were putting on a Record Show in the city and were looking for vendors. Could I give them the lowdown on which vendors would draw the biggest crowd? I told them I was not useful in that regard, but that I’d take a table for myself. I spent three days buying up the records from my former customers, and I sold them at that show. It was a one-day thing, and I made enough money to live six months or so, which took me to the winter when I flew away again. This became my model. Take off, come back, buy and sell records, repeat. The only difference is that I did it out of my loft and never did another Record Show.

I called my business Volver, which is the Spanish word for return or go back. Over the years, I lived in the Dominican, Melbourne, Cuba, and all over Los Angeles County. This worked great. My last gig was living in Vanuatu for five months, managing three beach properties when I was forced to return to Toronto. I arrived home on March 4, 2020. Canada shut down for Covid a week or so later and I’ve been running Volver year-round ever since.

That’s quite the diversion, but, obviously, to get back to your question, my life has changed drastically since having a brick-and-mortar. The important thing for me is that, due to the stroke and travelling, I realized just how unimportant most of the motivations are in “regular” life. Possessions and money being the most ridiculous to me. I decided I had to pursue a time-rich life rather than concentrate on anything else. I know that I am very privileged in that I’ve lived in a rent-controlled loft for almost 20 years. I have no car, no dependents, no mortgage, etc. Certainly, some of those things were planned, but as a result, I can work as much or as little as I wish.

Most people try to make as much money as possible, which leaves them with little time. I work as little as possible and therefore have much free time. One could argue I squander my time the way many people squander their money, but that’s a whole different discussion.

RMP: A broader question: How has life as a local in downtown Toronto changed since your early days of working in the industry?

STEWART: Well, it’s the industry that changed, and it’s done so in fundamental ways. Obviously, Discogs has severely messed with the used industry. But as for brick-and-mortar specifically, I worked at my first record store in 1989 and in those days you could send back unsold product for credit or refund. This allowed stores to take chances on unknown artists or unheard albums from known artists. This is why when you see videos of Tower Records and other stores in the 70s and 80s, there is so much product everywhere. Since new product cannot be returned anymore, stores don’t risk purchasing it... the label then presses fewer, and if something’s an unexpected hit, it’s unavailable when it should be flying off shelves. (Note that I have not carried any new product—with the exception of Cairo Records and Mississippi releases—in more than 10 years, so perhaps this has changed, but I doubt it.)

In addition, stores used to get punished for breaking street date. Now, labels don’t care at all—at least not if you’re one of the bigger shops. The biggest store in Toronto breaks street date all the time, which causes the smaller stores to do the same or suffer. I remember when the Beatles boxes came out, they were a few hundred dollars each and had a “strict” street date. Yet that big store, which was a five-minute walk from Good Music at the time, had them out a week early, so by the time I put them out on the release date, everyone who wanted one had already purchased them. And I can’t send them back. And they take up a ton of space. So, what’s a store to do? This is one of the reasons I stopped carrying new product. I wanted to follow the rules, but it was impossible to do so and not lose my shirt. After appealing to the labels and distributors with “receipts,” and finding them unwilling to act because my shop was so small, instead of breaking the rules, I took my ball and went home and switched to strictly used records.

RMP: Were you always firm on your values when it comes to business?

STEWART: Yes... when I managed Vortex Records, I used Instagram to promote the shop. I could be wrong, but I believe I was the first record store to use Instagram to market. It worked very well for us. I also used it for Good Music. But when I realized how evil Facebook (the company) was, I deleted my accounts and never looked back. I now have a hard rule against Social Media and have not used it since 2017, if I remember correctly. I also have never advertised. Even when Art & Trash and Vortex repeatedly won Best of the City awards (Good Music received Runner-Up its first year), we never advertised with those “Thanks for voting for us!” type ads.

More interesting to me than values, is processes. I like whittling away at the way I do things until they’re as minimal or unorthodox as they can be while still being recognizable. I don’t know of any other stores where you can only browse online and only pick up in person. Most business-minded people would think it suicide, but the challenge of it is the draw for me. I know I can do brick-and-mortar. I did it successfully for decades. It’s no longer challenging and therefore I don’t want to do it again. Even when I was doing it, I’d throw wrenches into my own machine.

There was a period when I had Good Music where I put blank price tags on the records and when people brought them to the counter to inquire as to how much they were, I’d say, “What do you think is fair? Not, what do you think is a great deal, but what would you like to pay that you’d later think to yourself that both you and I were treated fairly?” Most people were shocked at the prospect of having to consider what something is worth to them “from the register side,” as Tom Waits would say. Some would put the records back, completely unable to decide. Others would contemplate and then suggest a price. It was always fair. No one ever tried to take advantage of me. If anyone was significantly high, I’d give it to them for a more realistic price. “$25?” “How about $20?” “Great!” Many people thanked me for the unique interaction, but it was time-consuming and not practical in the long run, especially as my reputation grew and the store became busier.

Another important thing is that sticking to my values also works to my customers’ advantage. I do not sell beat records. That’s a policy. If you want cheaper records with lots of pops and clicks, there are plenty of stores who will sell them to you. But my customers know that my records are in such great condition that they don’t have to examine them before buying them. That relationship only exists because I stick to my motto: “Quality records bought and sold. Fair prices in and out.” If I’m low on stock, I don’t break my rule and buy beat records in order to get more inventory because I know the customer is holding me to my own standard.

I also think it’s wonderful that I can run an “online” store that sells records without using industry-wide lingo for grading. New customers are occasionally put off by this, but they understand it after picking up their first record and seeing it was accurately described.

Another rule is that I don’t ship. I like interacting with my customers. I don’t like interacting with post offices. But this also helps my customers because it keeps great titles circulating in Toronto rather than being shipped out. There are some records for which I’ve sold the same copy multiple times over 20 years. That can’t happen if it’s been posted to Japan.

So yes, when I come up with a rule, I stick to it, even if it upsets some people. I cannot tell you how many emails I’ve gotten from people angry that I won’t ship something that they cannot find anywhere else. I’ve had many people in other countries befriend Torontonians through social media so that they can get them to come pick up records from me for them. I’ve also had people drive here from other provinces to pick stuff up or customers who choose Toronto as an annual destination to holiday and grab records I’ve been putting aside for them all year. I’ve had people drive here from Montreal to sell records to make sure they get a fair price.

Those are all fascinating situations to me that I wouldn’t have with a regular shop or one with different values. I don’t ship, yet I have people on my mailing list from Australia, the US, Croatia, Ireland, the UK, Senegal, etc.

The only real downside to running such an unorthodox business is that I’m in a constant battle with Google. I do have a website, of course, where my stock is listed and which I run my mailing list from. I also have a listing on Google Maps so that people can find me. But Google often deletes me, saying I’m not a real business. I then have to submit documentation proving I’m a legit business, registered with the Ontario government, and that I am located where Google Maps says I am. I’ve had to do this four times so far this year alone, with the listing remaining offline for weeks at a time while Google considered my case. Sometimes when they bring me back, all of my reviews are gone and there’s no way to get them to put them back. It’s very frustrating, and if they ever decide not to bring me back, I’m screwed as those are the only essential online tools I need to get strangers to sell me records. This is because Google’s model of “real business” isn’t expansive enough to conceive of someone doing something different.

RMP: Are there any other businesses in Toronto that share values similar to Volver’s?

STEWART: You know, there used to be a wonderful restaurant called The Atlantic where the Chef made you what he wanted and you paid what you wanted. It was great. I was a regular there and I’d pay him with records—he had a sign on the door encouraging barter. He’d make food for me (his choice) and I’d give him records (my choice). It was around for years, and then the guy got bored of it or his lease was up and he closed down. People snarked when it closed and the headlines were, “Restaurant that allows diners to choose prices closes down,” but I remember the owner told me that, with few exceptions, everybody paid more than the price he’d have put on the menu. My brain is foggy, but I believe this was the inspiration for me using the blank price tags.

Currently... I’m the wrong person to ask as I’m not much of a consumer. My lack of knowledge about the current state of the city shouldn’t reflect on it. I have not purchased anything at another record shop in decades. I’m sure there are people doing creative things in retail/service that I haven’t heard of. I know most people think that record store owners are big collectors. I’m not. I think it’s one of my best features as a store owner. There is nothing that comes to me that I’m not willing to add to my inventory. I do not have a wantlist because I do not have a record collection.

RMP: Are there many people who are actually placed on the ban list?

STEWART: I checked my phone and there are seven—that doesn’t include the blanket rule of not selling to my competitors (that issue went away when I was no longer brick-and-mortar). I don’t really think about them much. I just don’t like entitled people, and I’m happy to be rid of them. The most useful power you have as a business owner is deciding who your clients are. I remember as a teenager I read a book that said “20% of your customers will cause 80% of your headaches. Get used to it.” and I thought, “Why?! Fuck that. Get rid of that 20% and 100% of your time can go to the remaining, now, 100% who are good customers,” and that’s the way I’ve run all of my businesses since.

Regarding banning—because my business is text-based, it’s very easy to ban people. I don’t have a store where people can enter and make a stink. If I block your number, I literally have no idea if you’re trying to get my attention. With brick-and-mortar, it’s much harder. Vortex had many dangerous people over the years (I ran the store for eight years but it was around for almost forty before Bert retired). The staff were aware of who to tell the cops about if I turned up dead. No joke.

RMP: Do you have a specific vision for the future of Volver?

STEWART: I don’t really think that way. I fall into things. I fell into filmmaking and film distribution. I fell into web design and software development. I fell into records. As I said, I try to pursue a time-rich life. If I could go through life without seeing another record, I’d be a few hours happier each month than I am now. I’ll figure it out some day.

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