Help Save Al Bum's Record Shoppe

Hi everyone, Mark from Al Bum's here. What a rough spring and summer we have endured so far and I'm not seeing light at the end of that tunnel yet. Let's just say I've made a few bad decisions in the past six months here at Al Bum's and we are on the verge of having to shut our doors if not for good at least for awhile. I guess I should start at the beginning with the start of 2015. We had the grand idea of a second location in an area that was/is ripe for a record store, I still hope to someday fill that void. With a few partners and myself, we found an awesome location on that towns main drag. We were geared up to pull the trigger when the owner of the property decided they didn't want a record store there, it was a prime location with lots of foot traffic and large evening dining and bar crowds. Although disappointed, we pushed on looking in the same area and sooner or later something will open up on that strip and be successful. Anyway, I had to make a decision to either gear up with stock for a second location or get caught unprepared if something did open up. So I rolled the dice and bought massive collections and doubled my Record Store Day order, praying that we would find a location and get it open before April 18. Well, big mistake and it didn't transpire and I was left with twice as many RSD releases as I could possibly move in our single location not to mention all the collections full of stock I already had in our primary location. I have been trying to move the remainder ever since and am still sitting on thousands of dollars in RSD stock, even pricing it below what I payed.
   Well, moving forward, that expenditure crippled the shop in a lot of ways and we found ourselves chasing our tail week after week, trying to get the distributor payed off as well as the extreme overstock in this one location from the collections I picked up earmarked for the second store, that I could only move so much of on a week to week. Long story short, it put us behind the eight ball where we have remained until our latest piece of bad news. The summer is the worst for retail (in my area anyway) with kids out of school, vacations and weekends customers spend camping and boating, thats a given and something we anticipate each year, what we didn't anticipate was the rent increase we were hit with at the end of our lease. Rent was almost doubled on us and in our current location, it doesn't make sense to pay that much. After all this time here, we still have at least one person come in every day and say they didn't know we were here. With what we are paying now, we could move down the street a few blocks to Old Town Acworth near Henry's (which we hope to do as soon as a space opens up, I am watching daily). This would triple our foot traffic at the very least and put us in the middle of all of the events that happen in downtown Acworth: Car Shows, Festivals, Parades, you name it, if it happens in Acworth, it happens there.
 Sorry for such a long story but I wanted to present the chain of events that have led to this. I have always supported many causes and in some cases wear my heart on my sleeve (Wounded Warriors, Christmas Angels ect) as well as local music and vinyl collectors, hell there are some days that I give away more vinyl with discounts and such as I sell, and hope we can continue to do those things for a long time. It's never easy admitting you've made some bad decisions and need some help righting the boat but that's what this GoFundMe is about. We are mere weeks from having to shut the doors as things are right now and hope to avoid doing that.
   This location is not worth what they are charging now but I was lucky enough to get into a month to month lease until we can move. If we can reach our goal, I plan to pay off overpriced distributors (we are starting to get in with the labels themselves, one biggie so far and pass the savings along of not having a middleman), find a location in Old Town Acworth and get the shop moved two blocks north as well as building a nicer,more customer friendly location. Every donation will be greatly appreciated and go solely for the things I've outlined here. So if you are able, give a little bit to help save Al Bum's, please do, I don't expect to have the millionaire donor like Criminal Records did just some of the great customers and friends I've made these years showing a little love to a friendly little store that loves them back. If you don't want to donate on the GoFundMe site, we also have a donation can set up in the shop that the daily total will be added to our goal.  If you want please share this to your page and help me get the word out to as many people as possible.
 Thanks for listening, Mark Bosley