In music retail, making an attempt to be all issues to all folks normally consigns companies to historical past’s dustbin. The house owners of Lake Metropolis’s Hex Enduction Information & Books figured that out some time in the past. And now they’re celebrating 5 years of peddling precisely what they need to avid music and literature followers who hunt down area of interest artwork. House owners Dean Whitmore, Gabi Web page-Fort, and Tom Ojendyk have found {that a} retailer—if their aesthetics are righteous sufficient—can thrive just by promoting items through which they 100% consider. What an idea.
However past being one in every of Seattle’s most attention-grabbing music and literature retailers, Hex Enduction is a full-fledged multimedia empire, albeit on an underground scale. It has expanded its attain to incorporate publishing books and a quarterly zine, releasing data, internet hosting dwell music and readings/writer interviews (I had the pleasure of interviewing Mudhoney’s Steve Turner and New Zealand indie-rock professional Matthew Goody at one of many latter), and serving as a gallery for native artists.
Influenced by the long-gone Fallout Information, Hex Enduction has change into a paragon of community-building. You may witness the gratitude the store’s impressed during the last half decade at its anniversary celebration held at neighboring Turntables & Trails on November 9, as a dozens of aesthetes took in units by the Fall-Outs, Kurt Bloch’s “No” 3, and Martin Bland of La Paire D’or.
The Stranger‘s interview with Hex Enduction’s principals on their residence turf occurred on November 6. Shellshocked by the election, I requested them if they will transfer the store to Canada. True to type, Web page-Fort—who oversees the guide part and can also be an editor at HarperCollins—stated, “I pulled this out,” holding up a duplicate of Jackie Wang’s poetry assortment, The Sunflower Forged a Spell to Save Us From the Void. Hex Enduction ain’t going anyplace, fortunately.
Whitmore—who put in 20 years at Sub Pop within the retail gross sales division—notes that Hex Enduction’s “development has at all times been going upwards, however it’s at a extremely sluggish tempo. I am not spending all the cash, so we act a bit like an actual enterprise.” Ojendyk provides that the shop “feels extra established and identified.”
Whereas 10-15% of Hex’s gross sales happen on Discogs.com, its bosses want in-store exchanges. “One, you earn more money, as a result of you do not have all of the charges related to Discogs transactions,” Ojendyk says. “There’s additionally the traditional interplay with the shopper, which is cooler. It is also extra enjoyable to see somebody get a report that they are psyched about than getting a brand new report in and mailing it off to wherever.” Whitmore concurs that participating patrons in conversations in regards to the stuff they’re shopping for is a fringe profit. Thus, Hex forges robust bonds and its prospects sit up for returning to the location of such rewarding encounters. Soulless capitalism has no place right here.
After signing the lease in July 2019, Hex’s house owners solely had a couple of months to inventory it—largely with vinyl, though cassettes and CDs occupy some area. Through the years, they’ve added bins and discovered methods to optimize its minuscule sq. footage. “Initially, the books have been a 3rd of what they’re now,” says Ojendyk, who additionally works in enterprise operations at Razorfish. “We have practically doubled the inventory of data since we opened. We additionally expanded quite a lot of the genres. Once we opened, we did not actually have any hip-hop. Reggae, we solely had a handful of titles, however actually not a loyal part.”
“We simply carry what we’re fascinated by,” Whitmore says. “I am on a complete jazz bender, so the jazz part has been rising and rising. However there’s some studying concerned. Some issues that you just suppose are the end-all be-all data… perhaps everybody who needs these data already has them. You find out about what does not make sense to hold. Additionally, it was once when one thing bought, I instantly needed it again in. Now, I actually do not care. So long as you’ve got received new, cool stuff coming in, that is all that issues.”
Web page-Fort says, “On the books entrance, I assumed that the poetry and the fiction in translation, which is what I most like, could be a tough promote. Truly, they’re probably the most [popular] part. Folks particularly care about Japanese novels [in translation]. We get a reasonably good scene of youthful readers coming in, they usually’re excited by the poetry and worldwide stuff.”
Hex sells new books, too. “I assumed it was going to be extra of an affordable paperbacks used enterprise, however I am impressed that everyone’s simply as impressed with the brand new stuff as I’m,” Web page-Fort says. “New hardcover fiction has been robust, as a result of it is costly. However as quickly as issues are in paperback, if I believe they’re thrilling, different folks appear to, as properly. We’ve got quite a lot of indie and small-press stuff that’s onerous to seek out.
A few of Hex’s bestsellers embody Val Wilmer’s As Severe as Your Life and Marcus O’Dair’s Robert Wyatt biography, Totally different Each Time. “Individuals are coming in for the great things!” Web page-Fort enthuses. “The Brandi Carlile autobiography left finally, however these guys have educated me totally on the ‘do not buy it except you need to take a look at it in a yr’ rule. Among the greatest used buys that are available are from a handful of older readers within the neighborhood whom I like. I’ve made some very cool new buddies due to the books that they promote.” Web page-Fort encourages you to promote your books at Hex, however do know that she’s selective and never within the store that always, so it could take a couple of days to finalize offers.
Hex is not the place you rating platters by Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter, and different mainstream acts. Somewhat, it is the place you go when you want to plug in essential gaps in your classic-rock and canonical-jazz collections. It is the place you may decide up necessities within the soul, funk, psych, krautrock, soundtrack, experimental, reggae, hip-hop, and “world” genres. (Educated part-time clerk Matt Olsen handles orders for indie-rock staples launched by strongholds corresponding to Matador, Merge, and Drag Metropolis.)
Take it from somebody who’s haunted report shops for 5 a long time: Hex is acutely tuned in to the zenith of all these musical types. You’ll be able to glimpse their experience every day by means of the store’s Instagram feed. I might simply spend a whole bunch of {dollars} per week there, have been my price range limitless.
Whitmore breaks down the Hex ethos: “Can we prefer it? Are we ? Can we respect it? You then simply let the chips fall the place they might. We have taken a couple of probabilities on issues which might be a slight stretch and other people don’t love to purchase them right here. Like, once we received a used Harry Kinds report, that sat in right here perpetually. That fuckin’ Ryan Adams report was staring me within the face… Not solely will we not prefer it and never need to have it in right here, however folks do not need to purchase it right here. So it really works out properly.”
Hex’s used bins steadily obtain out-of-print exclusives from outstanding underground musicians, which makes digging right here an extra-special deal with. “The caliber of [people] promoting their previous shit right here is a part of the story,” Web page-Fort says.
Hex’s prospects intuitively sense that the house owners function to not maximize income a lot as to current them with the best musical and literary artifacts. Maybe Whitmore and Web page-Fort being musicians themselves within the prog-punk group Tissue lends them deeper insights into what is going to attraction to their clientele.
Their retail success has unfold to extracurricular actions: Hex Enduction Information’ 2022 expanded reissue of Seattle garage-punks the Fall-Outs’ 1986 debut album, retitled Advantageous Younger Males, is all the way down to its final 5 copies out of 400. “As quickly as we introduced that report, all people purchased it,” Web page-Fort says. The label’s second launch, La Paire D’or’s Travelogue, ventures into synth-heavy, propulsive area rock, about which I raved about it on Slog earlier this yr.
The primary two books Hex has revealed—musician Philip Frobos’s novel Obscure Sufficient to Fulfill and Jensen Tjhung’s poetry assortment Previous Usual Superstition—have bought properly, thanks partly to assist from Elliott Bay Guide Co. and different independents. The third, Felicia Howe’s just lately launched philosophical-botanical research, Sibyl of the Flora, guarantees to disclose “the intricate connections between flowers, therapeutic, and spirituality.” Hex’s bosses are all pleasantly stunned at these books’ gross sales figures.
The sixteenth version of the Hex Enduction Quarterly zine simply dropped, and it is one other little bundle of fascinating surprises: essays, pictures, music and literary criticism, interviews, poetry, comics, recommendation, esoterica, and Whitmore’s amusing peeks behind the music-retail biz. “Individuals who learn the zine as a result of they seize it right here need to be in it,” Web page-Fort says. “It is constantly checking in with what folks need to be making anyway and sharing round. It is a present-tense magic that it captures. You are feeling impressed that there are all these folks doing attention-grabbing artwork.
“This quarter now we have Tom on the Angel Face reissue and the revivification of Fortunate Information. He is unimaginable on the opaque corners of the universe. It is also enjoyable to shine a lightweight on the brand new Crimson Ribbon report and the brand new J.R.C.G. report and different folks we expect are making rad stuff.”
At the moment hanging on Hex’s wall is Bridget Beorse’s artwork. It is yet one more approach Hex’s employees champion native artists. “It is good to see how [their] people come round to assist them,” Web page-Fort says. “We have met quite a lot of attention-grabbing folks by means of the occasions.”
Lest you suppose Hex’s buyer base is strictly the area of older people who cannot stop their analog-loving habits, it is extra various than you’d suppose. “Clearly there are quite a lot of older males,” Ojendyk observes. “However quite a lot of youthful folks are available, folks of various backgrounds. This is likely one of the extra various neighborhoods in Seattle.”
“Final week an Ethiopian couple got here in and slapped their injera up on the CDs and did their buying, which appeared fairly cool to me,” Whitmore says. “They purchased a bunch of Mulatu Astatke data.”
Granted, America and the world now appear to be in a extra peril than ever, however Hex Enduction’s tiny nook of the cultureverse retains on chugging. “We’re by no means in a whole ‘oh my god, what are we going to do?’ state,” Whitmore says. “The racks are at all times filled with data, we’re at all times paying our payments. However we’re undoubtedly modest about how we go about doing it. We like being [in Lake City] as a result of our lease is so low-cost. It permits us to have the sort of retailer that we need to have. If we have been to maneuver to Capitol Hill or one thing, there would simply be that strain. We might have to vary what we stock.”
Does Hex’s braintrust really feel just like the inventory is attending to be an excessive amount of for the quantity of area they’ve, although? Web page-Fort replies, “That limiting issue is magic.”
