Today we’d like to introduce you to Devin and Heather Smock.
Devin and Heather, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
We have both always had a great love of music and have half heartedly discussed the possibility of starting a business many times through-out our relationship. Music played big parts in both of our childhoods and we both have fond memories of our parents’ record collections.
*Heather- “I remember sitting on the floor almost analyzing the covers of some of my parents records. I was fascinated by the artwork on them, and thought the way the music came out of them was some kind of magic.”
*Devin- “I was up to, roughly. 10,000 records in my collection at home. Our friends often joked that our basement looked like a record store.”
We started to really play with the idea the spring of 2022. We had a booth at Peddler’s Antiques in South Jacksonville and decided to put a few crates of records in there and see what happens. It very quickly took off and everything snowballed from there. A friend of ours, Bre Smith, put us in contact with a local entrepreneur, Colleen Flinn, who was converting an old funeral home into a shopping hub with a handful of other businesses. We were reluctant to take on too much so when she offered us a small spot inside The Gillham House we jumped on it. We had just a few weeks to convert that room into a store space, build displays, find a distributor, get our business information straight, and put together an inventory.
*Heather- “It’s probably a good thing it all happened so fast. If we had more time to think about it, we may have talked ourselves out of it.”
It took off fairly quickly from there. Eventually, we outgrew our spot at Gillham House and moved to a bigger space within the building. We knew that we wanted to include live local music within our store. We managed to have a few small shows in what was essentially a hallway, and a few bigger shows outside. Colleen was very supportive of our vision and we were making plans to stretch out a little more inside the Gillham House. But life happened, as it often does, and the painful decision to sell the Gillham House was made.
We had a few months to find a new building, and honestly felt pretty positive about the challenge. Colleen introduced us to Rabbi Rob Thomas. He had recently moved back to his Jacksonville hometown and was looking for ways to help revitalize the town. After a few discussions with him, we decided that 59 E. Central Park Plaza was going to be a perfect fit. The old funeral home sold quickly but thankfully the new owners of the former Gillham House let us stay until our new spot was ready for us.
We started moving into our downtown location right after Christmas of 2023. We do not recommend moving an entire record store, and especially do not recommend doing it in December/January. While in the thick of this, Springfield IL record store, Recycled Records, auctioned off their inventory and we bought a very large chunk of it along with around 18 of the displays they had upstairs. Anyone that has ever been to Recycled Records can surely understand what a task it was to get all of the displays and countless crates full of records down those stairs.
*Devin- “There is no way I would do that again.
*Heather- “You’re lucky those stairs didn’t kill you”
*Devin- (laughing) “Yeah, there were definitely a few moments where I thought those stairs were going to give way. Our friend, Jeremey, actually had to put a few screws in a couple of those stairs to prevent them from flipping.
With lots and lots of help from friends and family, we managed to re-open Pizza Records on January 13th 2024. We quadrupled our space, added a stage and an arcade space, started selling guitars and other accessories, and increased our inventory. During the grand opening we had The Peter Sellers, John Drake, and Emily Perkins playing on our stage, and Gabi Acevedo doing tattoos in our staff room. We also did a Logan’s Homegrown Guitars and The Burnt Woodshack cigar box guitar give-a-way.
*Devin- “We somehow managed to get around 500 records inventoried in addition to everything else in the 2 1/2 weeks between closing at Gillham and re-opening at 59”
*Heather- “Its hard to believe now. We were so lucky to have as much help as we did.”
*Devin- “It was a lot of late nights and early mornings. We moved thousands of records those two weeks….tens of thousands…probably more”
*Heather- “Many of them had to be carried down two flights of stairs too”
In the past year we have increased our inventory and our shows. We have shows almost every weekend and on Wednesdays we host Pizza Records Live (PRL). We do open mic comedy, open mic original music, and an open mic interview segment. We post this on our Youtube and Spotify channels. We have some other podcasts in the works as well along with some other fun announcements.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I don’t think any small business can claim to have had a smooth road. This entire process has been a learning experience for us. We had to learn how to run a record store and a music venue, and how to make it work for our family. Most of our struggles are very similar to any other small retail business. We have had to cautiously navigate the slow months, then amp back up for the busier months. And we have had to learn what our customers want. What we think should be in the store may not be what the public is looking for.
As you know, we’re big fans of Pizza Records. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We are a record store plus small music venue. We do not have pizza. We sell records, CDs, cassettes, 8-tracks, turntables, cassette and cd players, guitars and accessories, music biographical books, concert DVDs and vhs’s, band tees, denim jackets and patches, music related greeting cards, zines, incense, and other music related merchandise. Our one gimmick is that we put your records in a pizza box.
We have a great “holy grail wall” of some hard to find vinyl like Motley Crue’s Too Fast for Love ’81 2nd pressing on Leathur records and a 1969 1st press of The Stooges self titled album.
We love our local bands and have shows almost every weekend, along with PRL on Wednesday nights.
Lately, we have been working on some podcasts that are uploaded to our Youtube and Spotify channels. We are also currently in production for an independent tv show based in a record store, “For The Record”. We often collaborate with our local internet radio station, and friend of the store, Elm City Radio on Live365.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Hire a good accountant and ask as many questions as possible. If you have never ran a business, there are numerous things that the average person may never think of. When in doubt, Google it and then Google it again. Also, know your area and be unique. And know that you are going to work long hours. You will live and breath your business and never really be “off the clock”.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: instagram.com/pizzarecords
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100084924990722
- Twitter: https://x.com/Pizza_Records_
- Youtube: youtube.com/pizzarecords9524
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/6svLb4KfSbRhURSq9p2m8k?si=8y1cQBquTyysMBaMCB_alA&pi=ZhSf87uATyiDy
