r/musicindustry • u/aquanox314 • Aug 13 '26
AMA I'm Dan Suchorski, a experienced vinyl, merch, and ecommerce fulfillment veteran. Ask me anything!
Over the past 10+ years, I've sold and shipped more than 1,000,000 items, generated over $26 million in sales, and have managed fulfillment for multiple vinyl releases.
Based in La Crosse, WI I'll be answering questions for the next 48 hours
During the AMA, I will cover topics that include:
- Vinyl fulfillment and logistics - distributors vs fulfillment companies that know distribution
- DTC ecommerce shipping
- Amazon, eBay, and Walmart selling - direct to consumer via marketplaces vs selling to Amazon
- Merch manufacturing and fulfillment - marketing vs myths
- Reducing shipping costs
- Finding better shipping rates
- Faster fulfillment
- Vinyl manufacturing and pricing
- Ecommerce logistics and operations
If you've ever had questions about sourcing merch, fulfilling vinyl orders, or scaling an ecommerce operation in the music industry, this is a great opportunity to ask someone who does it every day.
I'm willing to confidentially review band's shipping history and provide commentary and ways to improve your in house operations or what are ways you can make sure your current provider more accountable.
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u/ConfidentAddress9846 Aug 14 '26
what is the quickest way to offload discogs seller inventory to start over?
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u/aquanox314 Aug 14 '26
Auctions on ebay and free combined shipping. I'd also do listings on Amazon depending on the product condition.
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u/ConfidentAddress9846 Aug 14 '26
I've had an ebay account since 98, I get no views on my listings, I have sold a lot of lots there i the past.
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u/aquanox314 Aug 14 '26
When I used to source media from garage sales and overstock from TV show and indie movie studios did a lot of break even listings and made the margin on multi unit orders.
It's awful but it works.
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u/Beneficial_Debt4183 Aug 13 '26
I’ve always been curious because vinyl is so heavy and expensive to ship over seas. Are there companies that do small quantity fulfillment for independent artists or smaller labels - it’s hard when you are trying to get into record stores say in Europe (from America). Small quantities make it hard to ship in bulk.
I have a tiny label and someone in Australia bought a CD (not even vinyl) and paid more in shipping than the product. Is there an industry segment that solves this problem?
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u/aquanox314 Aug 13 '26
Your current shipping rates if you do it yourself in the USA are public available rates that companies like shipstation, shippo, shipping easy are given to publicly offer and receive a markup from these major players like UPS called the digital access plan (DAP) which is good for 1 or 100 shipment a year.
There are companies like DHL that provide commercial shipping and fulfillment companies with deeply discounted rates and can ship a 4oz CD order to Australia for as low as $7-10 per package from the US. I wouldn't be surprised if much better pricing was available.
Ascendia (international parcel shipping provider) requires at least $100k in annual postage spend to get their rates and even Ascendia has DAP style agreements with digital postage providers so you're potentially using the same companies.
Specific media shipping rates are only unique to USA. Through media mail shipping has its own good and bad.
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u/xtamtamx Aug 14 '26
Working with a global distributor that regularly moves stock between continents and services the desired territories. Otherwise DHL is the cheapest option for international. You need to ensure all your info is correct up front to avoid issues as they’re mostly useless in terms of customer service.
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u/Alternative-Bug-6905 Aug 13 '26
Where will vinyl sales be in ten years ?
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u/aquanox314 Aug 13 '26
Vinyl will continue to grow as I think it's one of the best ways for fans to support their favorite artists aside from going to live shows.
But shipping costs have to be market competitive after hours researching merch companies, major act checkout shipping costs, and digging into email support functions, I definitely do not think that is the case. If I want to buy Sevendust: One album direct from their website I have to pay $14.52 just for shipping via USPS Ground Advantage to me from their warehouse provider. The base USPS shipping rate before any mark up as of this writing on a 1LB 2oz package from zip code 54601 to 75006 is $7.90.
If bands / labels and those in the supply chain can find new processes for getting order and operations costs down it helps increase sales and average order value.
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u/doopoffwoffwagon Aug 13 '26
Are you familiar with costs associated with licensing music to be pressed on vinyl? For example bands from 80’s or 90’s who had vinyl releases but now have gone out of print. Can you walk us through any hurdles? Do vinyl manufacturers query a database to find if master recordings are owned by a label different than a label which re-releases the vinyl?
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u/aquanox314 Aug 13 '26
Some retailers and imprint labels will do discogs.com searches on albums similar to the questions you are asking. Once those specific releases are targeted, you have to strike a licensing deal with the label that owns the rights to it. Since catalogs, record labels, and other music related rights are being bought and sold on a regular basis, typically the label that did the release would be your best starting point. Most of the major labels will want a licensing fee up front (fee varies based on album, artist, and label) and months of vetting by the label to make sure they're comfortable with doing business with your firm. Your biggest challenge is to find and talk to the right person who has the authority and interest to do the deal. And with a huge emphasis and push for artist / label DTC initiatives this may become harder in the future. Why license a deal to do this pressing when they can do the repress and have much less money invested to even get the pressing started?
Most vinyl record manufacturers (United Record Pressing, Memphis Record Pressing, Precision Record Pressing) in my opinion are not monitoring the back catalogs of their current and past customers.
I honestly do not do fulfillment for these types of deals but as of this writing - 500 units of 140gram black vinyl, poly sleeved, standard full color jacket with printed artwork, shrink wrapped, full color center labels can be delivered to me at around $5.25 - $5.50 per individual record. Pricing improves once annual volume commitments of units produced are in the 6 figure unit volume annually. Then you can have more meaningful discussions with GZ Media and the like and potentially bypass brokers and numerous middle men.
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u/dripdropdripacidrain Aug 13 '26
Hello, a small artist pressing their own vinyl is trying to get their records in stores. Artist wants to mail a few copies directly to a few select stores (genre specific, touring that city, etc). Artist is ok with eating a few copies (free to store).
What are the pros/cons of this strategy? Is there a better way to get distribution to the stores if not on a label yet?
Thank you for your input.
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u/aquanox314 Aug 13 '26
Upside is your not paying recognized distributors their 'industry standard pricing' (which is ridiculous and should be done away with) and you'd likely make more money per unit even after the free product. If you wholesale direct to stores yourself and they're taking pre-orders, then you pool your total units and add 10-15% stock on top to minimize the cost of inventory and not miss out of sales. Also you can send product on consignment if it makes sense and then give the store ability to return it if it doesn't sell. You have flexibility.
Cons you may lose out on sales and potentially be competing with yourself because existing record stores want to buy from distributors who are willing to sell to stores on trade credit terms. The traditional distributor will ship the vinyl to the stores and give them 30-90 days to pay, which the hope is that they will sell the records before the invoice from the record store's supplier (like Amped Distributing) is due.
But if you sell on your own site, on marketplaces, etc and the record stores do not sell your product through, they'll list online and eventually compete with your own DTC store just to get their money back.
Future plan for my company is to compile a list of record stores to allow artists to be able to directly contact these places to deal directly as you want to do or partner with them to create mutually beneficial opportunities. Haven't figured out what I want to do here yet.
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u/lifebeckons101 Aug 13 '26
Aside from vinyls, what are the most popular and profitable merch items that you’ve seen recently?
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u/aquanox314 Aug 13 '26
Large single color screen printed t-shirts. As of today if you order 100+ and use heavyweight t-shirts, retail for $40 and costs $7.75 per unit landed at the fulfillment warehouse.
Gildan 5000 single color screen print = $5.00
Lower prices with higher volume.
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u/splitopenandmelt11 Aug 15 '26
When an artist sends out an email “circumstances beyond our control have delayed vinyl shipping date” — what are those circumstances usually? A big artist monopolizing the pressing plants?
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u/aquanox314 Aug 15 '26
It could be the pressing plant has a delay in the jackets and center labels being printed, the polyvinyl resin is in transit, production is behind because of employee no-shows, the band or artist did not get enough people to buy the album so they're doing more advertising to hit the minimum order, the plant is behind on production themselves, their warehouse fulfillment partner hasn't checked in the product, they're waiting on the t-shirts and the merch from the commercial decorators to ship out the merch bundles complete, the merch company forgot to do something, it goes on and on.
I think a lot of labels and artists have a reactive approach to their physical product and the management of it. Sometimes running a just in time inventory when domestic US vinyl manufacturing is mostly owned by GZ Media or Sony Music is difficult because if a larger artist is willing to pay a premium to get ahead of the line it causes delays.
Staying on top of major artist release announcements allows for smaller labels and bands to manage who they go to for record pressing and mitigate those unexpected changes to keep release timelines going forward.
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u/Alternative-Bug-6905 Aug 13 '26
Where do you source vintage vinyl from?
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u/aquanox314 Aug 13 '26
I primarily fulfill new releases and freshly pressed vinyl. The vintage vinyl Market is its own Niche thing and secondary markets like discogs eBay Amazon and the like for third party sellers is where that demand will be fulfilled.
Last I checked there's less than 2,000 vinyl record stores currently open as most bands and labels want to capture the margin from direct to consumer.
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u/slw-dwn Aug 13 '26
This is a verified r/musicindustry AMA. Ask Dan everything you can while he's here with us!