Melbourne's Favourite Record Store Is From Holland

This article is supported by CGU Insurance, who are celebrating the migrant small business owners building Australia.

You’d have to be a risk-taker to open a record store. The overheads are high and the profit margins are low, and even if you manage to find enough cash to set up your store, there's a world of online streaming services that'd like to see you fail. It’s incredible, then, that Netherlands expat Mark Reuten managed to open his Melbourne record store Dutch Vinyl and spin it into not only a stable business, but a successful one.

Walk past the store on any given day and you’ll hear funk and soul thumping from the shop’s speakers and customers poring over the custom-made wooden shelves, sorting through classics and unknowns. And it's this special vibe that makes Reuten a guy worth talking to.

He migrated to Australia 18 years ago and since then he’s worked in a variety of jobs, including website design. Through Dutch Vinyl, which opened a couple of years back, Reuten has been able to find a niche opportunity and make a mark on Australia quite seamlessly.

VICE: How was your experience of migration to Australia?
Mark Reuten: It was a pretty easy transition! I came here with a backpack and I kinda just blended in.

How is Dutch Vinyl different to other record stores?
We’re very broad. It’s not as heavily curated as other record stores. We don’t really go looking for specific collections; what we come across is what ends up in our shop. It tends to be broad-strokes stuff that people used to buy 10, 20, 30 years ago, and then we supplement that with new vinyl records that we curate, which is more to our taste. We’re probably one of the few record stores that sells a lot of $5 records, as well. We’ve got lots of people travelling here from outer suburbs and a lot of inner-city kids. It’s really broad and inclusive.

Aside from the name, does the shop have any connections to home?
I go to Holland every year and I buy records there. It’s a good way to keep the connection going. I can combine business and pleasure: see my friends and family, and buy records. It’s a point of difference too: having a lot of Dutch pressings, UK pressings, and German pressings.

A lot more care was taken pressing vinyl records in Holland. Sony used to have the largest pressing plant—well, at the moment that is the largest pressing plant in the world—in Holland. It used to be run by the Japanese, and their standards for pressing vinyl are the highest in the world. People really like Dutch presses, English presses, German presses. A lot of the time you see people swapping Australian pressings for Dutch pressings.

Why did you decide on this space in Abbotsford?
I was looking for an office. I’ve always wanted to have an office on the street, so I could see life go by. So I rented this space as an office. I had had this idea for a while, to do something with vinyl records online, selling them online, and then I went, "Maybe I’ll start a shop." It was a pretty spur of the moment thing. I just started buying records and went to Holland to buy records, then designed the furniture in the store and hired people. It was all a bit clumsily done, but I kinda just rolled into it.

How do you think your store fits into the local community?
I think a lot of the target audience lives around here and hangs out around here. Out of 100 people who walk past the shop maybe two or three will come inside. It’s not like you’re selling clothes or milk, it’s still a pretty niche thing. The good thing is that this is a really developing area. There’s big apartment buildings going up where people in their early 30s will buy their first home. A lot of these people are people who have record players or buy records. There’s going to be thousands of people living here, so it’s gonna be a really good vibe. There’s lots of cafes and bars coming up. Five, six years ago this was a dead strip. It’s really coming alive.

Dutch Vinyl is located at 269 Johnston St, Abbotsford, Melbourne. You can follow them on Instagram here.

This article is supported by CGU Insurance. You can find out more about them here.