At the company’s Philadelphia studio, Vinylux upcycles vinyl records into art and decor for vinylheads and music lovers alike.
When Jeff Davis earned his master’s degree in industrial design from Rhode Island School of Design in 2002, he had no idea his future career would be in the vinyl record business.
By applying the tenets of both an industrial designer and manufacturer, Davis discovered a material that would turn out to be a most pleasant surprise. It was a graduate school project that had Davis enjoying his love of music in a way that nobody could have imagined. Toward the end of his two-year graduate school term, Davis began to create unique items out of old, scratched vinyl records that were no longer playable.
“At the time the conversation was revolving around sustainability, ecological responsibility, recycling, and upcycling,” said Davis. “We needed to solve a problem, and there was this notion of looking for reused or obsolete materials. It could be offcuts from a piece of wood that was used to make a cabinet or flashing that was removed from an injection-molded part.
“One of the items I came across were vinyl records. I’ve always been a music fan and had a vinyl collection of my own. I was learning thermoforming as a design tool, so I tried using a vinyl record, and I was delighted and surprised that the records took really well to the process.”
It was only a few months after graduation that Davis launched Vinylux, a small company that takes records destined for the landfill and turns them into applied or decorative arts for both home and business use. Today his ever-growing collection of old, worn-out records is used to make bowls, coasters, journals, clocks, key chains, magnets, and Christmas ornaments. Vinylux uses nearly 200,000 records each year to manufacture its products.
He never thought upcycling old vinyl records would become a career but the positive reception his products received told a different story. When he made his first bowl out of a 33-rpm album, he showed it to one of his professors who was just kind of stunned.
“He said it really was a great use of the material, a material that people already loved,” said Davis. “He said it was a totally unobvious surprising kind of transformation to turn a record into something new.”
The professor told Davis that he would probably sell every one of these that he makes for the rest of his life if he so desired.
“My professors wanted to buy them from me,” said Davis. “At the end of the year, around the time of graduation, there was a big art show for students and alumni to sell their work on Benefit Street in Providence. I had backstock of two — or 300 of the bowls, and I sold every single one of them at the art show.
“I had a line of people five and six deep coming to look at them. They were looking at the labels and seeing a Willie Nelson record or a Beatles record or some classical record that their grandparents once played. The response was incredible.”
At the art show, an alum came up to Davis and told him she had witnessed the steady stream of customers gathered around his booth and offered to connect him with a sales rep. Davis made the connection, and it was just months before his products were featured at the New York International Gift Show.
The 52-year-old Davis started out in a 200-square-foot space in Queens, N.Y., and with a growing business he moved production to a 3,500-square-foot Philadelphia building, which he purchased in 2012. Today he oversees 10 employees, most of whom have gone through some sort of professional training as artists, designers, print makers, photographers, painters, woodworkers, and clothing makers.
“I am looking for people who have a lifetime experience of making and enjoying things with their hands,” said Davis. “We provide on the job training and generally is if you have some kind of background in making, you can successfully transition into working here.
“We are a little family of makers here. I say the biggest design project I’ve ever embarked on was designing the business itself.”
While working with one’s hands is essential at Vinylux, Davis’s shop is equipped with all the modern manufacturing tools including a laser cutter, engraver, CNC routers, automatic label applicators and heat benders. Davis has also built several of the Vinylux machines himself to help solve manufacturing problems.
Creativity and outside-the-box thinking is the norm at Vinylux and that formula has paid off. Vinylux has increased its profits by 20 to 25 percent year over year.
“Business has been good. We’ve had some really stellar quarters and years,” said Davis. “I would say for this year, our gross sales will be about $1.2 million. It is still quite a small business for being around for 20 years, but to me the goal has always been to stay a maker, a tinker and a designer and really never chase the easy dollar.
“We are not marketing experts; we are not mass production oriented. I call this a fabrication workshop as opposed to a factory.”
The catapult to higher sales numbers came when David started a division of Vinylux called Record Remix, which is a private label line of promotional products.
“The Record Remix products are similar record vinyl products, but the record labels are rebranded with corporate logos,” said Davis. “We brand them with names of TV shows, liquor company logos. It covers companies and special events, bands on tour, the Hard Rock Casino, who use our products with their logos on the record label.
“We started this division about seven years ago after getting random inquiries and orders. A guy said, ‘I’ve got a client, and they got your coasters as a Christmas gift, and they were wondering if you could put their logo on it somewhere.’ I said we could do that, and he said ‘Cool, they want to buy 10,000 sets of them.”
“We were like oh, okay. So, we figured out that business, and now we also work in the promotional products industry. I would say our most popular item now would be our framed records that we sell as awards. They are like gold and platinum records with custom framing.
“We manufacture every milestone anniversary awards for Sirius XM, Pandora, and we have programs with Hyatt Hotels and Journeys Shoes. Any number of companies want to reward either their clientele for strong sales or their in-house employees for numbers of years of service. A gold record is a universally understood icon of achievement.
“These companies are tired of the boring same old stuff, and they love our framed records because it is so cool, it’s nostalgic, it’s handmade, it’s recycled, and it’s made in the U.S.”
Record Remix does plenty of its business with corporations and live music venues. It produces products for Live Nation, the Hard Rock locations and even works with the Motown Museum in Detroit, Stax in Memphis, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Museum of African American Music.
“Those are the obvious tie-ins to the music business,” said Davis. “You would be surprised as to how many businesses are attracted to using a record. One is because it is retro, nostalgic, and people just think they are cool. Another reason is because they are upcycled material and made in the U.S.
“And also because they appeal to men. Often times, certainly in the giftware and houseware industry it is really hard to get something for men.”
As Davis likes to say, “everybody loves vinyl.”
Vinylux products range in price from $12 to $285. Shop Vinylux at www.vinylux.net For promotional items visit www.recordremix.com
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Author: Cathalijne Adams
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