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Monday, Dec. 8, 2014

RICK'S RECORDS

Store doesn’t miss a beat with relocation

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Talk about being overqualified for a job, Rick Colon, owner/manager of Rick’s Records on Shreveport-Barksdale Highway, surely fits the bill.

The Shreveport native first earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology then earned a degree in marriage and family therapy. A true music-lover who served as lead singer in a band during one of his stints in academia, Colon started his business career with the late, lamented Stan’s Records at the original iconic downtown location on Texas Avenue. Leaving Stan’s in 1977, he worked for a while at Hastings Records in Mall St. Vincent but from 1982-83 worked at the well-remembered SOOTO Records on Kings Highway and then ran a second location of SOOTO on Mansfield Road. One of his numerous detours led him to finish school.

“At Hastings, I bought a large shipment of cutouts, which my boss thought was a big mistake. However, we sold that large inventory in a very short time and the company asked me to manage one of their outlets,” Colon said. Colon declined that offer to keep exploring other independent avenues to success.

His ever-restless entrepreneurial spirit and his keen interest in comics and war games led him to open Little Shop of Legends, Shreveport’s first shop to market the increasingly popular war games. He ran that business successfully for two years before taking another detour into the real estate business.

“My family had acquired some property in Mesquite, Texas, just east of Dallas, and my dad asked me to try and sell it. I turned that project into $800,000 and decided real estate might be something good to pursue for a while,” Colon said.

Despite his other past and current business activities, Colon is still involved in the real estate industry as an agent for Century 21 Elite. Always a multitasker, Colon also somehow found time to be an author, writing a series of four books titled “The Four Keys,” which he has been selling through Amazon Kindle. 

Given his interest in retail CD and record sales, he also wrote “Big Monkey’s CD Price Guide” as a resource guide for the products with which he deals.

“I wanted to provide a source for used CD pricing that would give buyers and sellers a realistic and fair price for their products. I don’t attack the business with the idea to squeeze the most out of someone, but I attack it from the direction of what I would want to see,” Colon said.

With his extensive background in retail  music marketing through his time with Stan’s, Hastings and SOOTO, he decided to return to retail when the Disc Daddy music store in Shreve City became available.

“For a while, we stayed in the original Disc Daddy location at Shreve City, but I realized we could benefit greatly by moving across to the other side of Shreveport-Barksdale Highway,” Colon said.

Colon and business partner Don Meyers realized they could save several thousand dollars by such a move and have now relocated to 1240 Shreveport-Barksdale Highway, Suite 110. The 1,200-square-foot facility is an impressively well- organized space with an unequaled collection of CDs, DVDs, posters, T-shirts and a growing selection of vinyl both new and previously owned.

“Vinyl is really coming back strong in today’s market, and we sell at least 1,500 LPs a month,” Colon said. Colon maintains a high standard of the products he will purchase and sell. “We always try to offer a wide variety of products so that we have something for most anyone’s taste from weird underground to mainstream, from jazz to blues to country,” Meyers said.

Colon said he does not worry about current or future competition. “We don’t even think about it. If we give good service on great product at fair prices and do the right thing, I believe people will keep coming back,” Colon said. 

Check out the selection at Rick’s Records, 1240 Shreveport-Barksdale Highway, Suite 110, go to Rick’s Records on Facebook or call  them at 868-4268.

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