Name: Richard Gill and Sacha Church

Trading Ward: BD1

Business Name: The Disc

Business Address:

Sunbridge Rd, Bradford, BD1 2NE

Website: www.thedisc.net

Email: Contact The Disc

Telephone: 01274 206663

Mobile: 07747 806118

Background of Business

The Disc was started up 10 years ago by Richard Gill and six years ago Sacha Church joined the business. The shop is on Sunbridge Road and specialises exclusively in dance music, mainly on vinyl, but CD as well. Their customers aren’t just locals, but come from all over the region including Manchester, Leeds and Wakefield. They include music loving members of the public and professional DJs. Richard and Sacha also own a record label for their own production purposes with scope to sign other artists – strictly dance music. They are also both working DJs in their own right.

Support Journey

The Disc has traded successfully for its first 10 years in a niche market, but with changes in the industry Richard and Sacha felt they needed to adapt and explore other possibilities. They weren’t short of ideas to move the business on and eighteen months ago they turned to Kickstart to see what help was available to them. They now have their own Kickstart Business Adviser who is available to give them one to one advice and help keep them informed about the help that is available. This has led to support from Job Centre Plus who are contributing toward the wage of a trainee for 6 months. The hope is that after that time they will be able to set him on as a full time employee. There are other options too which Richard and Sacha are now considering. This includes help towards marketing advice, improvements to their website for on-line trading and promotion of the website.

Where are they now

Dance music is enormously popular and likely to remain so, but the business environment is changing. Richard and Sacha have been smart enough to recognise this but needed some help to adapt their business to match the changing needs of the market. Vinyl will always have its devotees, but both it and CDs are becoming less popular as more people choose to access their music on-line. There is also a healthy niche supplying hardware to professional DJs and they need to develop and market this aspect of their business. Having identified these opportunities Richard and Sacha are now taking action, with advice and support through Bradford Kickstart, to move their business on and remain as successful as they have been for the last 10 years.
 
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