Please Help to Save our Record Shop

Friends We Need Your Help 

The global COVID-19 pandemic and losing our premises has created the perfect sh*t storm for us over the last 12 months. We need your help to help us weather this situation and get into a long term premises. 

Cigarette Records is an independent record shop in South East London started by Owain Jones in 2013. Built on a student loan, blood, sweat (oh here comes a cliche) and tears. This has transformed the business from an online shop of 300 records to a physical store stocking 25,000+ records, employing people from the community, community outreach projects like free music workshops and putting on regular events. Unfortunately all this hard work has been steadily undone over the last 12 months by COVID and losing our premises. 

• Lost our premises. 
• All our Music Events for the year cancelled. 
• £11,000 currently in debt.
• Bounce Back Loan interest begins in May.
• Fallen through the cracks of Government covid grants.

There is Hope !

I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to apply for Match Funding from Mayor of London. 

This means that from a £20 donation here we get £40 total !

Maximum is £5000 in match funding. Let's Reach for the Stars!

£5000 match funding = a total of £10,000 for us. 

This is how much it would take for us to get back into a more positive situation. 

• Get us into a new premises - this is an optimistic estimate for if we don't have to pay 6 months rent up front. It depends so much on the landlord / agent. 
• Setting up the new shop, costs could include installation of Shutters.
• Equipment to build the Free Music Workshops further. 
• Increase staffing and training to continue adapting to online business model.
• Maintaining quality stock levels
• if there's anything left, decrease the £11,000 debt we have.

The Record Shop has good earning potential when our doors can open and people are spending as normal. But that time could be a long way off, with the true effect of COVID on the economy still to be seen. We need to carry on investing in the online side of business and increased staffing to match that demand. Your money from donations and Voucher purchases will help us get through the next difficult months and get into a new premises.

We will honour all Voucher purchases through this crowdfunder.

A Big Shout out to Catford Mews for helping us out with Temporary premises since October :)

Unfortunately we're only at Catford Mews temporarily until they begin work on the venue which is marked to be in the space we're in. So we need to ideally find a new premises in the next 2 months.  You can see it's an incredible pair of rooms with so much potential. We're excited to see what the venue looks like when finished. 

 Thanks to Everyone for your support. 
Every £ makes a Huge Difference. 

Big Love ❤️