Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Stutz.
Hi Michael, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We started collecting and selling 20th century antiques—old forgotten items from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. It was like time travel. Then we expanded further and back in time, and as our stock grew, including art, design, furniture, and books, we eventually added music to the mix. At some point, we knew that the music alone was a business in itself. We opened a record room inside The Salvage Yard Resale Shoppe in Fairview Park, and then during COVID we teamed up with our great friend Lidia Trempe at the historic Rudy’s Strudel in Parma to offer a mostly music but full media experience with one of a kind themed rooms, all holding movies, music, and literature. We’ve expanded with Substack and also have multiple satellite locations opening up throughout northern Ohio.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Everything we’ve done has been a natural progression from our passions and interests. It’s all completely fun and interesting, and that said the road hasn’t been smooth at all! It’s been pretty rocky, and the music business in general and record stores in particular are having a hard go of it. A record store is not an easy business model. And it’s getting harder all the time. But our own core business is antifragile and it seems that we’ve been able to use every challenge we’ve met so far as a way to improve and tighten our whole operation.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
People go to a lot of record stores, book stores, and movie stores to get a work that they’re interested in. The Current Year is set apart from those kind of stores, because people come to us to get work that <i>we’re</i> interested in! Yes, we have a very large inventory and an even bigger warehouse — what’s on the floor at any one time is only a small sample of our ever-growing holdings — so we do have a very wide selection, and the average person coming in looking for something is liable to find it. Or we can order it. But we have developed a reputation as a place to go to find something great that you never knew existed. That’s where we excel.
Our main purpose, in fact, is to function a hub for important culture and the arts. If you want to find new and great music that matters, and support important artists — many of them fairly underground and unknown — we are the place to be. We have moved the needle on a number of underground and obscure works, and we’re very proud of that. From albums to authors, we are introducing great, important work into the world and helping them be discovered. I really don’t even care about selling records; that’s not the goal. The goal is to tilt and shift and change the culture, and make things better in the world. Selling records and books in the process of doing that, well that’s a happy bonus.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Larry Landis, proprietor of Legend Records down near Columbus, has been instrumental as a mentor the whole step of the way. We wouldn’t exist without his help, and we continually learn from him across the board. Lidia Trempe at Rudy’s is family to us, and together our businesses have worked as one to pull off some massively exciting things, and we expect even more to come. Karen Smith at The Salvage Yard has always helped us and we learned a lot from being part of her very large operation there. There are many others, but no matter how cheesy it might be to say, it’s our loyal clients, the ones who shop at our store and support us in our daily operations, who deserve a whole lot of credit. We would be nothing without them.
Pricing:
- We have used and new media across all pricing spectrums, from dollar items to high end ultra rarities
Contact Info:
- Website: thecurrentyear.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/thecurrentyearretro
- Facebook: facebook.com/thecurrentyearretro
- Youtube: youtube.com/thecurrentyear
- Other: stutz.substack.com
