PEI Company Finds Global Niche for Pressing Vinyl
As vinyl continues its resurgence in popularity, artists and labels worldwide are looking to vinyl presses to pump out their albums on the nostalgic medium.
But some smaller artists are getting lost in the shuffle of big labels pressing huge runs of vinyl. That’s where PEI entrepreneurs Ghislaine Cormier and Gideon Banahene come in with their Charlottetown-based vinyl pressing plant Kaneshii Vinyl Press.
While the project has been in the works for a couple years, the press has only been in full production for a few months. They’ve been doing vinyl runs for clients locally but also in Quebec and some areas of the United States and New Zealand. Cormier says the feedback they’ve gotten has already meant more new and repeat clients.
“It’s just really great to see that our hypotheses were right. I feel like people have a tendency of looking at this stuff regionally but I really have a feeling that when it comes to the direction of vinyl, it’s more genres of music that specifically press vinyl,” she says.
“I feel like it’s types of music that are leaning towards vinyl… when you look at funk bands or heavy metal bands, you see a lot of interest.”
Rob Rice is the company’s logistics coordinator. He says much of their business so far has been generated organically and they haven’t had to put much effort into reaching out to potential clients yet.
We’ve had a lot of really great organic traffic, people reaching out to us,” he says. “It hasn’t been just Maritime provinces and Canada-wide, which is what we expected. We’ve had people from all over the world reaching out and saying ‘we’d definitely be interested in pressing vinyl with you…’ ”
Cormier says this organic interest has come from word of mouth and partnerships with other businesses and studios.
“The momentum got going and word of mouth spread really fast and the partnerships we’ve made,” she says. “We are proactive but I’d say probably 75 per cent of our clientele is just organically coming to us.”
Rice says Kaneshii is able to cater to independent artists and smaller labels because of their boutique style of press. They offer minimum runs of 100 units as opposed to the standard 500 offered by many larger presses.
“We’re more catered to smaller runs so there’s a lot of interest in just that for smaller artists because just some of the bands I’ve talked to around the world, they’re looking at nine months turnaround for records,” he says.
Rice says this kind of waiting time can be very costly for touring artists looking to the merchandise they sell on tour for their livelihood.
It’s really crucial to have those products with you. It’s definitely good for those artists to be able to get their vinyl in a reasonable turnaround time and they’ll go on tour with it instead of delaying their vinyl release for months, costing them sales,” he says.
The founders plan to keep supporting as many local artists as possible while also growing to serve small clients worldwide with their hands-on approach. While they haven’t had an official launch yet, there are plans for one for the fall.
“There are a lot of places we can go as a company with this and there are a lot of ideas we have too that we’d like to explore and act on at some point in time,” Rice says. “It’s just that we want to master one big process at a time and get that locked in 100 per cent and then possibly look at these other opportunities we could potentially be working with.”
“We take a little bit more time and cater to the client a little more so that we can at the end of the day pump out a product that represents their album.”