After announcing Schoolkids will relocate to Mission Valley in January, Stephen Judge, the owner, said he’s looking forward toward a new era for the record store. 

Business at Schoolkids is doing well, something Judge said he credits to the increasing popularity of vinyl, adding that it’s his top-selling format. 

“The turn of the 2000s was a tough time for the store for sure,” Judge said. “Until about five years ago was when [we] started to really see the change where vinyl resurgence was going beyond just collectors and some small niche of people buying vinyl.”

Schoolkids has its good months and its bad months, but some of its best came the month of last year’s Record Store Day, according to Judge.

“We did more on Record Store Day than we had in the entire month, just for one day,” Judge said. “Two hundred people in line, six in the morning so that’s exciting. There are a lot of positive things for us to build on. The last couple years we have had a lot of positive growth.”

Though Judge said he is optimistic about Schoolkids’ future, he said that business is still not as good as it was 20 years ago. 

“The volume is still lower than what we would see in the ‘90s when the CD was booming, but that’s inevitable,” Judge said. “We’ve had some bumps this year but we’ve been up from last year and that’s great because I can’t remember the last time we could say that.” 

Although the move is sad, it’s a victory within itself, Judge said. 

“The fact that we are talking about going into a bigger space is quite an accomplishment because five, six, seven years ago we were talking about closing or trying to find a smaller space,” Judge said. “So that’s kind of cool.”

Sorry State Records will open a record store Friday in downtown Raleigh, but Judge said the stores aren’t competitors.  

 “At the end of the day they are not going to be competing with us when it comes to volume, and they aren’t going to carrying the same type of music as us,” Judge said. “They are serving a certain niche which is great. I don’t look at it as competition at all.”

Judge said he is confident his customers will remain loyal patrons. 

“They’re customers of mine and we are friendly with them,” Judge said. “ I’ve known them for a while and I think it’s a good thing to have more record stores. The more people selling music with vinyl, especially the more it kind of gets in people’s faces and they are rallying around and supporting it, the better.”