Hello!

Welcome to the Know Your Product blog.

Rikki Flag has been running Know Your Product as a distro for years and I (andrew culture) have wanted to start a record shop since I was old enough to gaze longingly at rows and rows of vinyl recortds.

The last local independant shop here in Ipswich shut down last year and after trawling the racks at HMV and Virgin records a couple of weeks ago I struggled to find anything more alternative than the Clash or (supposedly) Metalica. The day before I'd popped into All-Ages Records in London and fell in love with the place within seconds, not least because they bought some copies of Beat Motel off me!

The bug had bitten, I had to finally follow my boyhood dream and start my own record shop. I do owe a nod to my wife (Emma), for it was her that gave me the final kick up the arse I needed.

To cut a pretty long story kinda short I ended up joining forces with Rikki Flag. One week later we're waiting on a lease at the shop we've found, and this morning we took a trip to my accountant and put things in motion to set up Know Your Product as a limited company. We don't hang around ya know!

So add the RSS feed from this blog to your whatever thingy ma-bob and we'll let you know how the set up for the shop is going, and once the shop is open we'll do our best to keep you amused with the ups and downs of running a small punk/indie/ska/phychobilly/hardcore/metal/ska shop!