WE'RE OPENING!!!

Wa-hoo, we're going to have our launch night on Thursday 29th June, whoop whoop!

We're going to be open all day, and in the evening we're going to stay open late so you lovely people can come in and have a good snout round!

We've still got a lot to do, but have a look at these panoramic photos I took yesterday to get an idea of how things are taking shape. When you click on one of these images your browser will probably shrink the image you see, so if you use FireFox then zoom in, and if you use Internet Explorer then hover your mouse over the image till the 'expand' button appears on the bottom right of the image.

The view from the till -
The back room complete with changing cubicle! We've got a LOT more clothes to put out but here's a rough idea. The big green thing is the zine/ patch wall. We've got so many zines we just don't know where to put them all.

And finally here's a photo I took from the centre of the shop turning all the way round

busy busy busy

We've got LOADS done over the last few days. We've figured out the till, hassled BT and Powergen over bills and 'negotiated' a lot with lawyers. But we've also done a lot of smart stuff like put stock out, like the NoFx singles club 7"s Rikki is holding in one of these photos whilst balancing precariously on a cd rack!

We've also spent a lot of time sorry out the clothing we've got for the back room, and oh boy do we have a lot of clothing! We're even going to be doing Know Your Product originals! I've seen them, and they are blinkin' great!


















As you can also see we've back to our bin-diving ways, the Corn Exchange in Ipswich was chucking out some huge notice boards that we decided would look great in our shop!

long arm of the laws

Nobody ever gets that joke, so don't feel bad! The back room of the shop was looks far too empty so before we started putting the clothes in we decided to hang up some camo netting. As with all things 'Know Your Product' no detail has been left unattended to, this netting was used by a certain well known punk band as part of thier backdrop!

Blue Monday

It's our aim not to have any whitespace left anywhere in the shop, and that includes the celing, so Rikki has made the only start to covering the celing that you would expect him to!

Grills, but no bacon

Just to save our ancient and probably antique wafer thin windows we had our mate Andy knock up some grills to stop drunk folk falling through! We were going to paint them a bright colour but as it took poor ole Rikki a week just to put on the undercoat we decided that black was punk anyway. It's great how deciding stuff is punk helps it fit into our plans!

And doncha just think they look amazing, Know Your Product is actually starting to look like a shop! Especially with the dead smart posters we've been sent my Fat Wreck Chords (cheers Nanette), Go Kart Records (cheers Nicole), Household Name Records (cheers Kafren) and even Metal Blade (cheers Anton!)

Hide your shameful body in style!

Wa-hoo, our tee shirts are here. We've got all the usual sizes plus girls skinny fit ones. If you spend more than £30 on our launch night we'll give you a tee shirt for FREE! Wow, sometimes I'm so generous I surprise even myself!

If we've got any left I'm sure we'll be flogging them at some point, get in touch and let us know if you want one!

Are you sitting comfortably?

We always wanted to have a settee in the shop, partly because we like sitting down and stuff, and also so that we could act as a sort of 'man creche' when fellas get dragged into town by their lovely partners. We couldn't find a settee but a big thanks goes out to Craig Unknown for giving us his armchair. Although he struggled a bit to get it out of his flat, which makes us wonder if that was why the last tennant left it in there! It was a bit of a pickle to get into the shop, so I helped Rikki by taking photos of him struggling. But as you can see, it's oh,
so comfortable for reading zines!

well travelled zines

I don't think we've really told you much about the zines we're going to be stocking. Well there will be all big names as well as some really obscure stuff, and all zine lovers love the obscure stuff! This morning a huge packet of 25 zines from Australia arrived, now I bet there's not many shops that have that many Australian zines! They certainly know how to make smart zines down under too, we've got some really original stuff like a book of fake Elvis' (or should that be Elvii for plural?) and three paper bags that just say 'you' on front!

Household Name indeed!

Wa-hoo! Look what we just got sent for the shop from Kafren at Household Name Records

It should be noted that I have that odd look on my face as I was virtually doing a headstand with the camera between my feet to take this photo!

2Tone door matt!

It's funny the things you get excited about when you open a record shop, take this mat for example. Well actually don't take it, we need it, otherwise we're gonna trapse crap all round the shop. This post was funnier in my head...

We've got wood!

It's true, chuffin' loads of it! We're currently drawing up some sort of plans to build an ark with the wood we've got left over from opening the shop, well maybe just a small one that we can play in when there's no customers in the shop.

And the picture of Rikki on the right is proof that we're not just organised, but clean and hygenic too!

In a vaugely Laurel and Hardy fashsion we built the shelves that will hold all the cds in the wee cardboard sleeves. We decided we're going to have to leave the cd cases in the racks empty, which sucks but the sad truth is we don't wanna get robbed.

Whilst Rikki was trying to screw the shelf supports into the wood of the shelves I learned all kinds of new words that my parents never taught me.

In fact we were flailing about in such a fashion that I was vaugly surprised not to see a gaggle of spectators at the windows when were were done!

The last picture here is me (andrew) installing our 'Know Your Product' baseball bat. We're thinking of selling Ramones baseball bats, whatcha reckon?

I've got the Key, I've got the secret,,,

Okay, we got the keys and got busy, and this update is so huge it's over here -
http://knowyourproduct.net/article020606.shtml

Up, up and away

Wa-hoo!

The website is up, well apart from the shop and links page :)
http://knowyourproduct.net/

We've also got the keys for the shop and have been busy building stuff so expect a big update soon!

Greenies...

Well as we're trying to be as ethically aware as we can with this shop we thought we'd get us some of that nice green energy, ya know wind and the like. We it turns out with nPower only 20,000 people can have green energy, and over 40,000 people applied when they launched, so we're boned!

Now you'd think it would be easy to get electricity in this day and age but it took me 9 phone calls and many horrid segments of hold music to find out all we have to do to get electricity is switch on the fuse box! DUH!

Do we measure up?

Yes we do! We dragged ourselves out of the house in the pouring rain at 9.30 this morning to go and measure the shop. We've been scrounging wood from all over the place and we decided we really ought to measure the shop so we can start building stuff, hurrah!

With any luck we might be getting the keys on Tuesday! Huzzah! Now all we need is electricity, water and ultimately customers!

The Lease at Last (at least)

Wa-hoo! We've posted back the lease after getting it looked over and now we're waiting for news, hey no change there then! And I thought it was about time there was a photo of me outside the shop!

So tired, tired of waiting, tired of waiting for...

Well we have the draft lease now and we're doing a lot of looking at it and scratching our heads, fortunetly we have the help of someone that knows about this sorta thing.

Seeing as how are houses are looking more and more like stock rooms it seems to make a strange amount of logical sense that I now have a cash register in my living room!

The clothing tags are now here too, and look VERY fan-dabby-dozey!

They're herrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeee

Wa-hoo the stickers just arrived!

They have the web address as knowyourproduct.co.uk and not knowyourproduct.net but if anyone goes to knowyourproduct.co.uk they get taken to knowyourproduct.net anyway so it don't matter! We had to move the site as we were having trouble figuring out where knowyourproduct.co.uk was registered!

Anyhew, if you want a sticker (the design is below) then let us know!

tags n tills

It's funny the things we're getting excited about with all the preperations for this shop. Today we spent yet more money, we got a cash till and forged bank note detector (not very anarcho hey) and we ordered our clothing tags! I think you'll all agree, they look shittin' great!

The greatest show on earth!

Otherwise known as 'Rikki's stock check'. Turns out he's got a lot more stuff than he thought!

We've started a rought sorta poll to find out what you want us to stock in the shop, have a butchers here -http://www.punknews.co.uk/forum2/index.php?board=13;action=display;threadid=34459;start=0