BOISE, Idaho — Downtown Boise’s iconic Record Exchange Friday announced its re-opening plans. Like many retail outlets, it closed in late March during the spread of COVID-19.
In an e-mail to customers, store co-owners Michael Bunnell and Jil Sevy wrote:
“When we closed the doors six weeks ago, we honestly wondered what the future would look like for The Record Exchange, but your continued support through our website and online sales platforms has enabled us to move forward.
Now, we want nothing more than to reopen our doors and begin the next phase of our 43-year history, but we must proceed at a pace we feel comfortable implementing.
We understand the State of Idaho and our governor have given retail stores the green-light to begin to reopen while taking all precautions necessary to protect employees and customers, but we are not quite ready to embrace that action. Working toward that goal, however, we have received assistance from the Payroll Protection Program through the Cares Act, which allows us to bring our employees back and prepare the store for a phased-in reopening.
We have begun preparing for the first phase, curbside pickup, which will begin by next weekend (May 8-9).
Our music buyers (working primarily from home) are busy restocking new releases that we missed during the shutdown, so we will have a full offering of current titles.
We are also working through our curbside pickup schedule and protocol.
To prepare for the second phase -– reopening the doors to the public -– we are resetting the store to allow for social distancing, providing directional movement throughout the store, enhancing our disinfectant cleaning and safety measures, and developing our coffee-shop protocol.
In addition, we have had plexiglass barriers installed at each register to protect our staff and customers. We are also fine-tuning our store shopping policies and, depending on where the city and state are in terms of COVID-19, we will reopen the doors to the public for limited-capacity shopping the week of May 18.
Our primary concern is the safety of our staff and their families, our customers, and our community and, despite the go-ahead from federal and state government, we will proceed when we believe we have provided a safe environment to shop in-store.
We greatly appreciate everyone who has ordered products from us from shop.therecordexchange.com and our eBay and Discogs sites …
Any support of the store right now is important for our survival, and we appreciate your patience and support. We consider our customers part of our extended family, and we all need to stay safe and secure while we try to create a new normal.”
