45s.com -- Processing

Please allow me to explain what goes into processing an order.

For the most part, we sell antique records. Very few records are manufactured any more, so we have found hundreds of thousands of records.

This has been a process that has been going on for close to 50 years.

"The Collection" is a collection of virtually every 45 rpm hit record between the 1950's and the 1990's.  Three generations of Windsors are responsible for "The Collection," an effort that began in 1956.

Walter Windsor, a talented singer/musician and an avid music lover, has an incredible collection of music and sheet music covering 1920 to 1960.  He has also authored a book and database, The Songdex, that provides detailed information on virtually every song written from 1920 to 1960.  In the 1950's, Walter Windsor was the General Manager of radio and television stations.  In 1956, he began bringing home extra copies of records received at KCMC Radio in Texarkana, Texas.  The Windsor boys, Billy (age 7) and Tony (age 5), loved those records and were the envy of all of their friends.

Unlike their baseball cards, Mother Mary never threw away any of the records.  So those first records from Elvis, The Coasters, Paul Anka, and many others have remained with the kids ever since.

In the 1960's as a high school and college student, Bill worked as a radio DJ, and a number of favorites were added.  (The Beatles are Bill's all-time favorite group!)  In the 1970's, the Bill Windsor family added a juke box, and more 45's were bought.

But "The Collection" really became a true collection in the 1980's when young Ryan Windsor (third generation) became a mobile DJ as a high school student.  After buying out another mobile DJ, the first quest was to complete a collection of the Top 2000 rock songs of all times.  Once that was accomplished, the new goal was to collect every song that hit the Billboard Hot 100 rock/pop charts from 1955 to 1990.

In the 90's, nephew Nicholas Harper, world-renowned audiophile, made significant contributions to the collection.

By 1999, "The Collection" was virtually complete -- over 20,000 45 rpm records -- every song that made it to at least #100 on Billboard for at least a week.  (Click on the links in this paragraph to see photographs of "The Collection.")

"The Collection" has been built from a wide variety of sources, and it has long since grown well beyond the original goals.  The buyout of a long-time jukebox operator in Akron, Ohio added many needed rock/pop hits, tens of thousands of dupes, and many country songs (making the top country music another goal).  The buyout of the inventory of a record store brought a large collection of rhythm and blues records, so another quest began; that store also had many pre-1955 records, so the search was expanded to cover 1950 to present.  Work is also well underway to complete the second set of the 20,000 rock/pop hits from 1955 to 1990.

In addition to Walter Windsor and all of the members of the Windsor family, some of the major "contributors" to The Collection include Glenn of the Used Tools and Used Records store (formerly at 117th and Madison) in Cleveland, Laura of Oldies Unlimited, and Jerry Weber of Jerry's Records.  The records have, however, come from everywhere -- radio stations, juke box operators, DJ's, friends and family, record shows, garage sales, flea markets, thrift shops, record companies, record clubs and record pools, record stores, record wholesalers, other collectors, and the Internet.  Major additions have come from Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Northern California, Michigan, and Minnesota.  Two years living and working in the UK added some interesting records to "The Collection."  We were very pleased to add a number of records from the private collection of Charlie Holz; Charlie authored a database of virtually every 45 rpm record ever produced.  Otti Schmitt was the most recent contributor -- 250,000 45's!

We never intended to acquire 750,000 records.  It just happened by accident. As it became harder and harder to find the records I needed to complete "The Collection," I began seizing opportunities to buy large quantities of records inexpensively.  I then searched through them for the ones I needed. Once I thought I was buying 100,000...but the seller miscalculated, and it was 250,000.

Finding large quantities of records proved to be the easy part.  Organizing them is and always will be an impossible task.  More hours than I would ever care to think about have been spent alphabetizing a PORTION of the 750,000 records.  The records have to be sorted by artist.  We first sort records into piles by the first letter of the last name of the artist.  We then make piles by artist.  This takes a ton of time as each label is different; some are hard to read; the type is small; and no one in their right mind would spend the massive amount of time it takes in hopes someone someday might want one of the 750,000 (as record players cease to exist in most homes).

Alphabetizing does no good unless you have an organizational system.  So, I spent close to 10 years typing a database of the hit records and of every artist with a song that ever hit the pop, rock, country, or r&b charts from 1950 to 2000.  Two sets of dividers were then set up. One is of each artist with records in "The Collection," and one set is of every artist that ever had a hit anywhere.  There are something like 7,000 artist dividers alone in the second set.  I then printed labels and applied them to heavy cardboard tab dividers.  In the collection, each record is in a heavy paper sleeve that has all the information about the record printed on it.  Those are filed chronologically behind each artist's name -- all 20,000.  "The Collection" fills the walls (shelves floor to ceiling) of a 300 square foot room.  You can imagine how much space is needed for the other 730,000!  The records are in boxes that are 8-inches wide, 8-inches high, and 20-inches long.  100 records or so to a box weighing about 10 pounds each. That's 7,500 boxes (at a cost of about $3 a box).  And at 10 pounds a box, we have 75,000 pounds (37 1/2 tons) of records! The boxes are on heavy-duty plastic shelving.  One of the logistical problems that we have is that when we have a bunch of records alphabetized and the boxes placed on the shelves, when we then alphabetize some more and need to add more boxes, we have to shift thousands of boxes to accomplish this.  We also have to re-label the outside of the boxes to indicate which artist(s) are inside.

Needless to say, we don't have any big fancy magical system to do this.  And the records have to be on the shelf so we can pull them out to go through them to find the records we need, so there has to be space to peek in ad we have to have a work surface nearby to put the boxes on as we search inside for the records we need.

The rent for a place large enough to hold all of these records would be astronomical.  We would lose a fortune each year if we had what we could really use; there just isn't enough demand for records. So, I have taken over the basement of our home.  We also have an office/warehouse, and we have two warehouses. At this point, we probably have 300,000 of the 750,000 records alphabetized by artist.

Now that you know what went into putting our record inventory together and where and how we have it stored, here's what's involved in processing an order.  The orders all go into our online ordering system.  We print out those orders twice a week.  As we print them, we look for the special order records.  Every record with an item number that is a 200 or 500 series number is a special order.  These are records that we are able to buy from the few remaining record manufacturers that still have inventory.  We enter these on an order form.  We can only place weekly orders for these as the manufacturers have minimum orders that it takes us about a week to meet, so we just automatically send those orders in every Wednesday.

Once the orders have been printed, we sort them into two piles. One pile is those that are special order items only.  Those go into a folder by the date of the order placed with the manufacturer and are held pending receipt of the shipment (which we usually receive within 7 days).  The other pile goes to my part-time order processor/helper, Jean. I review these orders and put a slash mark next to the special order items so Jean will not spend time looking in our inventory for those.

Jean pulls the orders. He does this by taking the first order form in the folder and looking at the first record on the order.  He then walks to the place in the warehouse where that artist's box or boxes are stored.  He pulls the box off the shelf, puts it on a table, notes the name of the song and record label and number, and then he has to physically look through every record until he finds a match. Once he does, he removes the record from the sleeve and gives it a quick inspection to ensure it is of sufficient quality.  When it isn't, he continues to search.  When he finds the record, he puts a check mark next to it.  When he doesn't, he puts an X.  He continues down the order form.  Once he has completed one, he places the records in a box with the order form on top. He continues through the file folder of orders until all are done.  He gives the box to me.  Jean spends every other waking moment alphabetizing records and putting them into the correct box and shifting the boxes again and again to make room. On some orders, he will go to two other warehouse locations to pull orders; those warehouses hold records that are special (such as our Christmas record inventory that is organized but used seasonally) but mainly contain records that are sorted so far only by the first letter of the last name of the artist.

I then take the box of processed orders home.  It is marked with the date the order was placed with various manufacturers for special order items. When those shipments come in, I open the boxes and put the records in alphabetical order by artist's last name. I then mark off the invoice to be sure we received what we ordered.  I email the manufacturers about any discrepancies.  I don't have to check the quality of these records as all are new. Once each shipment is received from the manufacturers, I pull the box marked with that order date, and I go through each order. I look for the slash marks, and I note the artist's last name, and then I look at that point in the stack of records that came from the manufacturers (probably an average of 200 or so special order records each time we do this).  Any that we didn't receive are marked SOLD OUT in the margin on the order form.

As I go through the special order records, the orders are placed in two piles.  The first pile is those that are completed.  If we didn't have some special order records, the amount is calculated and that amount is noted on the order form/packing slip. The second pile is for those where Jean could not find records in the warehouse to fill the non-special order items. This indicates we have no more back stock and the only remaining copy should be in "The Collection," unless the collection copy was recently sold, unless the collection copy is not of adequate quality, or there is a mistake in our inventory.  (We update our inventory online based upon the collection copy sleeve.  When we sell the last copy, the sleeve goes into a stack, and that record number is removed from the online inventory.)

I then go through the orders in the room that houses The Collection.  I pull those that we have after inspecting the record to be sure the quality is sufficient.  I check off those we have, and I marked SOLD OUT for those we no longer have or where there is a quality problem.  I calculate the amount of any sold out and note the refund amount on the order form.  Once all of the collection copies have been pulled, that date's stack of orders is processed for shipment.  On some occasions, I will note records that I feel we have somewhere, and we may put those orders aside to search further. With 750,000 records and a friend in the business who has about the same number (who we sometimes ask for help), we probably have a high percentage of the records we show as Sold Out, but we just can't find them.  It certainly isn't an exact science, especially when we have hundreds of thousands of records yet to be alphabetized.

Processing for shipment consists of stamping the date of the shipment and our name and address on the packing slip.  The name and address is important as we want to be sure there are addresses inside each package as well as on the outside of the package in the very rare cases when a package gets damaged or "lost" in shipment. Checks are written for the records that are out of stock. Each record is put into a new white sleeve. The records and the order form are kept together until all are done.  I then photocopy the order form so we retain a marked-up copy and have one to send as a packing slip with the shipment.  I then prepare a shipping label, apply it to the box, insert the records and the packing slip, and then seal the box with clear tape making sure the pressure-sensitive address label should never be lost or damaged by taping fully over it with clear shipping tape that wraps completely around the box to form a band, in each direction. The boxes are then weighed, and we calculate the postage for each one, run a postage meter strip, apply it to the box and stamp First Class, Air Mail, or apply Priority Mail stickers, depending on the shipment.  International shipments require going online to calculate postage.

The shipments are then delivered to the United States Postal Service.  Our copy of the order goes in a big pile for the month.  In the average month, we will process several hundred orders and ship thousands of records, so the pile is big.  We've had orders for thousands of dollars worth of records, but the vast majority of our orders are for one record.  We do not set up customer files as we'd have thousands of files for people who, for the most part, will never order again.  And we don't maintain a computer system to show when an order was shipped or anything, as once again, it would take so much time (and would so rarely have any benefit), and we'd have to significantly increase our prices for meaningless recordkeeping.  Instead, we say we process and ship within 21 days, and we usually meet that schedule.

As you can tell, it is essentially impossible for us to know the status of an order when someone emails to ask.  It could be anywhere in the series of places described above.  It could be with Jean at the office/warehouse for the first of the records to be pulled.  It could be in a box waiting for the special orders to arrives. It could be in "The Collection" in my basement room where the last of the records are pulled.  It should be on the order processing table, ready for postage and the post office, or already shipped.

So, if it hasn't been 21 days, please remember that our home page says in bright red letters that orders take 21 days for processing.  You might also remember that our order form and receipt also state that it takes 21 days or longer and asks people to be patient and not contact us until that time has elapsed.  If it has been more than 21 days, give the postal service a few days.  Email us again at 28 days.  If you don't have it at that point, we will go through all of the orders for that month and advise you the date it was shipped.  If it still hasn't shown up 30 days from the shipping date, we will reluctantly refund your money and take the loss.  But I can tell you that in 5 years, only two or three shipments have ever been "lost."  We find the postal service to be outstanding, and our system of two addresses and double-taping the label means our boxes simply don't get "lost."

So, that's where we are.  We hope you have your records soon and that you enjoy them.