Urban Outfitters is the World’s Biggest Vinyl Seller

“Music is very, very important to the Urban customer… in fact, we are the world’s number one vinyl seller,” Calvin Hollinger, the company’s chief administrative officer, said at a meeting with analysts yesterday. He explained that instead of having thousands of vinyl albums online, the company has a system in place that lets it seamlessly offer inventory from roughly 100 vendors without actually owning that inventory, a model it might use with Anthropologie’s home goods.
It’s notable that Urban Outfitters, a chain that’s worried it’s gotten too young for its 18- to 28-year-old customers in the past year, is such a big seller of an old technology. The people buying vinyl, it turns out, are those who grew up with the ability to download music or stream it on Pandora and Spotify. (Target and Whole Foods have also tried to get into the business.)
