Wax Trax is opening a “real store” at Stanley Marketplace

Pete Stidman has learned firsthand that the Mile High City has a serious addiction to vinyl since taking over Wax Trax Records, a mini-chain that’s in the midst of expanding its kiosk at Aurora’s Stanley Marketplace to what he refers to as a “real store” set to debut next month.

“I do think Denver is unique in terms of how many records people buy and how many people love to buy records,” he says. “I chalk that up to shops like Wax Trax and Twist & Shout being here all along and never leaving. People have a tradition that they’re passing along to their kids of buying records.”

Wax Trax certainly has a rich history. The initial shop was founded in 1975 by Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher, who would go on to start a groundbreaking record label called Wax Trax!, based in Chicago. But they allowed Duane Davis and Pete’s father, Dave Stidman, who purchased the business from them in 1978, to continue using the Wax Trax moniker, sans the exclamation point.

A new era

Pete Stidman took Wax Trax’s reins near the start of the 2020 pandemic, and over the subsequent years, he has steadily enlarged the brand’s footprint. The flagship store at 638 East 13th Avenue is actually two shops in one – the new-music outlet on the corner of 13th and Washington Street and the used-music affiliate a couple of doors down. There’s also the Broadway Bazaar, at 200 South Broadway, and Wax Trax Northside, at 3641 West 32nd Avenue, which debuted last fall.

By then, Wax Trax was already operating out of the Stanley Marketplace, 2501 Dallas Street, but in a limited capacity; the enterprise was essentially a long rack of LPs in one of the Stanley’s main corridors. Now, however, Wax Trax will have four walls to call its own, on the first floor of the center next to Zero Market.

During the era when every mall in America seemed to have a Sam Goody, it was commonplace for a single record retailer to have multiple branches in a single metropolitan area, but that’s no longer the case. Stidman, who’s done enough research into the subject to qualify as an expert, points out a few exceptions to the rule: Zia Records in Arizona, Josey Records in Texas, Missouri and Oklahoma, and Newbury Comics, which has a slew of shingles in New York and five other northeastern states. For the most part, though, these firms tend to concentrate on superstores, while the newer trio of Wax Traxes are more like boutiques –spaces that load a lot of cool into a modest-sized space.

That includes Aurora, which Stidman describes as “the most diverse city in the state – and we’ve found that the diversity of our selection works really well at the Stanley. We’ve been selling tons of Latin American records and African records – the whole diaspora – as well as rock and roll. I think a lot of ex-punk rockers live out there, too, based on our sales. And there are a lot of kids of all ages in Aurora. We sell more Bluey there than anywhere else.”

Given this wide-ranging clientele, “we felt it made sense if we expanded our stock by four times, so we would be able to capture more sales,” he continues, “because we’re covering more tastes and having deeper cuts for returning customers. And we’ll be able to sell stereos and T-shirts and all the other trappings that go along with a good record store.”

A grand opening

Another benefit of stretching out at the Stanley, in Stidman’s view, is “the aspect of creating more jobs for folks who are creative. When we hire, we look for people who are doing music-related stuff in their lives, and oftentimes, that means musicians in bands. We support them through that, and the staff covers each other when they want to go out on tour. That’s another nice aspect of Wax Trax’s growth.”

The grand opening of the Stanley Marketplace Wax Trax is scheduled for 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, July 18, with live music from 12-3 p.m. (The final lineup will be shared on Wax Trax’s calendar page.) Stidman, who’s run afoul of the Denver noise ordinance when putting on events at the 13th Street headquarters, hopes things will go more smoothly in Aurora on the big day, and he’s excited by another impending opportunity: “They’re finishing up a park outside that has an amphitheater. We’re looking at that as something we can program once in a while. It’s pretty neat what’s happening out there.”

The same can be said of the burgeoning Wax Trax empire, which defies the decline of brick-and-mortar buying. “I think there are certain kinds of shops that are growing like us around the country,” Stidman says. “It’s in its nascent stage.”