Renowned Melbourne Record Store Chain To Close CBD Venue

Melbourne's Polyester Records has announced that it will close its CBD store in the near future and consolidate into one location.

One of the city's most recognisable record stores, the CBD store on Flinders Lane will close mid-April, six years after it was opened, due to rising rent and falling CD sales.

In a statement today the store said, “given the ever-increasing rent in our current location the city, we've had to make a call to downsize back to one store for now. We feel it's the smart move to make in the short term and after a period of stabilising, we can look to return to the city to a more size and cost efficient space.

“There's no doubt we'll miss the Flinders Lane space particularly for the many, many celebrated in-store performances and events we've held there, but rest assured we are working on an alternative for this aspect of what we do with some exciting ideas in the cooker.”

Co-owned by Simon Karis and Nate Nott, they plan to re-launch their online store in the coming weeks as part of their consolidated offering.

“As our focus is drawn directly to the Fitzroy store, we have some great changes in the works this year which we're extremely excited to reveal over the coming months,” they said. “In the meantime, we'll continue to operate in our heartland of Fitzroy and move forward as always with our dedicated mission of supporting our local music community's output as well as a great range of quality releases from overseas.”

Last week fellow renowned Victorian record store Fist2Face announced it will be closing its physical presence, while UNFD's online store 24 Hundred went the other way and launched their real-world space.