The Vinyl Factory, Koobla Records and three founders in 2003.

Phonica Records is a dance and electronic music shop in London’s Soho, opened in 2003. Its founder and manager, Simon Rigg, told KEYI Magazine in an interview published on 13 March 2024 that the people behind The Vinyl Factory and FACT magazine were interested in opening a record shop, at a time when he was managing a small Soho shop called Koobla Records. He left Koobla to set up Phonica. The distributor Proper Music Group, in a featured-store profile published on 5 December 2017, said Rigg had started his music career as a dance buyer at Virgin and opened the shop in collaboration with The Vinyl Factory, which also had a pressing plant and FACT.

The backer had its own history with vinyl. English Wikipedia describes The Vinyl Factory as a London music company with a record label, a pressing plant and a venue space, which publishes Fact and owns the Phonica Records store. It says the business began as a pressing plant in 2001 after buying manufacturing equipment from EMI, and expanded into a record label in 2008.

Rigg brought two colleagues with him. In the 2024 interview he named his co-founders as Tom Relleen, who later formed one half of the band Tomaga, and Heidi Van den Amstel, the DJ known as Heidi. Proper’s 2017 profile gave the same three names and said Heidi later became a Radio 1 DJ. In an interview the London club fabric published for the shop’s tenth birthday, Rigg described the two as friends and workmates from his old shop, and the club’s introduction also named early staff including Will Saul and Pete Herbert.

The new business came with a clean slate. Rigg told KEYI that they already had the premises and the chance to begin anew: to name the shop as they pleased, stock it with what they wanted and hire new staff.

No advertising, German minimal records and a counter for DJs.

The shop opened quietly. Rigg told fabric that they did not advertise the opening and that it came at a time when few record shops were opening and many were closing, and that the team was worried early on. Proper’s 2017 profile said vinyl sales were low in the year it opened and that, to many, it seemed a crazy idea. Text published by KEYI Magazine for the shop’s twentieth anniversary in November 2023, written in Phonica’s own voice, says it built a word-of-mouth reputation helped by the trio’s link to Koobla Records on nearby Berwick Street.

The early stock gave the shop its reputation. Rigg told fabric that Phonica became known for the German pre-minimal sound of Kompakt, which he said few others were selling, and later for Ricardo Villalobos and the Perlon label. In the 2024 interview he listed Kompakt, Perlon and Playhouse, mostly from Germany, and said that with Heidi on the counter visiting DJs began to call in when they were in town. Proper put it in similar terms in 2017, citing the German minimal sound of Kompakt and Playhouse, followed by electro house.

Rigg was clear that the shop did not want to be tied to one genre. He told fabric that many shops at the time defined themselves as house or techno shops, while Phonica wanted to sell all kinds of dance and electronic music. Proper said its stock ran from soul 7-inch singles and library soundtracks to house and techno 12-inch records, and that many of its customers are DJs.

The room was set up for listening. Proper’s 2017 profile described a row of Technics turntables where customers can listen before buying, a three-seater sofa at the front of the shop looking out onto Poland Street, and tables of new CDs, each with a written review on display. It also listed bags and T-shirts among the goods the shop sells alongside records, CDs and books.

A shop name that became a label name.

A record shop’s identity is carried less by a logo on a screen than by the objects that pass across its counter. The carrier bag is the object many customers keep: a printed bag sized for a twelve-inch sleeve leaves the shop under an arm, travels on buses and ends up in wardrobes holding records for years, so the mark on it does the work that a billboard does for other retailers. Inside, the browser bins set the grammar of the room. Dividers and genre cards, often cut from card and lettered by hand or with a stencil, tell a visitor where reggae ends and soul begins, and their lettering becomes as familiar as the sign above the door. Price stickers work as small typography too, with their colours, codes and handwriting telling regulars how a shop sorts new and used stock.

Much of the rest of the visual language comes from events. In-store gigs bring posters, flyers, wristbands and listings boards, and a shop that books bands into local halls and churches builds a printed calendar around its name. Some shops run their own record labels, so their name also appears on sleeves, centre labels and catalogue numbers, where it reaches listeners who have never been through the door. Record Store Day adds a yearly set of exclusive releases, queues and window displays, and shops often make their own posters and bags for the day. Taken together, the bag, the bin card, the sticker and the gig poster give a shop a recognisable look that is built from use rather than from a single brand book.

A label for the staff, sub-labels and two anniversary compilations.

The shop’s name went onto records a few years after opening. The 2023 anniversary text says the Phonica label launched in 2007; Proper’s 2017 profile says 2008, adding that three of its opening four releases were by staff members; and Rigg told KEYI in 2024 that the label launched in 2009. Rigg said the label began so that the shop could put out records by its staff, starting with Hector and then Anthea’s JC Freaks project, and that it also released early records by Midland and Peggy Gou.

The label later divided into several imprints. In the 2024 interview Rigg listed the main Phonica label, Phonica AM, run by Luther Vine, Phonica White, the deep-house sub-label Karakul and Special Editions. He told fabric that Special Editions records come with full sleeve artwork and on heavy 180-gram vinyl, and are less aimed at the dance floor.

Two compilations mark the shop’s anniversaries. Rigg told fabric that the ten-year compilation would be a triple album, with all-exclusive tracks; the 2023 text dates Ten Years of Phonica to 2013, while Proper dates its release to 2014. The second, 20 Years of Phonica, followed in 2023, and Rigg told KEYI that Alex Egan, a member of staff, provided the artwork for both. Rigg also said the shop has held Record Store Day events since 2007, including an annual session in a warehouse space beneath the shop, and that it hosts in-store launches, question-and-answer sessions and free DJ lessons. In the same interview he said Phonica had a shop in Berlin as well as its base in London.

For a design guide, Phonica Records shows how a shop name can serve a counter, a label and a family of sub-labels at once, with plain names and a staff artist drawing the compilation sleeves. Compare Sister Ray, a Soho neighbour on Berwick Street, and Rough Trade, another London shop that became a label. For this guide we use Poland Street teal, slipmat orange and white label with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Phonica Records’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.