For Phillip Rollins, owner of OffBeat, a record and comic store in Jackson, Mississippi, January brought a downturn.
“Either you get paid off, or it’s like a dead zone,” Rollins said. “So January and summer tends to be the months that I personally hate the most because it’s so slow.”
Rollins, who recently moved to a new storefront in downtown Jackson, is having a good holiday retail season.
“I like a lot of big-ticket items,” he said. “Recently, I bought a collectible with two rare Taylor Swift 45 [a vinyl record played at a speed of 45 revolutions per minute]. I actually sold one of these, thinking I’d never have one. “
But once the summer passed, he had to deal with a problem that had been a headache since last year: inflation. Rollins is not alone. In December, nearly a third of small businesses said they were concerned about inflation, according to the Small Business Optimism Index, a monthly survey released by the National Federation of Independent Business.
“I’m kind of fed up because of the way inflation is going,” Rollins said. “For example, a Lauryn Hill record that was $25 last year is now $30, maybe $35. That extra $5 really makes a difference for people, ‘I want one record or I want two records.'”
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