Interview with Jeff Davis of Vinylux

October 26, 2009 · Posted in Great gift ideas, Home decor

We had the opportunity to hear from Jeff Davis, the man behind Vinylux – a company that repurposes records and album covers to make a fun collection of products that includes bowls and coasters.

How did the Vinylux business come about?
Vinylux began as a lark, and like all good larks, it took over my life. I was in graduate school at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), and had a little time to play around with new tools during the winter break. I began experimenting with using records as a raw material, and hit upon the idea of remolding them into new shapes. Sooner or later the bowls were born. The business started as a result of my professor saying: “You know, you could probably sell every one of these you make”.

How long have you been making your bowls and coasters?
About 7 years now. We’ve added a bunch of new products to our line over the years and have about 12 now.

How long does each piece take to make? What is the process like?
The pieces are now fairly quick to make, and I’ve been working for years now to make all of our processes super efficient. That’s actually my role at Vinylux now; I’m like the executive chef managing a team of line cooks, keeping all of the orders moving along at a good pace and making sure the “ingredients” are in place to fill those orders. The items are made on a handful of different machines, many of which I have built or retooled. Every piece is handled by a trained artisan, who works on the machines in our shop. We send out some of our items to be laser-cut, like our clocks and ornaments, and our sketchbooks are bound by a large bindery. Every piece passes through our shop in Philadelphia and is finished, packed and shipped from there.

People absolutely love stumbling upon a bowl or coaster of their favorite artist. If someone has a record they want to preserve can they send it to you to be turned into a bowl?
We do accept custom orders from people who want their own record to be made into a bowl. I wouldn’t necessarily call this “preservation” but it does rekindle a relationship someone may have with an album that they no longer play.

Are their some items with values higher than others because of the artist? For instance, what if someone wanted a Michael Jackson bowl?
We don’t quantify the value of any of our items based on who the artist is, or what vintage the record is. The value is really determined by the person who finds the record/bowl by their favorite artist… then they must have it! Since we’re not record dealers, we don’t really get involved with record values, except when we find rare stuff – then we keep it or put it on ebay.

If you had to describe a typical day in your life in one sentence, what would that sentence be?
Today was a little bit different from yesterday and tomorrow will be a little different from today and that’s the best part of running this business – within the framework of (get up, take the kids to school, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go to bed) there really are no typical days!

Any funny stories from the design studio you’d care to share? We sure like to laugh…
We find a lot of wacky stuff stashed inside people’s old record albums – love letters, postcards, song lyrics (desperately penned by some aspiring musician from long ago), pot seeds, crazy drawings, old porn… we have a growing collection of it all pinned up on the studio wall. We’ll sing out the lyrics of some horrible song we find, cruelly mocking someone’s pain and dashed dreams of stardom.

When you’re not doing Vinylux work, what do you enjoy doing?
I spend and enjoy almost all of my non-work time with my wife Maggie, my son Tyler, and my daughter Una. And gardening. And playing guitar. And listening to music. And brewing beer. And drinking it.