Comunidad

In 1967, Henry and Beverly Maldonado opened Maldonado’s Music Shop in a small East Sixth street storefront. Making Spanish language music their store’s niche, the Maldonados didn’t just make a point of getting to know their customers personally, they made it a point to know their customers’ tastes. And because those were the days of “record shops,” not “music retailers,” Maldonado’s quickly came to embody the classic definition of a mom ‘n’ pop record shop. Thirty years later, Maldonado’s specialty has been unofficially dubbed Tejano, and CDs and cassettes line the walls and display cases that once were the domain of the vinyl. By most accounts, little else has changed. Sure, Los Tigres Del Norte or Jennifer y Los Jets may now outsell Little Joe y La Familia or Santiago Jimenez, Jr., but the Maldonados, who put in an average of 60-70 hours a week behind the counter, still take pride in knowing the majority of their customers by name and musical taste — even if said clientele are more likely to drive up in a Lexus than ride by on a Schwinn. Since Maldonado’s is now well into its second generation of customers, this happens more and more.

“Not long ago, I had a man walk in the shop with his young son,” says Henry Maldonado. “After walking around a little, the man told me, `I wanted to bring my son in here so he’d get to see a real record shop before they’re all gone.’ It actually happens more than you’d think, but that kind of thing is what makes it all worthwhile.”

Clearly, Henry and Beverly Maldonado delight in giving young customers a de facto history lesson simply by still being around. And while CDs signal the store’s modern upgrading, Maldonado’s has maintained its classic feel, a texture of sorts that’s both romantic and musical. In that sense, Maldonado’s may feel more like Antone’s nightclub than Antone’s Record Store. Cameron Randle, Arista/Latin’s vice president and general manager, compares walking into Maldonado’s with “walking inside an old AM radio,” adding that the store’s legacy and community importance extend past what they sell.

“A store like Maldonado’s is a community center,” says Randle. “These stores are places where there’s a lot of community conversation and activism. These are the people who really care about their neighborhood and about music, not the folks that throw the occasional record into their cart alongside their dishwashing detergent.”

Even with this informal designation as an Eastside cultural institution and community center, Maldonado’s specialty is still music, and more specifically Tejano music. Almost in spite of the genre’s rising national profile, the availability of Tejano music in local specialty stores hasn’t changed all that much in the last 30 years. Henry Maldonado says that when he opened in 1967, his only competitor was another East Sixth Street record shop, the long defunct Volmon’s Jewelry. Today, he still has only one real Tejano specialty store competitor, Turntable, an 11-year-old shop off of South First that specializes in Tejano and club-driven dance music.

Not only are Maldonado and Turntable owner Thomas Hernandez quick to point out that both geography and stock make their stores complementary rather than competitive, they also insist that there’s a marked distinction between their own Tejano specialties and that of Mundo Latino, another large music store on East Seventh that carries over 40,000 Latin titles. The difference, they say, is that Mundo Latino tends to cater more to a committed audience of East Austin Mexican expatriates, who are mostly looking for imports of traditional or hard-core Mexican music.

Discoteca Sanchez, Tower Records, and the ever-popular Waterloo Records also offer fairly extensive new product and back catalog, but for a genre that still sells nearly half of its product in the cassette format, both Tower and Waterloo are at somewhat of a disadvantage. In fact, no other local music stores really worry either Maldonado or Hernandez; like most independently owned record shops, it’s the national chain stores such as Wal-Mart or Best Buy that most threaten them — particularly since both chains have discovered that there’s a huge Tejano/Latin music market to be tapped into.

“It actually started when the big record companies first realized there was a market,” says Maldonado, who in the Seventies independently released albums by artists like Johnny Degollado and La Raza Humilde on his own Mal-do imprint. “And so rather than the tons of small Mexican labels, it’s Sony, Arista, Capitol/EMI that are releasing product. They improved the sound and the quality of the product, but with better quality came more competition. As they jumped in, the Wal-Marts eventually jumped in, too.”

The problem with Wal-Mart’s entrance into the market, explains Maldonado, is that because they’re able to service so many stores from a central office, they’re also able to buy in bulk and get better prices from the labels than the mom ‘n’ pop outlets that order a tiny fraction of a chain store’s total units. Although the problem is hardly unique to Tejano music, Maldonado says he and the other local Tejano shops are just beginning to feel the pressure — mostly on the high-profile, highly-anticipated releases, which chains can mark down and then use to lure customers into their outlets. Unfortunately, it’s those same few releases a month — like a Selena collection or a new album from Mazz — that small stores were once able to count on to bring in buyers.

“The chain stores have made it so that all record shops should be on the endangered species list,” says Maldonado. “They have the buying power, we don’t. If K-Mart is buying 55,000 units of a new record, they’ve already made it gold since 50,000 is gold in the Spanish market. That’s great for the artist, and we want the artists to grow and their base to expand, but we’re getting killed by the price. All the other back catalog and more regional stuff they can’t stock (mostly because they don’t know enough about it) is really the only advantage we have.”

In truth, small shops like Maldonado’s and Turntable actually have two other advantages outside selection: knowledge and customer commitment.

“Some people are always going to be interested in getting the product at the best price,” says Randle, whose company deals with both large chain accounts and small independent retailers. “Some of the Tejano consumers value the neighborhood store approach or prefer to buy in an environment that speaks Spanish. Others, who may not have similar interests in language or cultural concerns, may buy from Wal-Mart.

“But what you find in the small stores like Maldonado’s is not only the consummate grassroots approach to marketing, but also an educated and informed floor staff that can direct and guide a buyer to new product. They’ll say, `If you like Mazz, you might like….’ Ever try to have an intelligent conversation with one of the clerks at the chains? Yes, the product is there, but the personal service and relationship typically isn’t. Those are the things that keep people coming to the mom ‘n’ pop stores.”

Unfortunately, running a small business is never easy, and no one knows this better than the Maldonados, who moved into their current East Seventh Street location in 1987, leaving the old location on East Sixth reluctantly. “I think Eastside growth has been very disappointing overall,” says Henry. “There’s very little in the way of new shopping centers and banking, and those are things that pick up business and the overall community.

“Accordingly, a lot of folks are moving out. They have these semiconductor jobs or other jobs that pay well, and as their status moves up they want to move to better and newer housing. And although they’re moving out to North or South Austin, they still come back here, because they know I’ll be here. At this point, I could open up virtually anywhere, although I’d never think to abandon a neighborhood that’s made it through the thick and thin with us.”

One group that both Maldonado and Hernandez say hasn’t helped Eastside music stores catering to a Latino audience are the very labels that cater to this audience. By the account of these two local businessmen, the Tejano market is growing in leaps and bounds, and still the labels that traffic in the genre aren’t giving smaller stores a piece of the marketing pie. Even something as simple as supplying stores that carry their product with promotional in-store play copies of new releases is being overlooked by major Tejano labels.

“With some of these companies, we’re left paying their promotional expenses out of our pockets — opening CDs that cost us $10 just to hear what they’ve sold us,” says Turntable’s Hernandez. “We sell Spanish music, so we play Spanish music in-store, and a lot of our sales are based on in-store play. It’s the promotional records we’re supposed to be playing in-store, but I guess some of these companies feel like they don’t need to help us because they spend so much money promoting the music to Spanish radio.”

Still a format known for translating new music into brisk record sales, Tejano radio is thriving. Both stores say that solely based on customer requests, they can guess what songs and what artists have been added to Austin’s Tejano station, KKLB (92.5 FM). In fact, Maldonado says that because Tejano radio is also somewhat notorious for failing to back-announce songs with full titles or the artist’s name, the small store’s knowledge of current music again comes into play in separating it from the chain store competition.

“They’ll come in and say, `It sounds like this girl or that guy,’ or say, `It sounds like Mazz’ or, `It sounds a little like Emillo,'” says Hernandez. “We’re going to be able to lead them to it, because it’s our job to know what radio’s playing.”

Arista Latin’s Randle, who both Hernandez and Maldonado say is among the best at providing promotional material, says it’s clearly the record company’s job to cater to the small stores. “I’m not so sure it’s as much that we’re doing exemplary work at Arista Latin as it is that the other labels ignore these stores altogether,” says Randle. “Why you’d ignore any retail account is beyond me. It’s both basic courtesy and good business to pay close attention to them. This is their livelihood, and in many cases, running their stores is a multi-generational livelihood. Why wouldn’t they deserve the same courtesy and same approach we’d take to a local store like Waterloo?”

In fact, Randle argues that an account like Maldonado’s deserves personal attention because that’s exactly what the store itself has provided for so long. “This is a genre where radio still deals in listener requests and dedications,” he says. “It’s a genre where the fanbase likes and needs to establish as much personal contact with their artists as possible, be it at in-store appearances or concerts. And just as Tejano radio is more personable than the big rock FMs, so are the Tejano-based mom ‘n’ pops. On our end, you can’t just check off the account and make sure it’s serviced. The personal relationship they have with their customer needs to be met with an effort from us to foster a personal relationship with them.”

Despite the fact that the current relationship between Austin’s small Tejano shops and the labels or the chain stores is tense, neither Maldonado nor Hernandez say they’re genuinely worried about the overall state of the Tejano market. Current trends seem to indicate the market is broadening with the growing acceptance of artists formerly classified as “regional Mexican” or norte�o. Although Billboard, which still lists everything performed in Spanish — from Gloria Estefan to La Differenzia — on one “Latin” chart, has been slow to pick up on the changing tides; big sales for Mexican groups like Los Tigres Del Norte and Groupo Limite have been encouraging signs for the local stores.

“The Tejano audience is opening up, losing some of its tunnel vision,” says Randle. “That Tejano fans other than the parents or Mexican nationalists are buying stuff from Mexican artists means the market is expanding. And market expansion is ultimately good for the stores.”

Given Turntable’s quiet decade-long run and Maldonado’s standing as Austin’s oldest record store, both owners say cultivating their place in the community — rather than just their place in the market — is what has kept their businesses alive and well.

“I have a lot of customers that have been coming in here for literally 30 years,” says Maldonado. “They come in as often as once a week, or only once a month, but they stand by us and are incredibly faithful.

“They read the newspapers and they see the ads with cheaper records, but they understand I’ve been here this long and still can’t afford to buy 10,000 units to pass along a couple of dollars discount. A lot of those customers have watched my son Javier grow up. Now he wants to expand and open up other shops. That’s good, but it’s a matter of time.

“We’ve lasted 30 years by being patient, stubborn, and hard-headed. In those 30 years, we’ve endured, and of course, learned a lot.”

This article appears in November 7 • 1997 and November 7 • 1997 (Cover).