Used recordings sweet music to owner

Paul Doege's office near the back of Recycled Records, 4930 S.

Virginia St., is much like the store itself: covered floor to ceiling with funky memorabilia, including autographed posters of Groucho Marx, Liberace, Errol Flynn.

Box Car Willie and others that have come to Doege via the store's trade.

An eclectic stream of music early Van Morrison, Sam Cooke, Patti Smith and so on constantly plays over the store's sound system Recycled Records stocks rock, blues, jazz, rap, country, classical the spectrum of recorded music, practically, and in formats as old as 78 RPM records and even a few 16 RPMs.

Rarities can be found such as the Beatles' "Yesterday...and Today" album from 1966 with the infamous "Butcher Cover": the Fab Four dressed in white smocks, surrounded by cuts of raw meat and chopped up dolls.

Doege, a Cleveland native, earned a marketing degree from Ohio State University in 1979.

His parents persuaded him to move to Reno, where they had retired, by offering a loan to buy a used-record store.

Doege, who was managing a Wendy's restaurant in Ohio, bought the two-year-old Recycled Records in Reno and its inventory of 30,000 records in 1980.

The store was at 1440 S.Wells Ave., behind a roast beef fast-food restaurant that now is home to Eatos Burritos.

"It now takes me two weeks to gross what I bought the store for," Doege says of his business today, which occupies 3,000 square feet in the Coliseum Meadows Plaza off South Virginia, north of Meadowood Mall.

Doege relocated to this spot in 1983 (and expanded twice).

He also ran an outlet on Rock Boulevard in Sparks from 1988 to 1993, and in 1998 opened a satellite store in a 500-square-foot space at 812 N.

Virginia St.

near the University of Nevada, Reno.

The tall, dark-haired Doege (pronounced,DOH-jee) 44, sports a "soul patch" tuft of beard hugging his lower lip (goatees are passe) and a diamond stud in his left earlobe.He wears a gray Recycled Records T-shirt, shorts and blackand- white checkered Van's sneakers.

There is no dress code at Recycled Records.

Doege proudly compares his workers to those of the lowbudget record store portrayed in the 2000 motion picture "High Fidelity" starring John Cusack.

They are fiercely independent, passionate about music, trivia buffs and not cut out for mainstream jobs.

"Because of the fact that I can't pay them the bigger money, I allow certain freedoms that a corporation wouldn't allow," Doege says.

"Like no dress code.

In fact, we used to have 'Shirtless Fridays.' This is really a freewheeling, give-and-take kind of business." It's also customer-responsive.

"We give great service," Doege says, emphasizing that employees are trained to approach and guide the common deer-in-the-headlights customers lost amid the aisles of wood shelves holding alphabetized and categorized vinyl records and compact discs, cassette tapes and eight-track tapes, movie videos and DVDs.

Employees also must deal with the nasty side of the business: surly, suspicious sellers of records, CDs or tapes believing the store is gouging them.

Most of Doege's inventory comes from people purging their music collections, divesting of unwanted music that fell in their laps or trying to raise a few desperate dollars.

"When you deal in second-hand, you automatically have people who aren't going to be happy with you, and don't like you," Doege explains.

"'I paid $15 for this CD and you're only offering me $2.' I'll dicker a little bit, but the way I've always looked at it, we're dealers.We're fast and easy.

So we don't pay as much." When a customer tries to drive too hard a bargain, Doege will suggest the person sell the CD on eBay or to a friend or put an ad in the paper.

Doege relishes his independent status, and is sought out by local reporters.

"You can't call the manager of a chain store and say, 'What do you think about this?' because the corporate management says they can't have those kinds of opinions.

There are so few left of us independents around, I get to be a spokesman for pop culture." One year, Doege's quotes appeared in the Reno daily newspaper eight times.

"That was the same year Kurt Cobain (lead singer/guitarist of the Seattle grunge rock group Nirvana) shot himself," Doege recalls.

"I called him an idiot.

If you've got that kind of money, you can go through recovery (from heroin addiction).

You can get away from it." That year, a group of Reno rappers, The Line, released a self-produced cassette, one track of which talked about killing cops.

A local independent music store stopped carrying the cassette, and the 24-year-old leader of The Line asked Recycled Records to stock the tape.

Doege agreed.

"I turned that into a little public relations coup.

I sold the things because I believe in freedom of speech and turned all the money over to the Police Athletic League." An intervioew with Doege:

Q: How did you learn to run a business? A: My parents owned a motel when I was growing up, so I had experience being an entrepreneur.

I worked on the desk.

I also worked retail, for Thom McCan and Chess King, which served me better than a business degree ever did.

Q: How long did it take to push the business into the black? A: Three years.

Q: How many employees did you start with? A: One part-time.

He was going to college.

He stayed with me for nine years.

Q: How do you accumulate your stock? A: I work strictly by what the public brings in, and have for 21 years.

In that time, I've watched eight used-record stores that have opened in this market that are all out of business.

[There are several others in the market now.] We don't go to auctions.

I don't search in garage sales.

My supply end which for me is the lifeblood is handled by a simple thing: a good-sized yellow pages ad.

Q: If you buy the new Sheryl Crow CD, it may cost $18 new at a mainstream music store.

What would it cost at Recycled Records? A: $10.

Most of my CDs run $8 to $10.

And if you buy two, we knock off a $1 and include the tax.

A lot of the CDs we sell are new.When it comes time to sell things, there are a lot of ways to get them.

Sometimes people are in emergency situations.

Sometimes we get stuff still sealed.

We get lots of stuff coming in here all the time, because we have lots of customers coming in here.

I also have a better margin than a new-music store.

I am buying cheap.

The average chain store is not making anywhere near that margin.

If a CD is on sale for $13 or $14, the wholesale cost of the thing is close to $10 or $11.

I have an even a better margin on my LP records.

I buy most of them for 50 cents to $1.

Q: How do you defend the markup you make as a dealer? A: I have to sit here and stock the store.

I may have a $100 album on the wall that I paid somebody $5 for.

But on the other hand, getting somebody to come in who's got the $100 in his pocket and wants to buy the album, could take 10 years.

Q:

Mirabelli's Music City, an independent store in Reno, closed this year after being in business since the 1950s.

How do you compete as an independent in a market that has not only national chains such as Sam Goody,Wherehouse Records and Tower Records, but retailers of music ranging from Barnes & Noble to Best Buys to most supermarkets, drugstores and discount stores? A.

Fairness and sense of humor.

People have a good time when they come in here.

Everybody's selling CDs now.

But we've always had good prices.

My tapes are still $3.50.

My tapes were $3.50 when we took over in December 1980.

I also have vinyl, which most people don't, although it's almost all gone now.

After Mirabelli's closed, I became the oldest record store in town.

Q: Do you compete directly with the new-music stores? A: Not really.

Sam Goody will sell 500 copies of the new Britney Spears when that thing comes out that week.

I may get one or two copies that float through.

That store is more for the impulse buyer, not the collector, who's the person who says, "Gee, I'm missing the third Killing Joke album." Q: A customer can get more value by accepting a store credit than selling for cash with you.

How many customers take advantage of this? A:We do have that percentage that likes to trade.We encourage it.We don't always have money, but we always have stock.

Q:What product guarantees do you offer? A: That it plays out.

The only thing we don't guarantee is whether or not you're going to like it.We do a visual inspection of what we buy.

A vinyl record might have snap-crackle-pop, which we can't guarantee against, but I guarantee it's not going to skip or have a warp that makes it unplayable.

I guarantee that my tapes aren't taped over and won't squeak or squeal.

Also, some people have the misconception that "used" looks like their used, which means beat to death.We have a polisher here that can make CDs look like new.

Q:What is Recycled Records' niche? A: More the music collector than just the passing music listener.We all have books and music at home.

But some people have libraries.We deal more with the completist.

If somebody wants a Japanese copy of a Bruce Springsteen single, chances are we'll have it as opposed to a regular record store.

But we also do just fine selling $3.50 Van Halen cassettes to Joe Blow.

Q:What are your customer demographics? A: A male 21-year-old is my average.

I think most people's musical tastes are formed between the ages of 16 and 24.

You actually have time to sit there with an album out in front of you, and go through the lyrics and pay attention to the music, and it really hits you because you're going through the hormonal roller coaster.

All of a sudden a sad song comes on, and you've broken up with your girlfriend.

After that age, here comes a wife, kids, career, and you don't have the time to sit down with a CD and go through all the songs.

It's background music now.