Jaica Tipper is pivoting.
The 18-year-old entrepreneur, who opened Tipper Records in Okotoks last spring, is closing the Fisher Crescent store at the end of January as she embarks on a new vinyl-centric venture.
Tipper struck a deal late last year to buy the Beatnik Bus, a mobile record store that has been plying the streets of Calgary since 2015, and will officially hit the road with it in early February.
“A few months after I opened a guy came in to sell his record collection, but his collection was like 20,000 records so I was like, ‘Do you want to sell it to me in pieces because obviously I can’t buy it all at once?’" she said.
Those discussions eventually ended up taking a turn as the collector told Tipper that his daughter was no longer able to continue operating the Beatnik Bus and was looking to sell the iconic business.
She’s excited to be the new owner of the 1990 bus that has had all of its seats taken out and replaced by record stands that can accommodate a whopping 7,500 albums.
Tipper is looking forward to taking it on the road, visiting locations and special events throughout the region.
“That’s kind of the fun of it,” she said. “I don’t have a set place that I’ll be at a set time. You kind of have to find the bus.”
She envisions rotating stock depending on where the bus ends up.
“I kind of wanted to do it so if I was going to folk festival, I could curate the collection geared toward folk records and if I was going to a blues festival, I would do blues records,” she said.
In cases where it’s not genre specific, she plans to rotate inventory so customers will always find something different.
The rise of the Beatnik Bus doesn’t necessarily mean the end of Tipper Records, however. Her parents’ business, the Hidden Gem, where the record store was located, is also closing at the end of January, but there are plans to open a second Calgary location — there’s already one in Kensington — in the future. When that happens, Tipper Records could be included.
Until that time, the bus awaits.
“I’m super excited to get to work on it,” she said.
