They had our highest monthly sales to date. And April started off very strong. Revenue was about 10% above last year for April of 2024. And we really had a pretty big aspect all put together within that. Obviously, we have Record Store Day. We all know that Taylor Swift’s new release came out here in April as well. And with that Taylor Swift one, we did all the exclusive vinyl for Target.com. We filled all their orders on that, which was very significant numbers this year. And then also, we’ve had a pretty big project we’ve been working on with Microsoft and Verizon. I’m sorry, not Microsoft, Nintendo and Verizon and Verizon’s doing a lot of Nintendo switch giveaways. And we’re the distributor in the middle selling a Nintendo product to Verizon.
So all of that’s been very positive impact for the beginning of Q4 here and should continue for the rest of the quarter.
Unidentified Company Representative: Our next question asks, in terms of new growth initiatives, what are you doing to improve the revenue line? Can you talk about any verticals that show elevated growth during the quarter? For example, vinyl, gaming, digital, et cetera.
Jeff Walker: Well, I’ve been talking to a lot of people recently, and I keep saying it’s a great time to be a music artist right now. Music is really on fire. And from an artist’s perspective, CDs are still selling. Vinyl is going through the roof and continuing to be super strong. Obviously, music artists have digital revenue, and they also have concerts and things like that that they’re doing. So the music side has been super strong. You really have to realize that vinyl is, it’s a collectible item. People are collecting it, and it’s really becoming strong there. We also have put out some press releases in the recent past on the K-pop music coming out of Korea. I can’t say anything more than that stuff’s on fire right now.
And the collectability of that from the fans has been very, very strong. One of the other parts of that is our AMPED division, which is exclusive distribution of music. We do have some K-pop labels in there, and one of them that has ATEEZ is a pop K-pop artist, that they are really producing some great sales there on that side. We’ve also moved into some new areas. We have gone down the path of live commerce. There’s Internet sales that are happening, obviously, on Amazon, Walmart, Target and websites. But in today’s world, a lot of sales are starting to move towards live commerce. And that is live auction, live commerce on why not. And we just did one this last week with Star Wars product with eBay Live. And we feel that that’s a very strong category of a new sales channel that wasn’t in existence a few years ago.
When we look at the breadth of products that we have and the collectability of those products, Alliance is primed to be a leader in the live commerce sales channels there. And then the additional one that has been a really big win for us here in fiscal 2024 and expected to continue into 2025 and forward is our digital expansion into digital video. We’ve had digital video for several years now, and it’s really starting to pick up with the volume there. And Bruce mentioned Nefarious and Blind, two big DVD titles that came out this year that drove a lot of digital revenue and are continuing to be very strong weekly digital revenue right now.
Unidentified Company Representative: Next question asks, congratulations on the record store day event. It seems like vinyl is continuing to grow. Can you talk about the macro thematic to what is driving this and is this sustainable going forward?
Bruce Ogilvie: Well, it’s everything vinyl today. I think part of it is vinyl is obviously a collectible item. People like to have a vinyl collection, show it off to their friends and so forth. And obviously people like the sound of vinyl as well. So it’s continuing to really drive forward. And we definitely have seen a pretty big shift from the music artists and the record labels, where they were previously thinking of vinyl as kind of an afterthought because in the past the sales weren’t that significant. But in today’s world, the sales of vinyl on a big new release are becoming very significant numbers. And it’s something that the record labels are spending much more time focusing on. And then the other component in the vinyl is a lot of great collectible sets where a lot of limited edition items in vinyl as well.
Like a good example right now, we do all the music, including vinyl and CD, for Walmart. And over the last 12 months, we’ve secured over 100 different exclusive vinyl titles for Walmart. And one of the big ones that I’m a big fan of is the Bob Marley legend, vinyl, that’s a evergreen seller, a top 10 or top 20 seller for years and years. Well, the limited edition one was a rainbow vinyl version. So that the disc is rainbow color and not just the black vinyl. So that’s something new and collectible that people want to have and, people want to not only collect it, they want to watch it turn on their turntable. So that’s what’s driving vinyl. And we have to also realize that its vinyl is a collectible item. The collectible products in across all entertainment, across sports, across cars, everything is very popular right now with people, and people are collecting a lot of stuff.
And Alliance is really selling a lot of product that is collectible, and that’s the majority of the product that’s in our warehouse is stuff that people are collecting and adding to their collections.
Unidentified Company Representative: Our next question asks, can you talk more about DTC and the progress there?
Bruce Ogilvie: Yes. I hit on that quite a bit there with Ashok’s question. We’re really continuing to fine-tune our direct-to-consumer. We definitely have added some people into our direct-to-consumer team that’s really focusing a lot with a lot of our major retailers, making sure listings and product selection and product pages and everything are dialed in and are looking great to really support the e-commerce initiatives that all the retailers have. That’s a big initiative for every brick and mortar retailer and e-commerce retailers of continue to expand their selection, have that stuff available for sale. It’s really driving a lot of sales for Alliance and for the retailers.
Unidentified Company Representative: And our last webcast question asks, can you provide additional color on your views of the consumer’s posture around your products? Also, are the restructuring costs all behind you now?
Bruce Ogilvie: Well, on the consumer – I mean, the consumers are definitely still rabid fans of entertainment products. So we’re still seeing strong demand on our product categories there. I think the restructuring costs, we didn’t have a whole lot of overall restructuring costs. We are definitely winding down the warehouse there in Minnesota. There was a small amount of cost to wind that down. It’s really the cost savings of that consolidation. And the other big part to think about is we acquired COKeM in September of 2020. So it’s been three and a half years at this point. This consolidation came about because the lease on the main facility was expiring here in May. And the other component, though, is we have been operating on two legacy computer systems.
