Hello to all followers of the newly christened DupeCoop blog.
I own DupeCoop CD & DVD Duplication in New York.
DupeCoop was my brainchild when I worked at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village back in the late 70's, early 80's. Some of the artists I worked with were The Rolling Stones, Hall & Oates, Joni Mitchell, Deborah Harry, The Brecker Brothers, AC/DC, etc.
Of course I also worked with local musicians and bands.
Oftentimes I would work on a great recording project and be deeply disappointed when I received the cassette copies the client would send me. Yes, I go back to the days of cassettes.
I started copying my clients' cassettes in my apartment, charging only for the blank tapes. The difference between my tapes and those from professional duplicators was remarkable and clients were thrilled. Of course, I didn't want my engineering work to be presented in anything but the best light.
After doing this for a few months, the void of quality copies in New York City got me to thinking that maybe this could be a side business. Well, okay, it was actually my girlfriend who got me thinking about it.
She worked for an ad agency and came up with the name DupeCoop, a reference to our first tiny location at SoundShop Studios on 22nd Street. My father hated the name and said it sounded like "Poop Scoop", but we stuck with it.
I emptied my bank account and purchased top quality equipment for real-time cassette duplication, including Studer two-track machines. I found a distributor of the kind of tape I preferred and sent copy samples to every major record label in the city.
Within four months of opening our doors DupeCoop was profitable. Our clients included Warner Brothers Records, RCA Records, Island Records and on and on. As it turned out, these labels were also disappointed with the quality of duplication in New York. We simply stepped into the void.
In just a couple years, what started as a side business turned into a full time job. The orders were coming in fast and we grew rapidly.
