How Gold Rush Vinyl remixed an outdated industry with automation

When Caren Kelleher left Silicon Valley in 2018 to found Gold Rush Vinyl, a vinyl record-pressing plant, people were shocked by her decision. 

To them, vinyl was obsolete. But Caren recognized the comeback moment vinyl was having. That growth then exploded during the pandemic. Fans liked to collect records from their favorite artists, and artists were incentivized to sell them as they brought in more revenue than digital streams and video views. 

But the few vinyl pressing plants still in operation hadn’t updated their manufacturing process for decades. Their capacity was limited and their turnaround, slow. With increasing demand and static supply, these plants catered almost exclusively to the major record labels.

Caren knew that to keep up with its returning popularity, the industry needed to rethink its operations and, most importantly, start serving indie artists, who were most often left out.

Manual work dominates an outdated industry

When launching Gold Rush Vinyl, Caren decided to focus on making high-quality, fast-turnaround vinyl specifically for indie artists. From the start, she knew her business model depended on having a larger number of smaller artists as clients. What surprised her was how much she underestimated the additional workload those clients would place on her team.

“We needed 10 times the clients as other manufacturers, sometimes 50 times,” Caren said. “Managing that was a nightmare, especially during the pandemic when supply chains got messed up.” 

Manual processes might’ve worked for companies serving fewer customers. It just wasn’t going to cut it for Gold Rush Vinyl. 

For example, when communicating with artists, Caren’s team would attach PDFs of quotes to emails. They’d go back and forth via email, and by the time the client agreed, it was hard to remember which quote they’d accepted. To confuse matters more, some clients would send emails while others would text. Some used Dropbox and others WeTransfer, then links would expire mid-conversation. The process was a mess, and the workload was impossible for their scrappy team. 

Gold Rush Vinyl was hitting a crescendo. To break through, they needed to build a better system and eliminate repetitive tasks—without dishing out tens of thousands of dollars.

“That’s where Zapier came in and became a superhero for our company,” Caren said.

Bringing vinyl into the 21st century with automation

Their sales cycle was the first thing in need of an upgrade. Caren googled “how to automatically upload PDFs from Gmail to Google Drive” and discovered Zapier. From there, she had the Zap—what we call an automated workflow—up and running in minutes.

“I remember making my first Zap because of the relief I felt. Because it worked. That’s magic,” Caren said.

After that first Zap, Caren slowly automated other tasks within their sales and manufacturing processes. And just like that, her workflows mushroomed, managing business-critical processes for her team on autopilot. “We can now attribute almost all of our customer service and sales processes to seven Zaps that we use with filters, delays, email parsing, and conditional formatting.”

Gold Rush Vinyl has even been able to create a member portal with Zapier. It allows artists to log in and check the status of their records without having to talk directly with anyone from their team. The time-saving portal keeps team members from having to field constant check-ins, and it ensures artists feel supported throughout the process. Without coding, Caren was able to build and maintain the portal for about $600 per year—significantly more affordable than the thousands it would cost to develop custom software for the same purpose.

Gold Rush Vinyl is now building automated workflows with more than 16 apps, including Airtable, Webflow, and Klaviyo. “Typically, when we make our software decisions now, we start with Zapier,” said Caren. “If a software isn’t in Zapier’s directory, we won’t even do a trial with that software.”

Automating business growth and new opportunities

With the help of automation, Gold Rush Vinyl is running with a 50% leaner headcount than competitors of a similar size. 

“I speak with business owners all the time and they’re like, ‘What’s the secret?’ Zapier is the key to what we do now,” said Caren.

Last year, Gold Rush Vinyl ran 76 Zaps for 18,000 tasks. They saved about 2,285 hours of manual work, which equals 1.2 years of labor. And every year, these numbers rise.

Because of the time Caren’s won back, she’s been able to focus on the tasks only she can do. She’s tuned up their manufacturing capacity and developed an entirely new business making 24k gold records, knowing the team will be able to handle the bigger workload. “We know with confidence that we’ll be able to grow because of the systems we have in place and the scalability of the processes,” Caren said.

In fact, Gold Rush Vinyl gets almost all of its business from word-of-mouth. To date, only 0.8% of revenue has been put toward marketing. Caren attributes this to their strong automation, allowing them to deliver better service. 

Through it all, Gold Rush Vinyl has maintained its unique vision in a legacy industry—something they have in common with the indie artists they serve. 

“We couldn’t do our work without Zapier. The work [Zapier] is doing helps us do more work for musicians.”