Go Fund Lilliput Records on Milwaukee’s East Side

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The Exclusive Company (1669 N. Farwell Ave.), a record store on Milwaukee’s East Side, announced last week that they are closing their doors in the next few months. However, a prospective new store called Lilliput Records is crowdfunding to fill the East Side space. 

Current Exclusive Company employees Tanner Musgrove and Brian Kirk are spearheading the effort. Musgrove shares the timeline of how everything started.

“We found out Feb. 4 that the store was closing,” she said about The Exclusive Company. “It gave us ample time to figure out a game plan … at first, I was really heartbroken that they were shutting down the store but that then became fuel to actually do something.”

She was concerned that the closing would leave a void in Milwaukee alone. “We just couldn’t stand to see that,” she continued. “Me and the current manager, Brian, got together and decided that we wanted to buy the inventory, which then led to us buying the actual building.”

Musgrove has worked at Exclusive Company for five years while Kirk has been there for 12 years. The new store’s name is a reference to the Jonathan Swift book Gulliver’s Travels.

She went on, “We really like the idea of this fantasy island named Lilliput and working that in tandem with the idea of a record store being a place where you can come to escape in and lose yourself. I know that’s what music is for so many of us anyway. We also love the band Liliput, formerly known as Kleenex. The name is a way to pay homage to them but also punk bands in general because they’ve had a huge influence in both Brian and I’s lives.”

They hope to make Lilliput Records as community-oriented a space as possible. Musgrove explained: “We want to give customers the same familiarity of The Exclusive Company so we do plan to keep the same model—CDs, DVDs, vinyl, audio equipment—but there’s always been a bit of a corporate feel to The Exclusive Company and we want to eliminate that. There’s definitely going to be some cosmetic changes that we’ll make overtime … whether that’s painting the space, ripping up the carpets, changing the bin, that kind of thing. We want to involve as many people as possible, whether that looks like collaborating with local businesses and artists or having local music come and play.”

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Lilliput Records hope to open during the first week of May.

“We made a deal on the building,” Musgrove said. “We’re getting all the paperwork together for that, plus we’ve hired a logo designer and we’re looking into POS systems and reaching out to distributions.”

Musgrove and Kirk have set up a GoFundMe to raise funds and complete the transition. Their goal is $120,000; in five days they have raised almost $12,000. To donate, click here. To subscribe to Lilliput Records’ newsletter, click here.