11 min read

Falls Church’s CD Cellar: 32 Years & Thriving

Falls Church’s CD Cellar: 32 Years & Thriving
CD Cellar at 105 Park Ave. in The City of Falls Church has grown to become one of the largest record stores in the Mid-Atlantic. Photo by Chris Jones.

If you’re not sure how CD Cellar – Falls Church’s only record shop specializing in Compact Discs (CDs), Vinyl long-playing records (LPs), and Digital Video Discs (DVDs) – has managed to survive for 32 years and counting, you’re probably uncertain how the business has managed to thrive and grow all these years to become one of the largest record stores in the mid-Atlantic and a northern Virginia hub for record collectors and music aficionados.

The Falls Church Independent spoke to Dave Giese, co-founder and co-owner of CD Cellar located at 105 Park Ave. – just a block from the State Theatre – about the shop’s origins in the early 90s, its secrets to success, and the joys of working within the record-collecting community they’ve helped build in The Little City and beyond.

Dave Giese is a co-founder and owner of CD Cellar, founded in 1992. Photo by Chris Jones.

“If you’re a local and even remotely interested in music, you’ve already heard of CD Cellar,” a highlight blurb from City Seeker begins. “The store has been a Broad Street fixture since 1992, when it first opened its doors to music enthusiasts of Falls Church. Packed to the rafters with an exhaustive inventory of secondhand and new CDs, DVDs and even vintage LPs, CD Cellar boasts of a friendly, knowledgeable staff who'll guide you adeptly among the long, confusing aisles. Not only do they have listening stations, but, get this – they also host several live music programs and band events throughout the year.”

According to Vinyl World, CD Cellar “specializes in “Classical, Funk/Soul, Hip Hop, Jazz, Pop, Rock, Stage & Screen.” And – “Don’t let the name fool you” – this indie record store has “a large selection of new and used vinyl, including audiophile pressings and rare OG releases,” and sells “Vinyl, CDs, T-shirts, Cassettes, DVDs, Amplifiers, Comic Books, Hi-Fi Equipment, Receivers, Tapes, Records, Turntables, [and] Speakers.”

From high-end audiophiles to teenagers just starting their collections, CD Cellar caters to all. Photo by Chris Jones.

“This is a great shop! I’m recreating the vinyl collection of my youth and I’ve found almost everything I need here,” wrote Emma Z in a Yelp review of CD Cellar last December. “Everything I've seen is reasonably priced and everything I've purchased has been good quality. The staff is friendly, asked if I wanted a frequent buyer card for savings and helped me find an album I was looking for. I'm in the shop 2 to 4 times a week now.”

“This place is amazing," wrote Robert E. of Stafford, Virginia on Yelp last September. "The store’s name belies their focus, which is vinyl. They easily have thousands of records. An entire section of the store is dedicated to classical and jazz. I collect vinyl soundtracks and was really impressed by the number they had, which in other stores is usually an afterthought. I walked out with over a hundred dollars in vinyl and could have easily spent much more…” 

So, How is CD Cellar's Business Doing?

And how is CD Cellar’s business actually doing? “Would you say you’re thriving as a business – or, are you barely hanging on?” we asked Giese. 

“No, we’re thriving,” Giese said without hesitation. “Sales generally go up each year by some modest percentage. I think ever since the Covid era, it really took off and it really hasn’t slowed down since. There’s a certain momentum to it. You know, you’re giving people a reason to come back. Stuff cycles through here pretty quickly. Used stuff. There’s a lot of churn so there are always new things to look at. You’re not coming into a store that has the same dusty stuff that’s been sitting there forever. We carry new records so we don’t have to rely on someone to trade in a new Taylor Swift in order to sell it. And we carry what we can get that’s popular on LP.”

Courtesy Anna Nayd, CD Cellar customer. Facebook photo.

A visit to the store confirmed just how fresh all the selections appeared, no dusty offerings, every item wrapped neatly in clear plastic. And every section clearly labeled and marked, as perhaps 15-20 shoppers of varied ages casually browsed the shelves in each of the store's two rooms.

Secrets to Success

One major payoff to carrying both new and used materials is that customers can economize by later selling back their used items while the store can continue to replenish their shelves with fresh offerings. “You’re basically creating sellers to us down the line,” Giese explained. “When somebody tires of [their records or CDs] they know they can always come back and trade it in, if they’ve taken care of it.”

So, how – especially in the age of Spotify, Apple Music and other music streaming services – has CD Cellar managed to survive and thrive after 32 years? According to Giese, “all the different music formats or ways of listening to music kind of coexist with each other” today. When he’s with his kids, for example, they might share music streamed on Spotify, but when he’s in the car, he might pop in a CD. And when he’s “listening as an activity” at home, he often pulls out a special LP for careful attention. 

"Seven rows of new arrivals." Facebook photo courtesy CD Cellar.

While streaming presented a real threat to the CD and record industry in the early 2000s, the “newness of streaming has kind of worn off,” Giese said. For many of today’s collectors – young and old – there’s a longing for the experience of listening to an album while pouring over its accompanying physical materials, not just as a stream. “People kind of miss the tactile element of, you know, record covers or just a [boxed] CD. There’s a certain amount of appeal to that. And the old joke is, “You just don’t get the inconvenience if you stream.” [Laughs]. 

"A lot of kids want to buy a lot of music..." Photo by Chris Jones.

But really, it’s more about cost-savings for avid music collectors. “A lot of kids want to buy a lot of music. And if you’re close to my age, you probably remember going into a record store and spending maybe $40 and coming out with 8 or 9 albums. You really can’t do that [today] unless you’re buying records straight out of the budget bins…. And, I think each format has its own following. Now there are people swinging back to CDs because they're so relatively inexpensive.”

A serendipitous find: matching Dischord shirt and album. Photo by Chris Jones.

The trick has been to supply the formats collectors have returned to even if said formats had once fallen out of favor. Everything comes in waves. “All these things kind of go through cycles,” Giese said. “And when one [format] slides back, usually another one pops up and makes itself more appealing.”

Moving to the Center of Falls Church

When CD Cellar began in 1992 (in the basement of what is now Space Bar at 709 Leesburg Pike), LPs had fallen out of favor and the store only carried used CDs. About 10 years later, however, they added LPs and now sales have “cycled back around” and “the numbers are pretty evenly split between the two formats, CDs and LPs,” Giese said.

CD Cellar's original Falls Church location below where Space Bar is today at 709 West Broad St. Courtesy CD Cellar.

Weathering many challenges – such as the rise of the iPod in 2001 and the Great Recession in 2007-2009 – Giese and his partners decided in 2014 to close out one of their shops in Clarendon (due to high rent) and consolidate with the original CD Cellar at the current Park Ave. location. “We had a good friend who had a guitar shop [Action Music] next to us and we knew the folks upstairs who have a recording studio. And we said, ‘This is the perfect spot for us.’ They made room for us when the deli moved out and this is when we really hit our stride, about 8 years ago in this location. We really like the spot.” 

Knowing Your Customers and Their Tastes

It’s also vital to know who your shoppers are, Giese emphasized. He described several of the store’s core “constituencies.” First, “you have the serious collectors.” These are the folks who “have always known us and are the people you don’t have to advertise to.” Then, you have the weekend shoppers, people who are “either just looking for a single CD or a single album, or are discovering the format.” But, “it’s a different scene on the weekends, in terms of who’s coming in.” Surprisingly, this group has “skewed a little bit younger” over the “last five years,” ranging “from their mid-20s to mid-40s.” These shoppers are acquiring music in higher volumes, and “there’s a healthy sprinkling of teens who are figuring it out for the very first time.”

A signed Oscar Peterson. Photo by Chris Jones.

The High-End Audiophiles

But, a key third constituency are the high-end audiophiles. These are the folks “who are buying super-audio discs (SACDs) or gold discs which are the old ultra-fidelity things,” or they’re buying “high-end pressings of records we’re all familiar with.” 

Many of these shoppers are spending a good deal of money on high-fidelity audio to match their high-quality, and often very pricey, audio components. “A lot of this is driven by people who’ve spent a fairly serious amount of money on a stereo system only to find that…. their system is so high-quality” that the audio shortcomings of what they’re playing – scratches or imperfections – detract from the listening experience. “If you’ve spent $40,000 or $60,000 on a stereo, or just a component, you’re not blinking at a $200 record,” Giese said.

On their website, CD Cellar offers high-quality turntables and other select audio equipment. Courtesy CD Cellar.

For these sorts of shoppers, CD Cellar is promoting Capital Audiofest in Rockville, Maryland this November, showcasing the highest-end stereo equipment. Some “80 rooms in the atrium-style hotel where vendors come to set up nicest stereo systems – and you listen and it’s pretty amazing what you hear and what you see,” Giese mused.

So, Giese thinks of all these varied shopping constituencies as “different tribes that come in here for different things,” but can all be made to feel happy and welcome.  

Carrying the Freshest Stock

Pleasing the most buyers also entails carrying the broadest range of musical genres in both new and used formats, carefully culled for quality. “We don’t specialize in any one particular kind of music in part because we don’t want to disenfranchise anybody,” Giese said, “so you’re just as likely to find jazz and classical in here as you are hip hop, rock and pop. You know, it’s not a matter of being all things to everybody, but it’s a matter of being welcoming to everybody’s tastes who come in.” 

Keeping the shelves stocked with fresh materials. Photo by Chris Jones.

One last factor that allows CD Cellar to always maintain fresh stock, the families of major music collectors often sell the shop their entire life collections, knowing they’ll be given fair appraisal values and be treated respectfully. And estate sales often look to CD Cellar to move their sizable collections. “There’s a lot of attention to detail here,” Giese said. “We grade [i.e., price] on a universally regarded standard, making sure we’re not putting anything out that’s particularly chewed up… And the old-school collectors like it because we’re very consistent and in line with what they might see on a website like Discogs and people who are buying stuff new appreciate it because we’re carrying a pretty diverse selection.” 

Employees Like to Stay

You can tell by CD Cellar’s employee loyalty, that the management is doing something right. They’re currently employing “probably 6 or 7” workers. And once people start working there, they don’t usually want to leave. “There are three of us who've been here over 30 years. And everybody else has been here between 5 and 7 years,” Giese said. “And we’ve got one guy who went from working with us to becoming a teacher, and now he comes in on Saturdays and has been doing that for 30 years. So, it’s a place to work that people hang onto. And we’ve got a good group of people here that I wouldn’t trade for any other staff.”

The Falls Church Experience

Finally, Giese highlights what makes shopping at CD Cellar a special experience within The City of Falls Church. “I think everybody who has an interest in music would enjoy a visit here, whether it’s for a few minutes or a few hours. Sometimes it takes a few hours to go through here completely.... I think part of the joy of a place like this is the serendipity of running into something you weren't looking for that looks interesting. And I would say it’s a neat place to come in and hang out.”

Iconic cardboard Spock cutout greets CD Cellar shoppers. Photo by Chris Jones.

“For anybody over 40 they’ll remember this kind of store from when they were a kid. There were a lot of them back then and I don’t think there are that many now…. This one has its own flavor and is friendly and welcoming and is a good way to spend a couple of hours if you want to spend your Saturday doing that. There are a lot of people here on the weekends who’ll go and get breakfast at Dogwood or take in a football game and spend some time with us and then go about their day. There are other people who come after the Farmers Market on Saturday and roll through as part of their morning. You know, we say, 'Please leave your coffee cups up here.'" [Laughs]  

“And this is a great little neighborhood to be in. You have some great restaurants around here. You’ve got a couple of great bars. You’ve got other music stuff around us like the studios upstairs and behind us and the guitar shop is one of the best in – if not the country – certainly on the east coast.... And with coffee shops around and the walkability in this part of Falls Church and the State Theatre across the street there’s a lot going on here.... [We've] got a little fun dining and arts block or two. And it’s worth anyone’s time to come and explore."


By Christopher Jones