Who We Are
We are a group of music lovers with well over 150 years of combined experience in the music business. We have partnered with a top pressing plant in Europe which has garnered countless awards and worked on thousands of projects.
Andy Zicklin - Co-Founder & Treasurer
Andrew was part of the San Francisco punk scene from 1981 through 1989, working at the Chatterbox, DNA Lounge, Paradise Lounge, Wolfgangs, and other Bill Graham venues. He also worked at KUSF and KQAK radio. In 1995, he joined Smith Barney. As his career grew, he worked at Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank as a Wealth Advisor. After leaving Deutsche Bank in 2010, he moved his family to Barcelona, Spain. When they moved back to the USA, he started Zicklin Management Group, working with accredited investors who want to participate in late stage private equity investments. Zicklin Management has grown into Market Central Private Assets. For fun, Andrew also hosts a radio show on KGNU in Colorado and travels around the country on his motorcycle, photographing small towns and abandoned America. He has shown his photography in Denver, San Francisco and Barcelona. Most recently Andy was the CEO of Amazing Radio USA, where he helped launch the Amazing Radio brand in the United States. (email Andy)
Jeff Grabow - EVP, Sales
Jeff started his music career at the legendary King Karol record store in New York City and graduated to sales and marketing positions at WEA, Virgin Records America, Restless Records, Artist Direct, and Caroline Distribution. Along the way, Jeff managed Johnny Thunders and consulted artists as diverse as Pat Boone and Taylor Swift. Jeff currently lives in Sin City USA, Las Vegas, Nevada. (email Jeff)
Bob Schmidt - SVP, Production
Bob Schmidt understands both sides of the record, so to speak. Having only recently retried from road-life, as a twenty-five-year veteran recording and touring musician, producer and composer, he recognizes quality when it comes to vinyl. His life-long love of vinyl certainly predates his own career, when as a youngster he purchased his first album - The Who’s Who Are You. His dedication to the cause is clear; to make sure that artists find the highest quality and truest craftsmanship when partnering with a company to produce their album on vinyl. Bob believes that each album should stand as a unique work of art, both visually as well as sonically. Knowing this process from the viewpoint of the artist as well as the manufacturer enables Bob to co-create long lasting and satisfying relationships with the artists and their representatives who find their way to Pressing Business. (email Bob)
Bill Hein - Co-Founder & CEO
Bill co-founded the Greenworld vinyl album import and distribution company and the Enigma Records and Restless Records labels signing Poison, Motley Crue, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Berlin, Stryper, Flaming Lips and many more notable artists. Restless was a founding partner in the Alternative Distribution Alliance joint venture with Interscope, Sub Pop, Atlantic Records, and Warner Music Group. Bill also managed the Rykodisc and Caroline/Astralwerks labels. Bill lives in Boulder, Colorado where he enjoys cycling, exploring Rocky Mountain ghost towns, and, of course, listening to vinyl. (email Bill)
Andrzej Mackiewicz - Co-Founder
Andrzej’s experience and knowledge of the music industry spans almost four decades and started as the owner of a small record shop. He has been TAKT’s CEO for 14 years now (TAKT is our manufacturing partner in Europe), pressing CDs, DVDs and vinyl. He is also releasing music through Audio Anatomy (focusing on audiophile-quality records at the intersection of prog/art rock and electronic music) and distributing hi-fi equipment to the Polish market. Andrzej lives in Krakow, Poland and is a high-end audio and vinyl freak, King Crimson, Kansas and Led Zeppelin fan, loves Key West, Iceland and Zimbabwe, likes good wine, good movies and good books. (email Andrzej)
Fred Goldring - Co-Founder & Legal
As a founding partner of the prominent Beverly Hills law firm Goldring, Hertz, & Lichtenstein LLP for 21 years, Fred represented many of the most important and biggest selling recording and performing artists in the world and was critical in the signing of many of his firm’s clients’ original record, television, film and brand deals, and helping many of his clients them to make the significant leap into other areas of the entertainment business. Fred has been widely recognized as being amongst the first people in the music industry to recognize, evangelize and embrace the seismic technological shift that became the digital music revolution. He is an Emmy, Clio and NAACP Image Award-winning Executive Producer (with will.i.am) of the iconic Yes We Can music video. Fred is also an accomplished musician and played guitar and sang back-up vocals as a member of New Radicals during President Biden’s Inauguration ceremonies on January 20, 2021.(email Fred)
Our Quality
Our manufacturing plant in Europe has carefully maintained & expertly operated presses from Phoenix Alpha and Alpha Toolex
Our standard weight vinyl is 140g, considerably heavier than most of our competitors’ 120g vinyl
Color vinyl? Multiple colors? Swirl vinyl? No problem
We print our own cardboard packaging & inserts in-house, you don’t have to deal with a separate printer
Our Beliefs
Simply put, there is not enough vinyl record manufacturing capacity worldwide to satisfy the demand from labels and independent artists; many plants shut down & scrapped their vinyl presses when the vinyl market looked to be in terminal decline
Further, there is a worldwide shortage of the lacquer masters needed to initiate the manufacturing process
Lastly, the pressing quality (including the packaging) from many manufacturers is substandard and their delivery reliability is poor
A Word About Our Capabilities
Maybe you’ve heard that Apollo Masters, one of only two remaining lacquer plants, burned to the ground leaving only one source globally, this is a manufacturing bottleneck of epic scale
Our European partner has advanced DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) capability bypassing the lacquer stage in the manufacturing process yielding superior sonic quality; we can also cut lacquers if that is your preference