Rough Trade, the record label, is now part of the Beggars Group of indie labels following Beggars' acquisition of Sanctuary's stake in it. Beggars' interest in Rough Trade had been common knowledge for sometime, and negotiations between Beggars and Sanctuary were ongoing, even as the board of the latter agreed to back the sale of the rest of its company to Universal Music. There had been rumours that Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis had been trying to regain complete control of the label himself, but in the end the Beggars deal seems to have had the backing of both Travis and his co-founder Jeannette Lee.
In a statement, Travis said this morning: "It has been a long and fitful journey from the time we were selling Lurkers singles in the Rough Trade shop on Kensington Park Road to this brand new partnership with Martin Mills and his Beggars Group. It has been a road littered with bumps and crashes but nevertheless we have had many world class artists gracing our label. Jeannette Lee and myself feel that history has bought us full circle and we know that this liaison will finally give the label the kind of stability, dynamism and expertise that will allow us to grow on a worldwide basis. We share a culture that is about our artists and their work. To continue to be a wholly independent label, with the support of the Beggars Group, is the best of all possible worlds to our way of thinking. We are genuinely excited about the future and the opportunity to bring new records and new artists to the world's attention".
Beggars chief Martin Mills added: "In our early days, I used to drive our new records over to the Rough Trade shop in Notting Hill. They've clearly been a crucial part of the UK independent scene since then, from the days of the Cartel and The Smiths, to The Strokes and Sufjan Stevens. It was impossible to resist the appeal of combining their amazing musical heritage with ours. Adding them to everything that's going on here for our existing group of record labels is a very exciting proposition".
The Rough Trade shops are now, of course, a separate company to the label. On an aside, they too have been in the news this last week with the opening of their new store in East London's Brick Lane. The expansion of an indie record shop chain is even more newsworthy at the moment, of course, given that much of the other big news in the music retail domain has been store closures, not openings.