Proposal · prepared for Polar Bear Records · 19 May 2026

A few specific fixes for polarbearrecords.co.uk.

Polar Bear Records · Kings Heath · website rebuild.

I rebuild small-business sites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving credibility on the table. Polar Bear has 35 years on York Road, the only Birmingham shop stocking Faust, Can and Henry Cow, and (in 2026) no website at all. Three findings below, then a working rebuild you can click through.

Open live preview ↗ Read the three findings Reply to the proposal

Address · 10 York Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham B14 7RZ Owner · Steve Bull, since 1993 Founded · 1991

10 York Road · Kings Heath · since 1991

Thirty-five years of jazz, avant rock and krautrock on the Birmingham high street. Open the live preview ↗

Three findings, in order of priority

What 35 years of specialism is currently leaving on the table.

A walk-through of what a stranger sees today when they search for Polar Bear from cold. Finding 01 is the trunk; the other two are branches.

01

Thirty-five years of trading, no website at all, every search for a Kings Heath record shop lands on someone else first.

What I saw: Polar Bear Records has been at 10 York Road since 1991. Steve has run it as a one-person shop since 1993. The Google query "record shop Kings Heath" returns ten links before the user reaches anything written by Polar Bear itself: Grapevine Birmingham, Yell, Yelp, Vinyl World, All Good Record Shops, Record Store Day, Wanderlog, Citymaps, Reviewbritain, Mimoji. Every one of those pages is third-party text about Polar Bear, with directory ads and competing record shops in the sidebar.
Why it matters: In 2026, the first impression a visitor forms of a record shop is the first organic search result. For Polar Bear that result is the Grapevine listing, the Vinyl World listing, or a Citymaps review thread. None of those pages say "1991" above the fold. None of them list the specialism. None of them carry the Friday-new-arrivals tradition. None of them are the polar bear shopfront photo a crate-digger would actually click. A 35-year specialist record shop is paying the directories to be findable, and the directories are reaping the credibility.
Cause: A combination of historical accident (the chain Polar Bear was franchised under had a central web presence; when it shrank, the local sites went down with it) and time (Steve runs the shop, the counter, the buying, the Friday post, and any one of those is a full week of work).
After rebuild: After rebuild: a one-page polarbearrecords.co.uk that ranks first for "record shop Kings Heath", "vinyl Birmingham", "avant rock Birmingham", "krautrock UK". The Friday-new-arrivals post mirrored to the homepage. Email signup for the Friday list, with the existing Facebook group as the second home. JSON-LD MusicStore + Organization + FAQPage at build time so AI assistants cite Polar Bear when asked.

02

Public contact address is stevepolarbear@hotmail.co.uk, the only Birmingham shop stocking Faust, Can and Henry Cow is reachable on a 1990s consumer inbox.

What I saw: The single public-facing email address listed for Polar Bear (across All Good Record Shops, the Facebook page header, the Discogs profile bio) is stevepolarbear@hotmail.co.uk. A hotmail.co.uk address was unremarkable in 2003. In 2026 it is a signal mismatch: the only shop in the Midlands that takes avant rock and krautrock seriously is replying from a free webmail address the same one a school-leaver uses for sign-ups.
Why it matters: A serious collector in London or Tokyo who has just clicked through to a Steve Bull email about a Krautrock collection sees the hotmail signature and pauses. So does the Visit Birmingham editor putting together a music-tourism trail. So does the journalist writing the Kings Heath piece. The substance of the shop is world-class. The address it answers from is undermining the substance.
Cause: When Polar Bear was set up, the hotmail address was the practical answer. The chain head office handled the formal email, the local shop was on hotmail for day-to-day, and the chain has since closed. The address never got upgraded because there was no domain to host the upgrade on.
After rebuild: After rebuild: steve@polarbearrecords.co.uk forwards to the hotmail inbox for as long as Steve wants it to (no migration drama). The signature on outbound mail reads "Steve Bull, Polar Bear Records, 10 York Road, Kings Heath" with the domain underneath. The hotmail address quietly retires after a year on the door.

03

The Friday-new-arrivals post has run every week since the 1990s, locked inside a Facebook group, invisible to Google.

What I saw: Every Friday since the early 1990s, Steve posts that week's new arrivals to the Polar Bear Facebook group. Customers in Birmingham, the wider Midlands and abroad have built a 30-year ritual around the Friday post. The post is the single most valuable piece of content the shop produces in any given week, and it is locked inside Facebook: not indexed by Google, not subscribable by email, not archived, not RSS-able, not visible to anyone who is not already a member of the group.
Why it matters: A potential new customer searching "Faust 1971 reissue Birmingham" should land directly on the Friday Polar Bear post that lists it. They do not, because the post is a Facebook group post. A music journalist writing about the Krautrock revival should be citing the Friday list as the canonical UK weekly source for new releases in the genre. They do not, because the Friday list is not citeable. 30 years of editorial work is invisible to the open web.
Cause: Facebook groups are walled-garden by design. There is no public RSS, no Open Graph card visible to non-members, no archive page. Once a post drops out of the feed it is functionally gone.
After rebuild: After rebuild: the Friday post writes once, publishes to (a) the homepage as that week's arrivals, (b) the Facebook group as it does today, (c) an email list, (d) an RSS feed, (e) the per-genre archive pages on the site (jazz / avant rock / classic rock / metal / prog and kraut rock / folk). Thirty years of Friday posts become a searchable archive Google can index. The Krautrock collector in Berlin finds Polar Bear on the first page of search results.

Pricing

Fixed price. No hourly billing. No surprise upgrade tier.

One number for the build, one for ongoing care, one optional. Includes the new domain, the email forward, and the Friday-list mirror.

Build

Full Astro rebuild, fixed for the work

New polarbearrecords.co.uk anchored on 35 years and the six-genre architecture. Steve Bull heritage page. Friday-arrivals homepage card. steve@polarbearrecords.co.uk forwarding to the hotmail inbox. Organization, MusicStore, FAQPage schema at build time. 2-3 week turnaround.

£2,000

fixed · one-off

Care

Hosting and ongoing care

Vercel hosting, SSL automatic, weekly Friday-list publish to the homepage, schema upkeep, monthly analytics email, small content edits any time. Cancel any month.

£150

/ month · cancel any time

Optional

Embedded chatbot, FAQ-trained

A small chatbot trained on the FAQ, hours, genres and the Friday list. Answers "do you have the new Faust", "what time do you close Friday", "can I sell my collection" before the visitor needs to phone.

£50

/ month · optional

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, fully remote from Switzerland.

• One round of revisions before launch
• DNS cutover handled (you keep the domain in your name)
• 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost
• Source code handed over on day 60 (you own everything)

Close

If the proposal lands, reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days.

I take on three Birmingham builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 29 May, the proposal site comes down.

See the live rebuild

A working preview you can click through.

Opens in this tab. The full rebuild as it would deploy to polarbearrecords.co.uk.

Open preview ↗