Arjan Shaw wanted to be his own boss.
After he was laid off from his software engineering job when budget cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency canceled work his company was doing for the United States Department of Agriculture, he began to consider what that would involve.
He had experience in landscaping, and enjoyed being outdoors in the summer, but that was ultimately just another job, another salary, and he wanted to pursue a passion.
He found it in music, and after plenty of effort opened PigStyle, Loveland’s newest, and currently only, record store.
“I’ve always been a collector myself, and (the record business) hasn’t been swallowed up by the box stores,” he said. “Itap something you can do independently.”
Shaw grew up in the Netherlands, where his father maintained a vinyl collection, and he himself has kept one for as long as he can remember.
The new store fills a void in Loveland left when Downtown Sound, the only record store in Loveland, moved to Greeley in 2024. Fort Collins, where Shaw lives, is overserved in the record market, he said, so he decided to try his luck in Loveland, where he saw an untapped market.
Located in a small storefront a block from the heart of downtown, 100 E. Third St., PigStyle is immediately recognizable for its bright green door and distinctive logo, a psychedelic pig skating on vinyl records.
The logo also provided the inspiration for the store’s unique name. Years ago, Shaw’s wife had quickly sketched the pig, and Shaw loved the drawing. When he was opening his store, he knew he wanted to incorporate it into the logo, and it stood to reason that the name should follow suit.
“Basically, the name PigStyle came from the pig,” he said. “Because I knew I wanted to use the pig.”
“I had to call it something,” he added with a laugh. “Everybody asks me when they come in here, maybe I should just post it somewhere in the shop.”
PigStyle, open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., is currently an operation of one, Shaw is doing everything himself, down to building the record bins by hand in a friend’s woodshop after hours.
He found some secondhand record players that sit in a charming restaurant booth where customers can listen to albums, but plans to replace them with better machines in the coming weeks.
He built his inventory himself, finding hobbyists looking to sell off their collections or others with bulk quantities of used records to offload, and sought out other online sellers looking to sell their records on consignment in his store.There’s still more work to be done.
Shaw’s currently working on establishing relationships with distributors to offer new records, and hopes to expand into CDs and cassette tapes as well.
But he’s already got an online purchasing option up and running on his website, pigstylemusic.com, and even has a streaming service where visitors to the site can hear songs that are present within his inventory, potentially finding a new favorite to add to their collections.
He’s hopeful that the business will take off. Prior to fully committing, Shaw took the plan for a test drive, purchasing one bulk shipment of records and hosting a yard sale at his home, making a small profit. That doesn’t guarantee that the business will be enough to make a living, he said, but was an encouraging sign, and enough for him to believe it was worth a try.
“I hope it works out,” he said with a smile.
