Energy for everyone
Energy for All ( EFA ) was a German Independent - record distribution , the 1982-2004 played a central role in the German indie scene. It was considered to be the "nucleus of the independent sales structure".
history
The EFA was founded in 1982 in the context of the band Ton Steine Scherben and the squatter scene and grew to become the most important distributor for the German scene of independent labels in the punk , new wave , alternative and from 1989 also for electronic music, which later always came more into focus. In the mid-1990s the motto was: "The guitar is dead." Some labels like Glitterhouse , which relied heavily on guitar-oriented music, therefore switched to other distributors. Insiders regarded it as a serious mistake that people continued to use dance labels even after the electronics boom ended in 1999.
The EFA was seen as exemplary in the way it looked after the labels and in their commitment to the products. She saw her task both in introducing new labels and making their products marketable, as well as placing established artists in the charts.
She worked with both small record stores and with large retail chains and markets. EFA worked geographically decentralized: had offices in Cologne and Berlin, administration and accounting in Frankfurt (Main) and Göttingen, the warehouse was in Hamburg. She had also bought the Austrian distributor Ixhulu and the Swiss distributor RecRec.
At the end of the day, EFA had over 50 employees and, in addition to its in-house 200, looked after small, medium and large independent labels from Germany and abroad.
The bankruptcy in spring 2004 did not come as a surprise to industry insiders, as a wrong business policy was observed in the 1990s, especially in export policy, and experts believe that the EFA did not react adequately to the recession that began in 1999. A year before the bankruptcy, some important labels like Kitty-Yo and Disko B jumped out and switched to other distributors like Indigo , even if the managing directors Horst Lewald and Ulrich Vormehr asked for patience. Some of the labels that remained with the distributor until the end lost five to seven-figure sums. Artists and pressing plants also fought for their share of the bankruptcy estate. The EFA bankruptcy damaged many labels so much that they also had to give up. The most popular example was Force Inc. Music Works GmbH with labels such as Force Inc. Music Works and Mille Plateaux . The history of sales was traced and analyzed in a chapter in the book "We will always go on" by George Lindt.