Hi-Fi Records’ Kyle Maggart seizes the day in Olathe

Kyle Maggart is always prepared. Whenever he goes anywhere that he expects to find a record player, he slides his most recent vinyl finds into a leather satchel and ferries a portion of his personal stash to that day’s turntable. Often, that turntable is the one where he works.

When we meet at Hi-Fi Records, the shop that Maggart runs from inside Olathe’s vintage mall Green Expressions, he pulls out two gems: The Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and a reissue of the Stooges’ 1969 self-titled debut.

“I just found the original a few weeks ago,” he says with a grin, holding up the Stooges’ record as if it were a prize he had won. He gets up, slides the Cure record onto the platter, and waits for the music to start. As the first few notes pour out of the speakers, he melts into his chair, and his grin widens into a blissed-out smile.

Maggart doesn’t keep all of the best stuff he unearths — no one in his business can. Instead, he adds a new round of finds to Hi-Fi’s stock every Friday. And his customers know it.

“You tell people that you’re putting out 250 new records on Friday, they will be there,” he says. “Record collectors are ravenous.”

Maggart isn’t a grizzled bargain-bin hound. About to turn 25, he contracted what he calls “record madness” only two years ago. That’s when Bettsy Ortiz, Maggart’s girlfriend, bought him a vinyl pressing of Paul Simon’s Graceland for his birthday. Ortiz, a lifelong avid collector, figured that her boyfriend would dig the gift, and she was right. She didn’t plan to ignite an obsession, but soon, Maggart was buying up records by the box. And as anyone who regularly hunts for records knows, you sift through a lot of rocks to find one diamond.

With cratefuls of pretty good rocks piling up around him, Maggart decided to enter the market himself — and he caught a lucky break. “My mom found an ad that just said, ‘Vendors wanted — Olathe’ and a phone number,” he says with a laugh. “So I called it up.”

He dialed Jet and Russell Magathan, who run Green Expressions. The couple hadn’t yet opened the store, and they set him up with a small space for about $100 a month. Hi-Fi Records was now official.

“Bettsy and I were able to set up, like, four crates of records I didn’t want — just priced to sell — and a few other knickknacks, like comic books and old things that I needed to get rid of,” he says. “I remember telling Bettsy the first day, as I was leaving, ‘You know, we’ll probably never even make our rent doing this, but it gives us something to do together.’ “

But sell records they did, and it wasn’t long before Maggart moved his records to a bigger space inside Green Expressions. To afford the higher rent, he started working two days a week at Expressions in addition to working what he says is a high-stress, full-time job.

Adding to the stress: Ortiz’s cancer diagnosis.

“At the time, Bettsy had to receive some more treatment, and I just knew I had to do something,” Maggart says. He was able to change his full-time gig to part-time hours and to take a little time off.

He also doubled down on vinyl, taking out a loan and buying as many records as he could find. He and Ortiz visited surrounding states together, hunting for collectible albums.

“Life is too short to not do what you love 100 percent of the time, every second of the day,” Maggart says. “Going through all that with Bettsy made me see that. I can devote as much time or as little time as I need to [to Hi-Fi Records],” he says. “If Bettsy’s not feeling well, she can ride along with me, look at records, and she enjoys it.”

Maggart’s goal is simple: Carry great used stuff at reasonable prices, with customer comfort paramount. “If I had to pick a store that I modeled my business after, it’s Love Garden,” he says. “I love how they do things. No matter what you buy, they have something good to say, or they don’t say anything at all.”

He cites another metro staple as a guiding star: Zebedee’s RPM — in particular, that store’s easygoing return policy. “If someone buys a warped record, or it’s just not what you thought it would be, you can return it,” he says.

Growth has been slow, but it’s happening, he says. The latest incarnation of Hi-Fi Records — which celebrated its grand opening on May 30 — is now filled with a diverse selection of rock-themed T-shirts, original art, used audio equipment and more.

“The bigger the better,” Maggart says. “I don’t know what that encompasses, but I think that this store will succeed in Kansas City. I want to carry new music, CDs, cassettes, shirts and local art. The more people who have access to dope-ass music, the better.”