Vintage-inspired Relikcs streams ‘anti-technology’ into the digital age with high-end audio furniture

A line of West Bottoms-built, high-end stereo consoles capitalizes on a gold rush for vinyl nostalgia, said Paul Suquet, noting their vintage-inspired business bridges the gap between a digital era and “the beauty of analog sound.”

Relikcs Furniture

“Music is something that connects us,” added Dan Posch, one of Suquet’s partners at Relikcs Furniture, a local maker of retrofitted, Mid Century Modern-syled sounds systems that pair record-playing and streaming capabilities in one sturdy console. “Those are core memories, the songs that your parents played when you were little and that you would dance to.”

In a world of fleeting digital interactions, Relikcs builds quality meant to last decades, the duo said, describing their longing for the tactile richness of a recent past when music crackled and hissed, and was enmeshed with everyday physical reality.

“I have a soft spot for tape and hiss and records,” said Suquet, a sound recording engineer and serial entrepreneur, reflecting on the resurgence of vinyl. “To me, it’s a beautiful thing to have people be interested in analog. Not to knock on digital. Digital is, in my opinion, the far superior sound performing format, but it just doesn’t provide the complications, let’s say, of analog.”

While the pieces are built to last decades, Relikcs offers people an escape back — even if for just the length of a song or an album, he added.

“It’s kind of like finding the anti-technology when you want it,” Suquet said.

“Having a beautiful cabinet such as ours perform brilliantly in both a streaming-convenient capacity, as well as, say, later at night, you come back from work, you want to have a beer or a glass of whiskey and sit down for not too long, just 20 minutes because you’ll know that you (just want to) put a record on … and just finding that human connection that you don’t often find in a digital landscape.”

Another pandemic pivot

It’s a familiar story across Kansas City and the globe: Relikcs origins began after COVID hit and Posch and his fiancee both lost their jobs.

Paul Suquet, Relikcs Furniture

Daniel Posch, Relikcs Furniture

Posch had been in the boutique hotel industry (sales and marketing) prior and turned to refinishing Mid Century Modern furniture to make ends meet. He sold some items from his own home, then set up in a garage.

Business picked up, and he began selling through Bella Patina and River Market Antiques. Now, Posch and a business partner operate Vintage Source out of a 7,000-square-foot showroom and they do upholstery and restoration. 

But, there was more to come.

“Along the same timeline … I had been restoring stereo console cabinets. And Paul Suquet came in and he was like, ‘Hey, I’ve been retrofitting these in Mexico City. Do you want to do one together?’” said Posch.

He restored the cabinet while Suquet focused on the internal pieces.

“And two and a half years later, we’ve basically professionally retrofit 50-plus vintage stereo consoles,” Posch said.

Engineering old with new

Relikcs electronics wizard Suquet doesn’t mince words.

“Our units are definitely top-of-the-line, and they compete very well against most of (competitor Bluesound’s line), which is set to take over what Sonos has been doing for the last 10 years,” he said

As an aside: Suquet connects Bluesound’s rise and Sonos’ decline with Sonos’ recent app update debacle. 

“They did a terrible job, at which point most of their consumers are not happy with them,” he said of the brands. 

By contrast, Suquet said, Relikcs is building a loyal fan base with a cabinet design that serves as a “functional piece of art that provides warmth and joy for the household.”

Suquet, Posch and a third partner — Brad Graff — have closely tracked vinyl’s resurgent popularity over the past few years, they said, noting it doesn’t appear to be slowing

“Dan and I have been retrofitting the vintage consoles, not really knowing when this gold fever, gold rush of records will stop, and it doesn’t seem to be stopping just yet,” Suquet said. 

Their solution: lean into old and new to weather trends if they change.

For vinyl lover Suquet specifically, that meant a slow and begrudging exploration of streaming that ultimately exposed him to a number of artists he might not have otherwise encountered, he acknowledged.

“Streaming democratizes music and allows for music discovery in ways that humanity has never seen before,” Suquet said. 

Where the vinyl rubber meets your wallet

As with good music, quality doesn’t come cheap, Posch said, noting Relikcs consoles ring up at about $10,000.

Relikcs Furniture

Comparing the built-to-last functional furniture piece to the disposable nature of modern-day electronics, he said, customers might consider the actual lifetime replacement costs of less expensive, more traditional audio setups before balking at the price tag.

It all depends on perspective, Posch emphasized, describing how Relikcs is as much about crafting new memories as looking back.

He recalled delivering one of the business’ first truly high-quality retrofit consoles to a client’s home — where the family’s 10-year-old son recently had gotten the household back into vinyl, exploring a newfound love of the analog sound of The Beatles.

“And so we’re bringing in the console,” Posch explained. “And the client looks at his son and says, ‘This is going to be yours one day.’ And the kid’s face just lit up.”

Haines Eason is the owner of startup media agency Freelance Kansas. He went into business for himself after a stint as a managing editor on the content marketing team at A Place for Mom. Among many other roles, he has worked as a communications professional at KU and as a journalist with work in places like The Guardian, Eater and KANSAS! Magazine. Learn about him and Freelance Kansas on LinkedIn and Facebook.