Friends since childhood, Robert and Julian grew up listening to music – particularly enjoying late ’70s & early ’80s music from artists such as Gary Numan, ABBA, Blondie, Duran Duran, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Our passion for music evolved into collecting, largely due to the multiple Frankie Goes to Hollywood ZTT 12″ remixes.

In 1985, our hobby transformed into a business called “Esprit”. We paid £20 for our first 16-minute remix of “Relax” and later found another copy for just £7. Realizing there was a market for buying and selling to people like ourselves, we started purchasing records at Record Fairs and local Record Shops and advertising in Record Collector magazine. CD singles, released in limited quantities and instantly collectible – such as Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” – further fueled our venture. We cleared out local record shops during our college lunch breaks. Around this time, our mutual friend Cathryn, also a music enthusiast, quit her banking job to join us as the third founder. The trio has remained united for 38 years and counting.

We became the largest advertiser in Record Collector Magazine throughout the late ’80s and ’90s, often featuring hand-typed, 10+ page adverts, until launching our first online store Esprit (on Compuserve) and then eil.com (still going strong today). eil.com stands for Esprit International Limited.

What makes us unique? All three of us still love music, both new and old, as much as we did in the ’80s and have always believed in offering great customer service and satisfaction. We truly understand what customers want from a company like ours. And if you ever have a problem, you can get in touch directly with any of the three of us.

We have also been featured numerous times in the UK press, radio, and on national TV.