Not a label as such, perhaps, but a manufacturer of records. Sound For Industry was based at 71-73 County Street, London, SE1, for much of its existence. It specialized in flexi-discs, the cheap-and-cheerful floppy records that were sometimes given away with magazines or used as promotional tools. The field of flexi-discs is too complex for this site and is something of a specialist concern, and even the existence of SFI 'Sound-Kards' - one-sided flexi-discs laminated on to cardboard - didn't justify the company getting a page on a site dedicated to vinyl records. It turns out, however, that several Sound For Industry records, such as the ones shown above, were pressed on vinyl, and thus earned SFI a place here. The style of the run-off markings and the dark-red translucent vinyl of the Mobil record indicate a Pye pressing, while the Berkshire Boy Choristers EP appears to be an Orlake product; which suggests that SFI could only manufacture flexis themselves and that records for customers who specified vinyl had to be made elsewhere. Catalogue numbers were in an SFI-0 series, and they reached at least SFI-799, so there are a lot of SFI flexis out there. The period of manufacture seems to have been from c.1968 to at least 1985. Thanks to Henry29 of the 45cat site for the use of the Choristers scan.
Copyright 2013 Robert Lyons.