New Location?
I am slowly working on a book about our business The Game Capital, and how it got started. This is only a rough draft since it is still a work in progress, but I decided to share some pieces from it here while I am writing!
More Space
It was becoming increasingly clear to us that we needed more space for our store. We had issues fitting customers in the store for events. We weren’t able to bring in more products like miniatures and paints for those miniatures. We knew that these would be popular products to carry, so it was frustrating.
We had looked in the past at a possible new location not far from our first location. There was an old two-story building connected to a ShopKo. It had a lot of space, multiple rooms, bathrooms and it had a large city-owned parking lot connected to it. These were all huge upgrades from what we currently had.
It also had a two-story warehouse in the back. This was especially exciting since it was so inconvenient to have our store and warehouse separated.
So Many Options
The building already had offices and rooms built-in that we could use in so many different ways. We could use the rooms on the main floor for offices, meeting rooms, game rooms, spaces people could rent for birthday parties or D&D sessions. Plus, bathrooms, lockers and a kitchenette/break room area that led to the warehouse. There were so many options. And that was just for the main floor.
The second story had a large open space in the front of the building, as well as a kitchenette area, multiple rooms for additional offices, game rooms, or even storage. We could ALWAYS use more space for storage.
Visibility
It also had much better visibility compared to our little store that was on a one-way street. People would see it when they came to shop at ShopKo, or when they went to the local library across the street.
There was also an annual celebration over Memorial Day weekend at the nearby park. We would get tons of exposure from just that!
Bummed
It was also much more than we could afford on our own, unfortunately. We would have to buy it from the current owner. We met with a landlord that owned a few of the buildings in the area to see if he would be interested in becoming a partner with us. He led us through the actual costs of purchasing the building. He proved it wasn’t very feasible.
We were bummed. We’d had high hopes for the building. We told ourselves that it just meant that something better was going to come along.
