SO EXCITED!!! After over 2 months from the day I first told the real estate agent I wanted to take the space I finally have a lease in hand.
So sorry I haven't been posting updates, it was such a painful and depressing process that I stopped thinking it would happen. Honestly I was at a point that talking about the store would make me upset since I had found the location and the landlord's attorney was taking forever to create a simple lease. It had me worried that this wasn't going to happen at all and I had cursed myself by talking about it before having the lease in hand.
Onto the good stuff...the doors will open on March 20th! I should get the keys on March 1st and in 19 days I will need to transform the space into my store. Here is what the space looks like right now.
As you can see it's a stain glass shop with a open floor plan...perfect for transforming into a Toy and Comic shop!
Few things that I've been currently working on and researching.
Point of Sale System
Wow...these are expensive for what they are. Seriously most of the POS systems for the industry have huge setup fees and reviews basically say they are garbage anyways. One had an app so buyers can control their monthly comic subscriptions which had me very excited...until I looked at the apple store and it has a 2 star average with a ton of feedback saying "I wish my local comic shop didn't switch to this app". Can't see spending thousands up front and hundreds a month for something that doesn't drastically make my life easier.
For now I'm putting this off and going old school. If anyone has a suggestion on a good POS system that isn't crazy expensive please let me know in the comments!! (@blewitt any thoughts?)
Insurance
Oh this is just something we all love to price out, right? Yuck...one of those necessary evils kind of like going to the dentist. So I have 2 people getting me numbers for this as we speak. Had a general ballpark number before signing the lease, but trying to get hard numbers now. Just hoping the ballpark doesn't increase to much.
Anyone thinking of opening a store a few things that can change the price of a quote really quick are if you need to cover the glass (windows) and if the property has sprinklers. Naturally I'm covering the glass and the property doesn't have sprinklers...both adding to the costs.
Wholesale Accounts
So I had found a few places to get wholesale accounts, but nobody would talk with me at a serious level until I had a signed lease. Due to the number of "online sellers" these days and the requirement by many of the bigger companies that sellers have a brick and mortar store these wholesalers flat out told me to talk to them later to get the answers I wanted and to sign the paperwork.
Means while some basic work was done I now need to fill out a ton of paperwork to get everything ready for opening. At least I've narrowed down my wholesalers in previous research.
Bagging, Boarding, Pricing
Currently have 10 long boxes of comics spread around my dinning room of 40 long boxes that need to be sorted, bagged, boarded, and priced. Add in all the vintage toys that I've been buying to stock up and there is a ton of work to be done. Anyone that has bagged and boarded comics before understands how much work 40 long boxes of unsorted comics can be.
Artwork
Have someone pricing out what I hope will be an amazing window cover. Going to put vinyl over the windows to make the entire window basically a billboard. Should have the quote for the vinyl side here today and then will know if this is possible or not...fingers crossed!
More to come...
Know there is more I'm dealing with, but with so many things being juggled and such a long break since the last update I can't think of it all right now. My thought is to give updates of different parts of the process to help anyone that might be looking to Open a Toy and Comic Store.