Thanksgiving Update
First of all, Happy Thanksgiving!! I hope everyone is having a safe and delicious holiday. I know I’m looking forward to, not turkey, but the traditional ham in our household. I’m also looking forward to a bit of a break from working on the business for a couple days. So, now that I actually have a moment to sit down at the computer, I thought I would take some time to let you all know what’s going on.
I’ve got some bad news/good news. Let’s get the bad news out of the way … we are not going to be open before Christmas like we had wanted to. The good news, we are going to be around for years to come and many more Christmases in the future, so missing one more in this crazy couple of years isn’t that big of a deal. Also, making a clean break from both 2020 and 2021 doesn’t sound like the worst idea.
Some more bad news … we aren’t going to have our online store available during this holiday shopping season. We know this will break a lot of hearts, but we could either be spending the entire month of December delivering product to y’all or we can be working to get the Geekhouse up and running as soon as possible. Also, unpacking all the inventory is just not going to happen within the next week so we wouldn’t be able to track down items in any timely manner.
Good news: because we aren’t going to be open during the Christmas rush, we are going to have a ton and I mean a TON of product when we open. We might even have that thing you weren’t able to get because it sold out everywhere else. We just got in a bunch of new posters, magnets, dice, books, graphic novels and games … oh so many games. I’m also about to make our first order of Sideshow statues, which is something I have wanted since we first opened but never had the space to display them.
So, when are we going to be open? The answer, albeit a bit ambiguous, is hopefully in January. We are being held up by a few big projects. Project 1: The building front display windows and doors. As a lot of you already know, our front window was kicked in a while back. Because the window was insanely large it was going to be expensive and have a long wait time to get it replaced. There was a lot of deliberation, but because of the concern of it getting broken again in the future (there have been a lot of windows smashed in downtown in the last two years) we decided to replace the entire store front with smaller, double pane windows. This will hopefully prevent glass from breaking in the event of another vandalism, but even it if did get broken, it would be less costly and more timely to get replaced. Plus, it’s going to look so good! However, because of things being the way they are, the metal and glass are taking a long time to get here with no exact date of delivery as of yet. So, we wait. Unfortunately, the front replacement is holding up our second big project …
Project 2: Flooring. We are planning on having a beautiful wood plank floor put in with tile around the front door, but we need to wait until the front door gets put in before we can get started. We may have some work around if it ends up being the last task but since we still have other projects we can work on, we are going to wait as long as possible in hopes that the supplies arrive.
Project 3: Stocking product and libraries. We have all the furniture for the retail except the front counter, which I am really looking forward to building myself. The layout is set, and it looks marvelous! However, before we can stock the retail, we need the flooring done. I’m ok moving empty furniture back and forth but not shelves full of product. In the lounge, because we have grown the libraries, we are waiting on some shelves and the play tables to arrive. They have been ordered but the delivery date is set for mid-December at the earliest. Also, there’s one piece of furniture that was supposed to be delivered at the end of October but has been lost somewhere in Eugene for weeks. Once we have the flooring and all the furniture, we will be able to get the product and library items onto shelves in an orderly fashion. I’m not going to lie, this is the project I am most looking forward to. I have forgotten what we have in the library and I’m excited to start my list of games I need to learn and books I need to read. Plus there’s going to be a lot of punching and sleeving new library games and you all know how much I love that. So excited!
In the meantime, we are going to continue to paint, get flooring in, furnish, and decorate the back part of the building which will include a historical gaming section, RPG and two player areas and the Trophy Room. You’ll have to wait to find out exactly what the Trophy Room is but it’s going to be exciting. We also need to sand, stain and paint both sets of stairs. There is still a lot of work but we are moving forward. And I know I keep saying this, but the wait is going to be well worth it.