The End of Imaginary Wars as We Know It?

Though it came just in time for the holidays, this little paper didn’t come to me from under the Christmas tree (Christmas and New Years have kept me significantly busy—I’ve only had the chance to post about it now!).

(In my best Strongbad voice) IN-CORPORATED!!!

So as of now, Imaginary Wars is an incorporated business!

If you’ve been coming to my blog regularly, you’ve probably gathered that I’ve been heading towards opening my own store; though I don’t think I’ve been saying much on the blog about the endeavor (beyond “school is taking up more time than I’d like). I have been a bit more candid about my progress, here and there, when I’ve been a guest on Jaded GamerCast.

I think I’m also only mentioning the store now because things have finally begun to really pick up steam—or rather, there wasn’t much momentum being gained through the fall until about December, so I never really felt much like writing business updates like “still writing my business plan; projecting future sales is tricksy” or anything like that.

And then there’s the fact that I don’t have buckets of money simply “tucked away in The Banana Stand“…so to speak, and I’ve been feeling like banks aren’t really going to be too open to talking money with me (I mean, banks don’t lend money to people who need it, right?). Accordingly, I decided early on to go the way of bringing investors into this endeavor. So with no easily quantifiable progress on the building-a-store side of things, and nothing new happening on the funding-a-store side of things, I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired to write a ton of updates until…well, something happened.

And that’s where today’s post comes in: not only have my incorporation papers been finalized, but some early enthusiasts in this venture have begun to give me solid numbers on what they can invest—more accurately, I began to get the good news–and money–about mid-way through December. Now things are really starting to take shape!

Ducks in a Row

One of the things I’ve learned so far is the importance what order things should be done in. I’ve managed to half start a few different steps before realising I needed to get other things done first. Where is this going? Well, I took a serious look at several retail spots back in October and November; it was then that it became apparent that I had to complete a bunch of steps before I could actively start pursuing a location. With most of those steps either underway or out of the way, I was able to take better look inside the place that is the top contender for locations right now (barring any unforeseen weirdness).

The view from the back room door, looking towards the front.

Measuring in at 2000 square feet, the spot is ideal for a games store: plenty of room for gaming tables—but not too much room so as to make it just an empty bay with tables in it (one of the local competitors has a bit of that going on).

...Though of course, with these photos I’m NOT making a very good argument that this place won't be just an empty bay with a few tables.

There’s also adequate storage space in the back room to make selling on the internet much more realistic (in that it will have adequate space for prepping orders and storing shipping materials) The last games store I managed had no back room worth mentioning and always suffered whenever we got a little too much of one line restocked…or heck, even when we’d get our pop orders in—the shop couldn’t effectively store eight flats of pop. And don’t even talk to me about the gong show that Christmas stock levels brought to that store.

Storage aplenty! There's another row of shelves along the wall on the left that's just out of frame. (My daughter's there for scale.)

Plus the location is part of a strip mall with some decent anchor-like stores–it also not only has a Tim Horton’s in the same parking lot (if you’re Canadian, you’ll understand my excitement), but there’s a pub just a few doors down! Hello, late-night gaming!

Well, I’m sick as a dog and still have to go meet with some other people today, so I’m going to leave things here. I’ve a pretty good idea of what lines I’ll be carrying and will maybe go into that within the next couple updates I make.

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