Thursday, September 20, 2007

Thursday Before Opening

With only a few days left, we worked on some final touches to the store, like outlet covers and banners. Some updates on past items:
  • Table Problem. The company that manufactured our bad display table will be sending someone out to drill new holes.
  • John Hanson Co. order. Was shipped, but to the old address. We'll likely be shuttling the 13 boxes to the new store tomorrow -- or using the truck were picking up tomorrow morning. This order contains a lot of puzzles and games not normally available through distribution. It fills in a lot of holes for us.
  • GW Paint Rack. It hasn't been available until now, so it's shipping for arrival next week, after we open.
  • RC2. Thomas and ERTL (same company) are MIA. My rep is trying to contact them. They likely won't show up before we open, but that's no big deal.
  • Parts. We're waiting on parts for one gondola (got the wrong parts yesterday), for our tiered display table (bad drill holes), and for our Melissa & Doug art supply rack.
  • Truck. Gets picked up tomorrow morning. They're only charging me for one day, but the guys don't want to be there during the weekend when I pick it up. I'm only paying for Sunday.
  • My Contractors. Tonight they're installing the remaining slatwall and working on electrical and telecom.
  • Their Contractors. Coming in tomorrow to finish replacing ballasts and bulbs and the leaky toilet. There's a special cleaning company coming in Saturday to spruce the place up and wax the bathroom floors. Dunno, it's something the property management company does.
  • The Old Store. What a basket case. I need to figure out how much of the walls are my responsibility. They need to be patched (definitely my responsibility), but I wonder if I should have them painted. I also need to replace a broken door (my doing).
As you can see, not everything went according to plan, but so far there haven't been any show stoppers.

Here are some photos from today:

I put up the racks and displayed the product. Mike is putting up signage.


Here's the minis section from across the store. It shows where the Warmachine, GW and Flames of War sections are located. There will be a magazine rack to the right of the bookcase with codices and other mini related books.


Here's the cooler "fully populated." Can you find Mike's Cherry Coke?


This is our sophisticated telecommunications center. I especially like the alligator clips. My IT buddies would pity me if they could see this. This is likely to be fixed this evening or tomorrow.


GF9 Scenics rack. There is only one way to properly display this stuff without it driving you nuts, and it's in this rack. If I had known this earlier, I would have used the rack in the store or left the scenics in the box.


This is a corner of the game room where we're placing terrain on racks. Most of this came from the GW store. They brought it over last week when they closed.


This is the Melissa & Doug track rack. It contains individual pieces of track for Thomas compatible railroad systems. It's a lot cheaper than RC2 but still high quality. I'm just a sucker for racks.


This is the M&D play table that we're using to display a train setup. David hot glued it to the table last Saturday. Gluing down the track is something I learned by visiting other toy stores with my son.


Toy vehicles and stacking toys


Various craft toys


Floor puzzles


Blocks and food toys. I don't quite understand why children play with fake food, but people buy them.


More puzzles.

3 comments:

  1. Looking good! If you let me know when you are most going to need help over the next few days, then I can better prioritize when to be there. If it was up to me I'd be there all weekend, but my time is no longer completely my own :-P

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  2. That will teach you to go and get married ;) Just wait till you have a kid.

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  3. I've got plenty of people helping for the actual move on Sunday. What I need are more people for the setup on Monday.

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