{"id":558,"date":"2005-01-28T12:09:43","date_gmt":"2005-01-28T17:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xorph.com\/creator\/2005\/01\/28\/pipe-dream-srand\/"},"modified":"2005-01-28T12:09:43","modified_gmt":"2005-01-28T17:09:43","slug":"pipe-dream-srand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/2005\/01\/28\/pipe-dream-srand\/","title":{"rendered":"Pipe Dream #sRAND()"},"content":{"rendered":"

I want to open a game-comic-bookstore with two attachments: a set of rooms with gridded tables and whiteboards, reservable cheaply for gaming or brainstorming meetings, and a coffee and sandwich shop. The place would be called The Purple Hippo<\/acronym>, possibly.<\/p>\n

Problems with this pipe dream:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Purple Hippo is not as funny a name as I thought it was in high school.\n<\/li>\n
  2. I know jack shit about running a store, a coffee shop, or a business in general.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Shockingly enough, #2 is the sticking point for a lot of my pipe dreams. (I also have no capital, but I assume that’s implicit.)<\/p>\n

    In an oddly appropriate segue, I should probably talk about The Louisville Game Shop<\/a> now. I was lucky enough to find out about TLGS before it opened, back in December, and I even managed (through dint of extreme endurance and sharp eyes) to show up at its grand opening. It’s got a great inventory, and its owner (Colin) is friendly and helpful. Almost painfully so.<\/p>\n

    I really, desperately want TLGS to succeed. I want it to draw in thousands of customers and ignite a latent gaming esprit de corps in the Highlands. I want Colin and his business partners (if any) to be rolling in filthy lucre. I want them to experience so much demand that they have to buy adjacent buildings. I want there to be a real game store in Louisville.<\/i><\/p>\n

    I’m aware that no link on the interweb is really one-way, so I assume that Colin will eventually read this, and I wanted to make sure I said that stuff first. Consider it a preface.<\/p>\n

    Because it really doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. The place has “Nice Guy Tries To Start A Business, Goes Bankrupt In Under A Year” written all over it. I try to patronize it whenever I can, and most of the time I’m the only customer there. When I came to the grand opening, they didn’t take credit cards yet; I hesitate to think how much that cost them. Like I said, there’s some excellent inventory–I bought my copy of Nobilis there–but it doesn’t look like any of it is moving. (This is also the situation at Great Escape, but that’s because their game inventory is crap and they make their money on comics and DVDs.)<\/p>\n

    I don’t have the money to even be a good regular customer at TLGS, much less support it entirely myself, as I’d like to. I find myself thinking of ways to give in-kind, as if it were a charity project–I can host your website! I’ll print flyers! The advertising for the store is pitiful, by the way. I found one flyer in an engineering buildings at U of L, and I think there was a half-page ad on the back of LEO once. There appears to be a little interweb buzz, but in Louisville that’s really not worth much.<\/p>\n

    Anyway. I’m going to be crushed when TLGS fails, as I’m pretty sure it will. And even though I can think of things they could be doing better (1: don’t put your shop on the first floor of a musty double-zoned house), I know that the same or worse would happen to me if I tried to start a business now.<\/p>\n

    But now is when I want<\/i> to start a business, because I have only myself to risk. When I’m thirty-five and understand business better and have capital, I’ll probably also have a family of some kind to worry about; I won’t have the option of living on ramen noodles for a year, or whatever, if I fail.<\/p>\n

    PS As if I needed another reason to be bitter, Fourth Street Live is doing great!<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I want to open a game-comic-bookstore with two attachments: a set of rooms with gridded tables and whiteboards, reservable cheaply for gaming or brainstorming meetings, and a coffee and sandwich shop. The place would be called The Purple Hippo, possibly. Problems with this pipe dream: The Purple Hippo is not as funny a name as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angst","category-obsessions","category-plugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xorph.com\/nfd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}