We're only 2 days into 2012 and I have some bad news for followers of Kryptonian Warrior. I would have replaced the word "Bad" with "Devastating" or "Terrible", but considering the thousands of other things in life that could be much worse than this news I think "Bad" should suffice...
As you're no doubt aware I've been doing this blog since 2008, roughly 4 years now, and within the last year and a half you may have seen a large amount of posts about me fulfilling my lifelong dream of opening up a comic shop in my home town of Chelmsford, UK. It was an extremely tough ride setting the whole thing up and creating a large "Superstore" which grew every month with more and more stock, both comic related and entertainment orientated, but in the end we did end up with a fantastic store with tons of products and a big customer following. It's the coolest shop ever! :P
Unfortunately although I had the ability and good fortune to be able to go big with my first store, with 7 life-size statues adorning our massive front windows, arcade machines at the back, the ability to play movies or games for customers (and the staff) behind the till on a big LCD TV and have a massive stock room upstairs, we never managed to get the footfall or custom we needed to battle the insurmountable overheads that a 3000 square foot store inevitably produces. We have loyal returning customer week on week, we have a popular e-commerce website that now supplies our awesome range across the world (with more to come now that the store is closing) and we are very well known throughout our County as the biggest and best comic & collectable store for miles. But it's still not enough... And that sucks.
I aim to open up a much smaller store in the future, which could be months, or years. But Red Sun is not dead or going into administration in any way, and for that I am very thankful for and of course very lucky to be able to say. In our shopping precinct alone companies I consider pretty big are dropping like flies. Hawkin's Bazaar and La Senza have gone into administration recently and big boys such as Game and HMV aren't far behind from what I understand. And that's only the start of a ton of shops all crashing and burning. We're heading into a second recession and we already fought through the first, with our heads held high I might add! But in the end we came out the other side bruised and beaten, but not dead. Far from dead.
Either way Red Sun will continue in as many ways as I can possibly keep it going and as I'll have more time on my hands I'll be able to update this blog more, post on our Facebook page more and take over our Twitter account for even more interaction with our customers and fans.
I'd like to take this oppurtunity to thank all my staff, both past and present, who made the store what it is today and who worked their individual butts off every single day, to my family for supporting me and the store in every way possible, to the various guests we've had signing in store, to both the UK Garrison and the Heroes Alliance UK who have come to support us on our numerous special occasions, and to the customers who made working in the store a pure joy. Red Sun was an amazing adventure while it lasted and I hope those of you that were with me for the ride, in some way or form, felt that too...
Long live Red Sun!
Here are a few pics from the last 15 months of Red Sun's run, just in case you have no idea what this is all about! A lot of good memories here...
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