Hello All,
For my first blog I might as well talk about what’s on everyone’s mind – the move to North Stafford. For those who don’t know yet, we moved into the Garrison Village Shopping Center (397 Garrisonville Road in the old Soccer Scene location). I would like to thank everyone who volunteered their time on that weekend. We could not have moved so quickly and smoothly without your help.
“There are three things that matter in real estate – location, location, location.” When Brian and Greg decided to expand their on-line business and open a physical store, they went with Chatham for a variety of different reasons. “Location” factored in for Brian because he was excited to have a local store his kids and their friends could get to by bike. As they said on the website, “Character Vaults was created by Gamerz for gamers.” (And now you know why our name is Character Vaults, but our sign outside said “Gamerz.” Maybe next time I’ll tell you where the name “Character Vaults” came from.) Once I came into the fold, my first task was to organize our tournament schedule. Within months, Friday Night Magic was up and running, 40K was getting crazy on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and Pokemon was Standing Room Only on Sundays.
However, a business needs constant exposure to attract new customers. As time went on, the traffic in the old shopping center dwindled. To survive, we needed an influx of new customers that South Stafford didn’t have. The 2008 U.S. Census estimates put Stafford County’s population at 124,117. Over 75% of those people live north of Stafford Courthouse. For our business to make it to the next level, moving north was a priority. As Chatham Square continued its slow demise, we made every effort to negotiate our way out of our lease. Unexpectedly, we received a call telling us we could leave if we vacated within 10 days. Taking this as a blessing and not the logistical nightmare that it truly was, we scrambled to find a new retail space to lease. In the next few weeks, I’ll start to post pictures of the new space. It has a great layout with a separate area for the X-Box systems, a parents’ lounge, an actual office, and a larger game area! The new game area has the two WarHammer tables plus six regular tables (giving us the capability to seat 36 people without any rearranging). If you haven’t stopped in to see us since the move, come check it out. We still do everything on the same schedule as before. Check out the calendar on another part of this website.
For those of you feeling abandoned, please understand that we had to take the opportunity that was given to us. I encourage you to make the trip to our new store at least once. I myself live just 2 miles from the old store, so I’m in the same boat you are with the extra driving distance. We are very excited about our new store, and we don’t want to lose or exclude our old customers. You are the reason we have been successful in the past and we appreciate it.
Thanks,
Travis @ CV
