Behind the Counter
This month, I wanted to relate to you the dealings we had this past 6 weeks in attempting to make a couple business deals. It is a comical, tragic story of human idiocy, IMO. Part of that idiocy may be my own, of course! Everything contained in my story are MY OPINIONS of how things happened. I am expressing only my opinions, others may not share them.
We’ve been in our current location for 7 years, starting our 8th year in May. Our sales have steadily increased. But, being someone who likes challenges, I have considered many options to grow my business. Currently, we have this location maxed out with product. We really can’t add any new things (like, say, Model Kits) since we have no space left. Even the UP HIGH space (our ceiling is 12 feet high) is taken due to the T-Shirts display we have way up there!! So, if this store is to grow, we would have to move. Or, we could grow our business by opening a second location. Or, we could open a different business entirely (say a used book store). We have been thinking on this for about a year.
And, having some money put together, we were finally ready to move forward.
We found a location downtown that had about 4500 square feet of space to lease, with a sign in the window. 2 Blocks from the high-school, and 2 blocks from the junior-high as well. The neighbors are long-time, successful businesses. The building was currently leased, but it was advertised as able to be subleased.
What ensued in our efforts to agree to a sublease was the definition of frustration.
Setting down with the current tenants on our first meeting – we asked the usual questions: How much space is available? The answer: How much space do you want? How would we split the utilities? The answer: How do you want to split them? When would we be able to move in? The answer: When do you want to move in? Even the easiest question of all “How much do you want for rent” was answered not with information, but rather another question: How much can you afford to pay?
It really should have been the death knell of the deal right then and there. People who have such cluelessness about their business operations should have been warning enough. Yet, the location appealed to me. So even though my wife and I left that meeting completely befuddled, and shaking our heads – I attempted to move forward.
I called back a few days later to speak to the people – who ran a very unsuccessful, and terribly disorganized “junk store” in the monstrous space which used to be a pharmacy. (A Walgreens I believe, but am not certain.) I attempted again to negotiate with them. They again had no answers other than “someone else was also interested”. I asked questions, I got no discernible information. Finally, I asked who owned the building because it was clear I was going to get no information from the current tenants. As it turns out – the building owner was someone I knew!
Contacting the owner, I found out how much the current lease was, how far in arrears it was for lease payments, what the insurance and other costs were, and how long the current lease was, and how the options worked.
Based on my new information, I made a proposal that I might be willing to lease the building. Of course, this was met with a plethora of issues, including they didn’t really want to leave – but keep part of the business for their own hobby/business.
Again, this should have been a point at which bells and alarms go off for me. But, no, I am a bit simple it seems, and I push forward. I make concessions, I agree to things I don’t want to. Eventually, we work out a fairly comprehensive contract.
Being someone who considers business aspects, I know that I have a certain amount of time to get open before school lets out, and before the 2010 Yellow Pages closes. I need to be in and open, and contracted for things like phone book placement, year book ads, etc. But – again, in my opinion -- the tenants keep dragging their feet and eventually I just decide to drop the whole thing. In the meantime, I am allowed to store display cases in their facility, I order 50 new bookcases, and spend thousands of dollars on fixtures for this new undertaking I am planning – then get told to give back the key, and have to remove said display items from their building, have to rent a UHaul truck, and show proof of insurance JUST to be allowed to move my property from their building.
They actually asked me to have each person in my crew sign, and have notarized, an insurance waiver. In my opinion this was just a tactic in being nasty – but I comply, because I feel if I don’t get my stuff out of their building quickly, there may be legal entanglements – as in my having to call the police to get access to the property that is mine.
A measure of hilarity comes to me because, in the process of moving things out which were stored there briefly, the owners of two other local businesses mention to me that the people I nearly subleased from are not pleasant to work with. Really? No kidding? Well, yup, that would be MY opinion, too.
I do walk away from the whole process with a few lessons:
- My current landlord is a prince of a human being.
- Subleasing will never be considered by me again.
- Next time I consider renting a location, I will ask all the local neighbors what their opinion is of the landlord or previous business owners in that location.
I could have saved myself a lot of headaches, not to mention money, by just listening to my “spider-sense” when the people had a FOR RENT sign in the window, but were unprepared to answer the simplest of questions.
Ahhhhhhh. It is good to have that behind me. We will now be focusing on signing a new 3-year lease on our current location, and reaching more customers, providing better service and selling more stuff right here where we are.
Dorothy was right! There is no place like home!
Marcus King
Titan Games & Music
637 Capital Ave SW
Battle Creek, MI 49015
We also sell on AMAZON, you can check us out at: http://www.amazon.com/shops/titangames
