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As many of you may have heard, GOB Retail will be moving locations this summer. This process began almost 3 years ago, when it became obvious that we would outgrow our current location. If you have been in the shop lately or been to some of our Magic pre-releases or Warmachine league events, it's obvious we need the space.
After searching for the right place for over two years, last fall we began negotiations to purchase a location in Clawson. It met all of the criteria we had been looking for.
1) Not too far from our current location. Just 3 miles away. We didn't want to be moving "away" from our current customers.
2) It's just 1 mile from an I-75 exit, for all those who travel a ways to reach us. (and just 1 mile from Oakland Mall).
3) Its bigger, and that was the whole point of the exercise. Its actually a LOT bigger. 7,900 square feet. The current store is just 1,200 square feet.
4) It is on 14 mile road, so it should easy to find.
5) It has a decent sized parking lot, suitable for our every day needs.
6) It was in our acceptible price range. What other businesses can afford and what game stores can afford are often two entirely different things.
7) We wanted to buy rather than lease. More stable. No risk of future lease negotiations going badly and forcing us to close down or move under less than ideal circumstances.
Ok, so we've been telling a lot of folks we intended to move this summer. Just been holding back the actual location until we knew it was a done deal. Well, we closed on the property about a week ago. Own it now (well, a slice of it anyway, with the bank owning the rest). So we can tell you with 100% certainty that GOB Retail will be moving to:
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GOB Retail - Games & Comics
775 E. 14 Mile Road
Clawson, MI 48017
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We don't have an exact move date yet. The building was a little bit of a fixer-upper, so we fast at work on that. Tentatively all we can say right now is, it is our hope to have a move date for the very end of June to early July. But a lot of work has to be done on the building yet and all that work has to be reviewed and approved by the city first.
During the course of this process, we intend to use this page to keep everyone informed about our progress. To your right there are image galleries by date, which we will add to as we get more ready at the new store. Below you will find periodic news updates that are specific to the move process.
What Does All This Mean For You?
This of course, is a big deal for us, three years in the making, but what does it all have to do with you? How is it going to affect you? I mean, simply other than being where we hang our hats, that is. We'll have more detailed news bits as things come together, but here are a few of the big things:
The Game Room:
The new building is BIG. So big, in fact, that by square footage, it will make GOB Retail one of the largest game stores in the country. The building was initially constructed with two big rooms. One at 5200 square feet, the other near 2700 square feet. The smaller of the two rooms will become a dedicated game room. That will make the game room more than twice the size of of our whole (current) store. That will allow us to have:
1) Six 4ft x 8ft Miniature Wargaming Tables
2) 2 Lounge sitting areas (with sofas) for role-playing and casual board and card gaming.
3) A multitude of traditional gaming tables for card and board gaming.
This means we have dedicated gaming space for 24 Miniatures player on the miniatures tables, with the ability to put 4x4 boards over additional tables for additional players. We will be able to sit 144 players for games like Magic the Gathering in comfortable fashion. And perhaps most importantly, unlike at the current store, on any given game night we'll be able to support play for multiple game systems at once. Magic, Warmachine, board games, role playing games and more will be able to be played all at the same time, with space for everyone. We'll also have space to continue expanding the GOB Retail Gaming Library.
Comics:
Notice the new store name above? Yes, we'll finally have the retail space to let us get into selling and supporting comics. We've wanted to venture into the comics side of the business for a while now, but simply did not have the space available at the current store to do it justice and likey would have detracted for our coverage of games. But the new store has a retail area that is 5200 square foot, more than 4 times our current space, so we can actually dedicate a space for comics and graphic novels that is larger than many smaller comic stores. And of course, as we move into the comics biz, we plan to leverage our IT skills to bring our customers an online pull box/pre-ordering system they can use through their GOB Retail rewards card. Stay tuned for a seprate announcement when we are ready to go live with this.
Lots of New Products:
With all this new space, we're going to be able to add new products and expand existing product lines in ways we simply could not do before. We will be vastly expanding our game accessories selection (Dice, sleeves, deck boxes, card boxes, tokens, playmats, etc), we'll have a robust comic accessories selection, we plan to add a selection of puzzles, POP figures and more. We'll be expanding our role- playing game coverage, our board and card game coverage, our new and used video game section will be vastly improved, Battletech will be expanded, etc. The list of additions and expansions is far too long to cover everything here, so just stayed turned to our news as we cover areas individually.
Expanded Hours:
With the much larger game room, we plan to expand our hours to better enable our customers to use that play space. We'll be open to 11pm four days a week and will be expanding hours the other 3 days as well.
We'll have more updates soon, so stay tuned.
Thanks,
Ryan Johnson
GOB Retail
www.gobretail.com
Below is New Store Layout we plan to put in place - 7,900 square feet space with comparision size of current store in Madison Heights
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| Click image gallery updated below to view store's update during renovation. |
Image Gallery
Updated during New Location (clawson) Renovation
Last Updated : Friday, June 27th
Click to view more images
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