Online shop in Development and Other News
It has been a very long time sense I’ve checked in here and offered much in the way of updates. So I’ll try to keep this as short as possible detailed as possible about our new Online Shop and Other News.
Considering the state of things (pre-zombie apocalypse) Docking Bay 93 is running in a very limited form at the moment. Its so very easy to social distance when you are an introvert, whats hard is being given limitations and being told you HAVE to be an introvert. I think that’s where the anxiety comes from. Don’t panic, grab your towel, use it for a makeshift mask, we are prepped for this.
I and my minions are focusing our energy on some of those projects that got put on the back burner for way to long, but before we can even get too them we have to dig through the layers of back stock and this-is-all-in-my-way! before we can get to a lot of those projects. I feel like cleaning my office and stock rooms are like excavating the tomb of some super eclectic nerd who can’t remember how much of any one thing he bought and way-WAY to many unclaimed special orders and holds. Don’t judge me.
One of those back burner projects has been to build an online store. I hate it. As I learn to love this new avenue of global commerce I hope you will all bear with me. I am not fast. Nor terribly clever. Shopify doesn’t seem to require either of those things. But like the ham-fisted basement dweller that I am I will ply my swift MUD learned typing skills to the task and will get that going as fast as I able between removing layers of collectible sediment from my stock room.
The other online portal we are using is of course Ebay, where eventually all collectibles go to find the awful truth of their actual worth. So there are some gems to be had and a lot of bargains. Please give it a look. I’m hoping to make the purging of our back stock not just something of a necessity but an actual fun task that favors the collector who doesn’t make it through our door nearly often enough or simply can’t because of distance. Considering the Corvid-19 scare, it is of course a necessity to be distant.
Between both this new Shopify account and Ebay. I’m hoping we can get our foot in the door of online commerce (I have opinions on all this which I hope to discuss in a future blog). With one offering newer items just off the truck and staples for your gaming group and the other offering a more nuanced selection of things that slipped through the cracks. Regardless it is requiring a type of patience that is learned or perhaps it’s an adaptation of the generation, I am on the tail end of the former.
So–
Buy some of our stuff if you are so inclined!
https://www.ebay.com/usr/d0ck1ngb4y93 <– EBAY online shop
https://docking-bay-93.myshopify.com/collections/all <–Shopify online shop
We are doing local pickup – curbside and shipping. Feel free to reach out, we are around.
Some of the other things happening around the store is some resetting of shelves and product lines which we are still fussing over. Ben has been working his butt off to make the store look nice and neat when we return to regular hours, and paring down our collectible stock lines (make sure to see that ebay store link above). There has been a lot of whittling away at the ghastly amount of MTG cards we have and our binders will be fit to burst soon. Along side that an updated buy list if I can pull my weight around here. Glen has been delving through the vaults, diving deep into our comic back stock, and will have a fresh pile of priced-by-approximate-grade books available to buy in some form or another as soon as we work out those details. And finally Carrie and Rob of Phoenix Nest Arcade are doing some much needed overhauling of the classic arcade, Lord of the Rings pinball is in the middle of a rebuild, Donkey Kong Jr has been pulled for an repair on its wibbly-wobbly monitor, and hopefully we will have a new pinball machine arrival within the next week or two.
TLDR: we are extremely busy for a store that is closed. I have no explanation for this other than we as a country are work-a-holics.