The People Behind The Plastic Empire

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: so i'm telling you guys the origins of the gamers alley youtube channel oh you want to come on through come on through man don't walk around us he could clip it so so would you say about three years ago you guys started coming by asking the staff if we were interested in creating a youtube channel and my answer every time was what no so i started paying attention to a little channel in uh little at the time in greenville south carolina called toy federation and what they created through their youtube channel it's very inspiring to me so after about the third or fourth time telling you guys no it finally turned into a yes i've never actually been to toy federation and i want to see did they catch lightning in a bottle with the youtube or are they the lightning in the bottle what's up man i got goosebumps walking through that door it's so much bigger than i [00:01:08] Speaker 2: thought it was going to be see that's what a lot of people say so i guess that's good yeah it's like it's better than it's better than being underwhelmed i don't claim we have the best [00:01:16] Speaker 3: store i don't believe we have the biggest store i just said we have a pretty cool store and we have fun uh so this is kind of a lot of here is just going to be vintage but i mean keep up with all that some of this is out of hand because like this is just all power rangers because it's only like three or four of you guys work here right yeah well there's more on the other side but full time in the front yeah it's just us the guys you always see but in you know i only have two bins of starcom and then we'll wait and we'll try to fill the case with a good assortment and then once that sells out we always want to wait till we have enough for presentation and it has to be complete right right but then you know what you'll have to do is you'll take all these power ranger bins and you'll you'll have to go out there because you can't spend too much time back here when you know you're not being helpful out there so we'll bring maybe three or four of these bins out but then it gets to where it's just out of hand and then uh there's stuff down the aisles because we've just been busy i mean that's vintage star wars more to the right is going to be ninja turtles uh how long have you been open i mean i've been doing this for a living for 23 years i've had the [00:02:24] Speaker 1: brick and mortar maybe 11 years so it's 23 years of doing this have you always been this meticulous [00:02:29] Speaker 3: of separating stuff or did you see the old way when i i was an online version of me and i dealt with new product it was a lot of military stuff die cast tanks 118 skill planes ultimate soldier forces of valor dragon and i just ordered a new product and put it on the website when it sold we shipped it when i started to do the shows is when i was like that military stuff kind of wasn't selling like it used to hot toys originated doing it was military figures technically their first figure was a really horrible neo matrix figure wow then they went to military then they started getting licenses like rebel cop and alien and predator and then one six turned into all film and television and the militaries so then i was like well i gotta reinvent myself or you know i was like the other stuff but that's not what i was so then i started to carry or go to shows and what's moving you kind of you're like live in the field learning what people are requesting and asking they ain't asking for what i got but that guy's killing it over there let me carry some of that the whole reason i did a store is there was because i had like a con like i was like i don't know there's circus people the way they call them carnies where they just travel and they're in a different town and i was always on the road traveling alone but then you meet somebody and he's doing what you're doing he's trying to make a living change numbers and maybe you want to so you don't eat alone now you got somebody to have a share a meal with and then next time we do the show you want a room together you know it just steamrolled and then i was dude i met he opened up a store and i i felt like this is not any shame on him i i had a pretty big amount of inventory he opened a store and he had hardly anything and then he just showed me all this stuff coming in it was driving me nuts i was like i can't believe all this stuff this guy's getting here we are you know uh one unit to two units to this space opened up and then i rented the front third of the building and then the lady was going to sell the building so then i bought the building and then and i started retro toy con across the street i started retro toy con like year two that is the [00:04:40] Speaker 1: perfect yeah no layout he was like he needs to get the greenville convention center if i was about the [00:04:46] Speaker 3: money i would have left to the convention center it'll never it'll never leave because i will i i'm not interested or you got to know the maitre d or you got to know somebody to even get in and it's this mom and pop restaurant and it's so good and then you're like well but if it's so hard to get in and everybody's waiting to get in why don't they just make the restaurant bigger and they can accommodate more people but then maybe the cooks couldn't make the quality of the food you know like don't mess with the ingredients yeah it's hard to remember what everything is this is all sealed turtles is this going to your next convention this is all going to be a retro toy con that's a really minty cat's layer that's going that's probably the nicest one we've had we've got a complete fortress of things in the box it's missing the flap this is all vintage sealed well i mean mint in box not i think the reason why your [00:05:33] Speaker 1: business is never going to be in trouble even though this stuff's getting 40 and 50 years old youtube like new kids get into it because of youtube videos who i was like how do you know about [00:05:46] Speaker 3: this but they're into it but all this is packed for the show uh this is all packed for the show [00:05:52] Speaker 1: you probably don't remember but i was at a toy show and i talked to you and when you told me you owned this building had all these things i was like you're not in toy business you're in the real estate business but now i understand why you're not renting these spots so these were see these were [00:06:05] Speaker 3: the castle displays that was like he man and snake mountain and we had a bridge and that was part of that movie set up because it was like going to a 1987 toy fair if they were selling new to the market an easy bake oven and all the buyers from play world and toys r us are all there kind of like how tokyo does their toy show they would have like maybe a grandma baking cookies and then as your people walk in the aisles they would sample them and this is what we're trying to sell oh give me 50 cases for my stuff you know they're not full of toys on peg hooks it's here's the wave for 1987. so that's [00:06:40] Speaker 1: how you would get into the walmart's and the kb's and oh yeah you would set up yeah yeah if you've ever [00:06:46] Speaker 3: gone to new york uh toy fair the manufacturers are all there and they're showcasing what's coming out for the upcoming year businesses can go there you have to have a business license utility and the business you ever went to one of these oh yeah yeah in the very beginning i flew to new york and then that's when you met your manufacturer so the people that you might talk to on the phone it went a long way because like i flew in and i met sideshow and i've been i had some orders in with them but now i took the time to meet you and then and then i gave you a ten thousand dollar order maybe which was a ton of money for me in 2002 or whatever kind of money today and right 26. but they would do here's the whole outlook for 2003 what do you want and then that's how i had a lego account which i don't have anymore but they wouldn't let me in they had a castle a lego castle surrounded their booth and i go i want to go in i go you don't have an appointment and i was like i told you like it was hard to get and i was like well how am i supposed to like i'm here i flew all the way from florida and i would like to carry lego and so then i started getting loud it wasn't like me but i was like this is ridiculous i can't believe i'm you know and so there's a you know they let me in and it placed like a ten thousand dollar lego order and it was when they had uh the star wars unleashed lego and i got indiana jones lego wow i was placing the orders for all i still have cases of that stuff because it never sold well enough because i was the military guy and i was trying to get into new stuff but imagine what them cases are worth now i have them and it felt like why are you even here if you're only seeing people you already have like what was the point of you being here yeah you're not getting any new clients why did you rent all this space it's crazy i just like i had a mcfarland account way back when but they they wouldn't give me the time of day and i kept trying to get in with them and then i had a folder where i saved all the rejections and then one day i get a call from the vice president of mcfarland and they said we'd love for you to carry our product and then i laughed but i just found it funny because they wouldn't give me the time of day but when they needed me i they came running so when 21st century toys got in bed with walmart planes 118 scale p51s and whatever p47s corsairs they had a 55 retail cost was 39.50 and i i might order i don't know 100 units 100 120 units like i filled a ups truck up a lot of units yeah but this was you know that was my bread and butter i was like their top 10 buyer and this is you know early mid 2000s next thing you know they got in bed with walmart and walmart was selling that plane for 39.99 15 cheaper so i'm losing orders all the guys like me are losing orders and and then so then we all pretty much dropped 21st century toys i mean walmart will use you for a certain amount of time and then they don't need you anymore yeah and then they moved on because military collectibles weren't moving like they used to did you get that call oh and then they came and wanted uh me back and i said you're done and you you went with you know the big boys and you forgot who got you where you are all his mom and pop shops yeah and so then i don't i don't need you [00:09:56] Speaker 1: anymore it's kind of like how magic did amazon would have unlimited allocations cheaper than i could get it from wizards for and how do you compete with that and then like with the toys i'd have to get it [00:10:09] Speaker 3: through distribution and they're getting it straight on their their containers from china like i i was going to do an exclusive fox wolf this is the first time 21st century ever did this in 118 scale we met with the designer we're gonna we picked the paint scheme we were buying the whole run i think it was we had to buy like 1200 units then it changed like exclusivity for six months but we can't promise that walmart may not get their shipment of it at some point within your six month window and then i was like but then that's not an exclusive and then it also came back to well then we're gonna have to share it with small blue planet small blue planet which we knew if you ordered your wholesale product all of a sudden it started shipping from small blue planet which was this online seller you could see in some of the old toy magazine which was supposedly a family member or a brother-in-law of the owner and so then i was like so now you're just sharing my exclusive with your own family and i know your ideas because my wholesale orders are shipping from them so this is ebay there's nobody here right now but i mean this is where they work that's part of that shira movie display we did so it was a movie called the beanie bubble so it was on ty the founder of the beanie babies zach galifianakis played him and they had to recreate two trade shows one and i think 19 or 85 and one in 97. too many people wouldn't cooperate with them licensing wise so they pretty much the only manufacturer that was noteworthy was mattel so they could do barbie and hot wheels and but it's not like you could do bravestar because just because playmates made turtles doesn't mean they own the rights to turtles it's like so anything that's on a shelf with numbers and letters it's all listed and it's toy federation's ebay yeah toy federation shop it's like the same on all my socials i feel like you would have [00:12:00] Speaker 1: to have a full staff doing this as much stuff as y'all get in yeah but if it's worthy of the store [00:12:05] Speaker 3: it stays in the store i can't walk everything over here because i'd rather have it to the people who are going to come see me but not everybody can come see me but if there's a limited number i'm saving for the people because i get people from all over the country daily because you guys really don't have [00:12:21] Speaker 1: a traditional website ebay is kind of your website because see i used to have a website and i walked [00:12:27] Speaker 3: away from it to do brick and mortar yeah i mean i didn't win that battle amazon one you think with [00:12:32] Speaker 1: your name now though it would be easier to get it going again i mean i i mean ebay reaches the whole [00:12:39] Speaker 3: world do i need to try to do that on my own when i know they're going to get it caught but so does the merchant provider and the web hosting and it's the old me when i was struggling for inventory and trying fighting every which way to you know i might have it on my ebay and it might be in a bin to go to the show and then it might be in my shop and then the moment you sell it in the shop or at a show is when [00:13:02] Speaker 1: the guy bought it on your ebay it took me opening up five stores in 10 years to realize i just wanted one store and i finally felt like i understood how to run my business and i hit that like stride yeah i mean you gotta fail to to win what year did you actually feel like you hit your stride with this [00:13:24] Speaker 3: i mean the first month in this you know like it was like i signed a three-year lease i don't even have any employees i'm having to lock the shop at two o'clock to run and get my kids from school take them home to then drive back to the shop to then open the door and i was like this is horrible business like and then i met chad and then chad started to help me and then then i so then i didn't have to close when i would go get my kids from school but then you know and then i'm writing ious for i don't have money to buy collections i'm writing people here's a hundred dollars now and i get you a hundred dollars next week and they it all they trusted me a lot of guys see your success or my store or other [00:14:05] Speaker 1: stores and they don't understand oh early days they just think you print money open a store but you [00:14:12] Speaker 3: have to be a fighter i've told this story you know phoenix reseal did a whole documentary on me you know and then my mom watched it after and she's like well i only you know because i cared and because i mean it she gave up she was the longest holdout and then at the very end it was like maybe it's time to get a real job you know you got to provide and you got kids and you got you know responsibilities but you know the mortgage was never not paid you know like i had enough things that i acquired when i had another day job and was making money that i literally gutted everything that had value like my 12 backs and my last 17 carded and i had things like that when i was selling aircraft parts you know in a high-paid sales job so i could sell uh but you know i wasn't happy that's the insane delusional [00:15:04] Speaker 1: mindset you have to have i mean i don't have to do this i don't have fancy jewelry you know i wear you [00:15:09] Speaker 3: know i got two belts a black and a brown i have you know i drive a ford transit like my money is in my toys and and memories i'll die doing this and we're back same spot [00:15:28] Speaker 1: oh my god how did you know we were driving in a tropical storm would you do it again same situation no one we know now totally worth risking our lives for so i'm gonna give you my honest thoughts and feedback on it no offense to guys who film for a living i think a teenager with an iphone could film that shop and it would feel like lightning in a bottle he had an aura about him but the whole store had an aura yeah so there's levels of this game a lot of times i always try to learn from people but i can admit i felt like i learned more spending that hour with ryan about business about toys about running this kind of hobby shop in that hour that i've probably learned in like the last 10 years is youtube was a lightning in a bottle to catch it at the right time i don't think so i think toy federation the owner the staff the customers that support that place i think that's the lightning in the bottle i am truly impressed with that store truly impressed with ryan he's not a guy who just films a youtube video he is a smart forward-thinking business person who understands you don't change the ingredients all right we'll see you guys in the next one [00:17:06] Speaker ?: you