Week 1 - On the subtle differences between soft and grand openings

It's been a busy week here at Junior's Hobbies.  And, at the same time, not a busy week at all.  

Hi, I'm Donnie, the owner of Junior's Hobbies, and longtime model car builder. I've been complaining for at least the past ten years about the lack of a hobby shop around here, and for whatever reason I've taken it into my thick skull I should be the one to open one.

And here we are.  

It's not much.  As of today (Friday, March 21, 2025) I only have fifteen model kits from Aoshima on offer.  There's a lot more coming, of course, but at the moment, the shelves are kinda bare.

That's why I decided to soft-launch Junior's Hobbies, as opposed to putting on some impressive Grand Opening!-style event.  Imagine, you go to a Grand Opening! for some local business, and under all the balloons and glitz there's just one shelf with anything on it.  That would be ridiculous, right?

At the same time, I want to be open.  I've been planning this for over a year, and I'm getting impatient.  I like people, I love sharing my passion for scale modeling with people, and most importantly, I don't want to live in my car!

Hence, the soft opening.  It's the perfect solution; Junior's Hobbies is not ready for prime time just yet, but I still get to sell something, at least, to get some money coming in.  I can get away with opening odd hours, or closing for a day so I can get some of the all-important running-around done.  

As a consequence of that decision, I haven't had a lot of visitors or sales this first week.  So while I have been busy doing things to grow the business, the shop itself hasn't been very busy at all.

Junior's Hobbies is open.

Tell your friends.