Improving our Toy Display at Conquest Comics

Over the years, I think I’ve become a bit numb to the sheer quantity of really cool inventory we’ve acquired in my shop Conquest Comics. My business partner and I opened it up 16 years ago and I remember thinking that we’d never fill the place up. Since that launch, we filled up our old shop to the brim, moved next door to a much larger space, and filled that up alongside two 8x20 cargo shipping containers in the back. That much inventory can create narrow isles, towering displays, and a need for guests to dig in a bit to really discover what’s there. Feel free to ask any of the following Hive alum that I’m proud to share, have all been gracious enough to take time out of their busy lives to check out my shop. @steemmatt, @yabapmatt, @dfinney, @daltano, @bryanimhoff. If I forgot anyone, my apologies. But I’m sure they’d all attest, our shop is friggin stacked!

Point is, sometimes the displays take on a life of their own. Often we buy a collection, and now I have to figure out how to shoehorn in 85 new WWE figures…or 7 gigantic Sideshow statues, or…well…you get the picture. So every now and then, I have to rethink on how to maximize the space better and become more efficient with that space. Be it to tidy up more or jam more shit in, but usually both of those objectives simultaneously. I’m happy to say that we accomplished that with one of our toy displays recently.

This section is/was mainly our Movie/TV Show figure section. Plopped right in the heart of toy section, it was thin, rectangular, wheeled display that was around 6 feet tall. A limited amount of figures could be hung on pegs and the top base wasn’t large enough to really hold much. As I mentioned earlier, this section is a prime example of a display taking on a life of its own. We acquired so many collections of Horror figs in the past couple of years, that it just oozed out from the pegs. Boxes stacked on top of each other. Creeping into more and more of the isle on all 4 sides. We needed to attack this and improve.

So with the help of my guy @jgiambi, we dismantled and rebuilt with those earlier mentioned objectives in mind:

Tidy Up
Jam More Shit

We ditched the wheeled display. He was a good soldier for a decade and a half, but that display piece was kicked to the curb for a much more simple and practical, makeshift grid wall cube. We attached 4 pieces of tall 8ft grid wall for the sides and a made the top a bit larger. This results in not only getting up a ton more figures on pegs from the back room, but more of the larger boxes could be taken off the floor to go up top…all while increasing the isle space for folks to walk through on all sides.