Very sad meta commenting things going on here.
Kenny at the FPI blog put up a link to my recent Nostalgia & Me posts.
I commented on them and then I talk about doing so here.
Bizarre. And a little sad.
Anyway, Kenny said:
Rich Bruton, ex employee in our Nostalgia and Comics store, has posted his latest two entries on working there for 19 years on his Fictions blog. The latest post concerns the takeover of the business by FPI in the late 90s and the misgivings the staff had at the time about that. I’d say from Rich’s post there are still things they would do differently but that over time they have seen that less changed than they might have expected.
I remember when we first bought it from the previous owner and the problem it had then was that it had run up a lot of debt which was endangering it’s supply, which in turn was close to making the shop a less attractive location for buyers. The shop now runs well and much of that has really come from those who were already there doing a fine job, allied to us bringing sounder finances to it. It’s an interesting read and I’m sure posts to come will deal with some other decisions we’ve made along the way that didn’t quite work out. It’s always interesting to see someone else’s view of these things, especially someone whose wages you are no longer paying.
To which I added this as comment:
(How incestuous is this, commenting on a post about my own weblog. sad, sad, sad, sad)
Cheers for posting it up guys.Like I say in the post I think all at Nostalgia & Comics would ideally like to have a shop just doing comics and graphic novels. That is, after all our first love (and I suspect it's Kenny's and Joe's as well) but we also acknowledge that in a shop our size financial necessity means we stock the merchandise as well.
But I certainly don't want anyone to think I've an axe to grind against FPI, my former employers. If I wasn't 131 miles away, I'd still be working there now. It was a pleasure to work at Nostalgia & Comics and being taken over by FPI meant that Nostalgia & Comics could continue providing on of the best comic shop experiences in the country.
FPI has been a surprise. They aren't the huge corporate beast many think. And certainly at the core, as represented by Kenny and Joe on this blog, they dearly love the comics. Which is what we do best after all.
So stop by the FPI blog, they're doing a good thing over there and proving to be as valuable to the UK comic scene as Journalista and Comics reporter is to the US scene.
No comments:
Post a Comment