Thank you for helping us grow!

This week we moved our entire warehouse into our new space, we built eight pieces of furniture, we started training two new team members, we fed a team of 12 during the process, and we reorganized the entire store.

We are "opening week exhausted" but we also feel the excitement of that time. The expansion and reorganization has definitely given us some room to spread out a little and create some space to fill in again. We've always had complete confidence that no matter what we decided to bring in, we could find a space for it. And now we have more room. It feels like a reset.

As much as we have tremendous reason to celebrate this week, I want to address the elephant in the room: "Will you be expanding to get event space?"

When we opened in 2020 we confidently told anyone who would ask that we would surely be expanding to a larger space as soon as we could. "One to two years max," we would say. So what does THIS expansion (without that added event space) mean?

Our mission is to foster community for our gamers and hobbyists and to create opportunities to gather and meet each other. Having a physical space for that to happen at LionHeart Hobby was always a goal. It makes sense and we wanted to provide it.

The reality, though, after 18 months of research, talking to developers, talking to banks, talking to the city, talking to small business development, talking to our accountant, researching, crunching numbers, mulling, planning, and scheming is the conclusion that a larger expansion is simply not possible in this current climate.

The fact is, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to expand. Right now LionHeart Hobby is healthy and growing. But if we tried to go ahead with something like a large expansion, even if we could fundraise a portion of it, it could put the entire company at risk. No one wants that.

Sustainability, long-term growth, and building upon the foundation of what we've started makes the most sense at this point. With our warehouse and office in our same building now, we feel we can get all our processes standardized, get our team fully trained and cross-trained, add to our hours (next week late hours start!), and improve on what we've started.

Rudy and I love what we do and if you know me, I'm an ideas person. I'm ALWAYS dreaming up new ways to reach out and connect. We have wonderful, growing communities of folks who we want to support and with whom we continuously look for spaces that can serve us all. Those spaces will be outside of the store, but we find this has not hindered us.

Our Discord has almost 300 (mostly local) people on it. The Kyle Library runs events all week built by the LionHeart Community. For instance, there were 15 people at Skirmish Saturday last week! People are building game rooms in their homes, finding free spaces in their community centers, and even traveling to do organized events in other locations.

There are so many ways to connect and find your people. If you're not sure how, just stop by the store and we will hook you up! And we will continue to seek out the coolest, most fun and eclectic blend of products to bring in each week and fill the store to the brim so it remains fresh and fun for you for years to come.

Thank you for helping us grow.