Editor’s note: Made in Tarrant is an occasional Q&A series on small businesses started in Tarrant County. Submit your business here.
When Steve Cromer was looking for a new gig about seven years ago, he checked out local listings of businesses for sale and found options such as laundromats and frozen yogurt stores.
But those ideas didn’t excite him. Laundromats don’t have vibrant communities.
Then, it hit him. He loves vintage video games, so why not get into that business? He reached out to local shop owners by leaving a note at their registers asking if they wanted to sell their businesses. Soon enough, he got a call.
Now, he is a co-owner of Retro Madness, selling video games and collectibles at locations in Bedford and Fort Worth. The business also offers video game repair, which is the domain of his business partner, Daniel Chamberlin.
Cromer especially enjoys the community he shares with customers — fellow enthusiasts of “nerd culture” — and getting to relive the excitement that toy stores brought him as a kid.
“I can still remember how excited I was for us to just pull up and park in front because you knew something good was coming,” he said.
Cromer talked to reporter McKinnon Rice about his fun-filled business.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Contact information:
Website: retromadnessdfw.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RetromadnessDFW/
Instagram: @retromadnessdfw
Email: retromadnessdfw@gmail.com
Address: 1424 Brown Trail, Bedford
5425 S. Hulen St., Fort Worth
McKinnon Rice: Can you tell me a little bit about the products you sell?
Steve Cromer: It’s kind of three buckets. The repair is a service, so we will work on any video game system if the parts exist. I don’t know if you have ever heard of an Atari, but that came out before the original Nintendo. So from Nintendo up to PS 5 and series X.
And then our retail offerings fall into two buckets. One is video games. We don’t have a lot of current-gen stuff. Our inventory kind of starts at PS 4 and Switch No. 1 and goes backwards in time. We really love it when we can get in large lots of Nintendo 64, GameCube. The other day, I went to a convention and bought 350 original Nintendo games. Our clientele is really excited for us to get those in stock.
The third leg of the stool is collectibles, and that focus really starts with the original Star Wars in 1977. They came out with a toy line in ’77 of 3¾-inch figures. I really like to say that started iconic toy collecting in the ’80s. Transformers came out, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-Man. More recently, we do sell a little bit of anime, and about 10% of our sales are Pokémon cards. We’ve got our toe in a number of different places, all of it kind of fitting under geek culture as a broad umbrella.
Pokémon cards represent a tenth of Retro Madness’s sales. (Courtesy | Retro Madness)
Rice: What is your favorite part of operating your business?
Cromer: Absolutely, community. I was saying, if you run a laundromat, you don’t have a big sense of community. Our store is not quite as tight as a neighborhood bar, but there is a lot of that aspect to it. Some of my best friends that I hang out with on a monthly basis are our clientele. They have nicknames like Turtle Chris and Uber Hulk. There is a really dynamic and vibrant community around collecting, so that’s a ton of fun. Even though I don’t know families maybe quite as well as I know the collectors, I love having a young family come in and getting to see a 5- or 7-year-old kid get a $10 toy. You can kind of relive the excitement that you felt. When I was a kid, there was a toy store at Granbury Road and I-20, not far at all from where our store is located. It was called Bolen’s Toy Palace, and I can still remember how excited I was for us to just pull up and park in front because you knew something good was coming. We really enjoy our customers. All of my help are big-time collectors of one or multiple toys or Pokémon cards, so they have really good discussions with our clientele when folks come in. We like to talk or see pictures of stuff that our customers bought, even if they buy it at another store. We’re kind of there to have those conversations.
Rice: What are some of the challenges that come with operating a business like yours?
Cromer: (Laughs) Oh, man, do we have 30 minutes? A lot of things that I struggle with would be similar, I think, to any business. Site selection — we did have one location that we closed. Just learning the nuts and bolts of running a small business. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the term triple net, but when you lease a building, you pay for the insurance and upkeep of the building. The owner bills you for that separately, along with your rent. So learning about that. When you rent a suite in a strip center, you’re also responsible for the air conditioning. I’m knocking on my forehead so I can knock on wood here — I haven’t had any air conditioning units go out on me, but if I did, I’d be on the hook for $8,000-$10,000 to replace that unit.
Some of the things that you do anticipate in going into operating a business are just dealing with employees. We’ve been lucky in that our average tenure of an employee is like three years, which is unbelievable based on us being a small business, and our pay rates being less than a Target, for instance. But, you know, there’s always things that happen with employees that you’ve got to adapt to, and in some cases, terminate, which is definitely not fun.
Those are the big ones. Honestly, seven years in, I really just am starting to feel like I’ve kind of got my arms wrapped around the proper way to run the business. It takes time. I will bring up one more challenge, and that is, 95% of everything in our store we buy from the public. If you bring me some Pokémon cards, I want to make you a fair offer, but I also need to make you an offer that will allow for the business to make profit. That can be a challenge.
Retro Madness products. (Courtesy | Retro Madness)
Rice: What do you hope for the future of your business?
Cromer: We’ve made it 11 years, so, I think, when I read articles in random business digest, we’re definitely a dinosaur having made it 11 years, so that’s exciting. I would say in the next five years, potentially reopening a third location, and likely in Dallas County, would be my target for that. And, just in a general sense, slow and steady sales improvement, and maintaining — I want to say we have a 4.6 Google rating. We’re super passionate about our reviews. We want to continue to make folks happy when they come through the door.
McKinnon Rice is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at mckinnon.rice@fortworthreport.org.
The Fort Worth Report partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
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