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Around September 2001 a good friend of mine, Chris Zantidies, took a heaven sent job to be the DCI policy guy in Seattle. I've known Zed since he was 14 - he's my great friend and former flat mate Hughie Shonkopolis (Jim Bandas) cousin. When the MTG craze hit our roleplaying group Zed started learning the rules, running tournaments, etc and worked his way into Wizards from there. So the night before he flies out my girlfriend Linda & I take him for a meal & drinks to wish him well. Sometime during coffee Zed starts talking me into applying for his old job (now done by Dale Atkin). I have a job I love with great workmates, more money than I think I deserve, company car, etc so I decline (I subsequently apply for the position at the last minute and justifiably never hear back from the company about the position).

But I mention to Zed that I'd always wanted to run a games shop, as I'm happy where I am, I just don't have the time to try. Zed comes up with the simple answer "Talk to Chris Foggin - he's been saying for years he's going to open a shop, put him in there fulltime, you help out when you can and see how it goes. After a year if it appears viable, make a decision then". After that the mudcake or whatever arrives and we talk about Zed's new job, what decks he's taking, does he think he'll be able to use his accent to pull heaps of chicks (it must have worked, Zed came back to Oz married to Jess-way to go Zed!) etc. But the idea stayed with me for a while and went from idle conversation making to something that wouldn't leave me alone.

A few days later I emailed Chris and asked him if he was still interested in opening a shop. He gave me what he later told me was his standard reply to such enquires "yeah, I'm still kicking that idea around". We schedule a meeting at his house to go for a coffee and a chat later that week and after general chat we get down to business. Within about 3 minutes it's apparent that we get on very well, we have the same objectives, and generally have the same thinking on how to accomplish those objectives. However, Chris is talking from an advanced position -how much he believes we'll earn a year, where I'm talking from an embryonic position like "this is how much money we have to turnover before we even make rent". I try to ask intelligent, insightful questions that one would ask of a potential business partner, and Chris easily gives me the impression that everything in the universe happens for a reason, and don't stress because it's sort of uncool here in Enmore drinking latte. What I really didn't expect was for Chris to suggest we should try to open in a month or so in time for Christmas. I kinda try to divert such rapid progress citing unpreparedness as the main reason, but it's really because I still regularly get paid each month and drive round the state in a finely appointed latest model sedan, with unlimited expense account and endless invites to various golf days. We make a unspoken understanding (the first of around 12,000 to date) that we can live with each other and we should pursue the matter further.

I discovered during the next few months or so that Chris was on first name basis with around a dozen or so city based real estate agents. He had pursued many times his dream of owning his own gamestore and had even gone to the extent of inspecting properties. About once a week or so we'd meet for coffee and slowly, and I mean slowly, started to gather information and documentation required to start a company. Locations were thrashed out-the city was looked at more than once but ruled out because of the very strong and successful Games Paradise in Pitt St, the North side of town was a little hard for the bulk of our prospective clients to get to, and those who played were being well looked after at MegaGames Trader Eastwood (now Top Ryde), and both Campbelltown & Blacktown had their own stores who were both well supported and also supportive of their local communities. For a while I was hot on Rockdale, but after an arvo of looking at mainly bad premises Chris said to me plainly "this area is dead in retail". He probably wanted to say that the minute he got out of his car, but for my sake gave it a go anyway. So by the process of elimination we had it down to 2 retail areas -Hurstville & Burwood.

We also had argued fairly healthily about what to call the shop. Chris liked "Earthquake Games" because it was catchy and represented one of his favourite cards. I wanted something generic, non threatening and easily identifiable, so pretty much wouldn't budge on Sydney Games Centre, although I tried to compromise by endorsing "Equinox Games" for a while. Looking back, I'm glad we didn't go that way. To his credit Chris yielded to what he acknowledged was at least an apt name for the place, even if a little too mainstream for his liking, and we pressed on.

By this time another Ryde Player of the Year had come and gone, holidays had been taken and around 15 prospective gameshop premises had been walked through and I had blabbed to my friends The Mighty Allan Sharpe and Adam Williams, at the NSW State Titles 2001, that maybe their concerns over getting cards for their States deck may be allayed in the short term as a new, brilliantly managed store may just about be ready to open in Sydney sometime soon. This remark, like so many other things I do, went off pre-maturely and only succeeded in having others approach me furtively with questions like "is it true you and Foggo are opening a shop?". A shop at Hurstville, right next door to a pub, immediately caught Foggo's attention-rent was in our price range(which by now had been amended up for about the 6th time), had a downstairs area (with pre-built bar style fixture-a must!)which could be used for retail, plus a sexy looking spiral staircase going upstairs to a big-ish play area, complete with a wall mounted air-con. Plans were made, proposals generated, secretaries perved on and coffee boiled in anticipation of what would be a March opening. Regretably, but probably a blessing now the way things turned out, we couldn't agree to terms with the real estate, and reluctantly let it go.

By this time we had registered at company name with ASIC (for around $1100), registered a domain name for our website, talked a lot about how good it was going to be, looked at heaps of properties, sent maybe a half dozen proposals to real estates, drunk a lot of coffee but generally not achieved much. I had told my boss (and good friend over 14 years) Graeme Cowderoy of my plans to use long service leave in the next 6 months or so, and whilst concerned about my financial future also worried about my ability to do both jobs at once. But being the friend that he is he fully supported me and pretty much put up with me delaying my leave a few times when various deals fell through until the lease was signed. Chris was fairly amazed at how cool this was and asked once or twice "are you sure you want to leave people this nice?". I still wasn't sure myself, but I didn't want to die wondering.

Mercifully, things sped up when we found a run down furniture shop at the bottom of Burwood Rd near Parramatta Rd. Being a furniture shop it was naturally big, sort of split in the middle, with carspots out the back. It was also about 25metres from the Bath Arms Hotel, which assured the store of getting Foggo's seal of approval. Funnily enough, the current occupants of the store didn't realise that their shop was being leased out from under them, and after pretending to be customers (at the real estate agents advice-Chris nearly bought a vanity unit) we pressed the agent for a more formal inspection. After some considerable persuading, we met the agent out the front at the prescribed time, when she told us to wait out the front. She then had a very animated discussion with the occupants in Cantonese for a few minutes, who kept looking at Chris & I suspiciously (although Foggo seemed used to this). She then came back saying they agreed to let us through the place, telling us that as of now we were property inspectors valuing the building. She must have said something incredible, because anyone who has seen Foggo before about 2pm thinks he is a lot of things, but property inspector definitely ain't one of them. The rent, layout of the store and the nearby Bath Arms all seemed to add up to THE best place we had seen so far, so we sunk in another proposal and started working up layout plans.

It was sort of traditional after meeting we'd go and have a coffee and a chat, so because it was up near the real estate who'd just shonkily showed us over the furniture shop we dove into the Green Olive Cafe. Perched outside sipping flat whites and admiring the passing traffic I noticed a for lease sign in the window of the old Bridge & Backgammon Club, on the first floor of the building on the other side of the road. The agent was Ray White City South, so I called them (I was so tired of calling agents by this time), got through to the property managers secretary, asked her the going price, choked on the flat white when she told me, thanked her then hung up. I told Chris, he said don't worry about it, we had our venue, now could I please pay attention to some of his latest Vogon poetry he had written. All this was going swimmingly, the agent sent back a counter offer that wasn't out of the question (a first), Graeme had approved again the months I wanted to take off work, Andrew Corney, a now SGC regular who was close to Chris, and is now lumbered with me being his friend too had kindly arranged his dad, an accountant, to give us much needed free financial advice, and I found out that I was no longer going to be doing the North-West run for Westinghouse (though I loved it, after 10 years a change was welcome), and was going to go to Newcastle overnight instead. I should have seen it coming, things had to go wrong...

We discovered, during our initial dealings with the council, that the small office above our fine furniture shop was in fact an illegal (but well known) brothel. This only enhanced the stores appeal to Foggo, who immediately started planning our first staff Xmas party there, however the fine town planners were more than a little concerned about having school aged kiddies being in such close proximity of such an establishment (the brothel, not Foggo). Also, we discovered the Bath Arms to be a bit of a dive, which once again suited Foggo, but not me as they didn't serve Coopers OR Guiness, a neccessity for a wanky sales rep with an expense account like me. These things, coupled with the dodginess of the real estate in showing the property, turned us from being keen as mustard to putting the shop in the too hard basket over the next 6 weeks or so. So we were sitting quite disconsolately back in the Green Olive, me wondering how I was going to delay my long service leave once again and Chris wondering where the Xmas party will be, when we noticed the for lease sign was still up in the Backgammon Club. It has been around 6 weeks since our initial enquiry, and after chatting amongst ourselves and the nice people in the cafe established it had been empty for at least 9 months, probably more. Chris said we should try again, and arrange an inspection. So I did, and after getting the same asking price again, got the comment "if you inspect and you're still interested, put in a proposal",which gave me heart that the agent may be getting sick of having the owner call each week saying "have you leased it yet?". I can't remember exactly the reason I couldn't make the inspection (I believe I was out of town for Westinghouse) but after Chris & I had seen, talked about and argued so much about what we did & didn't want in a venue I had no worries leaving the inspection solely to him.

As I have discovered over the last 15 months or so, when it comes to the shop, things seem to go better when I'm not there and Foggo reported that the premises, whilst too far away from a pub or a brothel for his liking, was for us "Utopia". A big call. So we generated a proposal (we had the template down pat by this stage, just changed the address & numbers) and sent it off, offering about 2/3rds of the agents asking price. Much to our surprise we got an email back within 2 days (a record) and they hadn't laughed at our offering. They didn't accept it either, but their counter offer was still OK. By this stage I'd had enough living in limbo and just wanted to get started anyway, either in the Bridge Club or in a tin shed in Erskineville, so I called them up and after about 20 minutes haggling, came down to something I could live with. Chris being more streetwise, and for those who haven't visited the store, a little more money concious than I, quite rightly said we may be able to sweeten the deal either a little more, so we tried and got a little extra. We were still paying around $170 a week more than we had hoped, but at least, finally, we had a premises!

When I told Chris over the phone that we had an agreement and that the lease was being prepared and would be ready in around 5 days time, he went, for the first time I could remember, quiet and said "so this is it, it's happening". Luckily we weren't drinking latte in Enmore at the time, because for the first time Foggo registered on the uncoolommeter. I confirmed with Graeme for the 10th or so time my long service leave and we started trying to work our what needed to be done.

We opened the bank accounts, engaged solicitors (Chris's friend Jaman's dad kindly helped us out no charge here), withdrew life savings (no much by any standards), hired trucks, bought furniture, got insurance, got electricity & phone lines, got friends to help with anything, borrowed tables, drank coffee, put up posters, picked up used office furniture donated by friends (thanks be to Squealer & Nigel Parsons) and started organising accounts.

This part was by far the trickiest, and to me the most concerning part of the venture. Chris had either worked for or met and become aquainted with the main wholesalers we woud be dealing with, and each had given him some non specific verbal agreement to help him out if in fact one day he did get a store going. Because, like most of the rest of Sydney, they'd been hearing this for sometime, it was easy for them to say "when you're ready come see us". The worry was that if they became unwilling/unable to supply us, we'd have a 170 square metre venue that carried an echo when you spoke. My worry was unfounded and all but one embraced what we were trying to do and helped us out. It would also be remiss of me not to mention the help I got from Michael & Lynn from Mythic Games (then Meghom) at Campbelltown, who kindly allowed me to come out for coffee one Saturday morning and gave me phone numbers and direction to people and companies we should & shouldn't deal with.

We had signed on a Friday for the lease to start on the Monday, and our plan was to open Thursday. Thanks to our friends Palm-Off Paul Medhurst and MTG bunny TBS who were either on holiday or outta work (guess which is which) at the time we managed to get the cleaning/displaying/carrying lots of heavy gear up stairs thing done in time, and had the shop laid out and looking as good as we thought possible for a empty room with 12 tables and 60 chairs in it. We belatedly decided to have a Wednesday night pre-opening party, attended by 20 or so MTG players, and the reactions from the guys to the place, and in fact to Chris & I for having a go, made me feel that even if we crashed in the first month or so it was worth it just for this. Every one said if there was anything they could do to help with the store, just ask. As the first few days then weeks went by, more and more of the MTG community started coming in and most said the same thing. People I hadn't met before they walked in the store offered help and encouragement readily, and soon the place started to "feel" right. I was still worried about whether we'd end up broke, but more and more I was starting to not care. This is what I wanted to do.

The inevitable happened and my 9 weeks long service leave ran out, and I trudged back to reality. I hung in doing both jobs at once for just under a year, but it came that I wasn't doing either as well as I could. I was also concerned that Chris, whilst he genuinely loved coming into the shop each day, may burn out. So after 14 years, 2 months, 2 weeks & 2 days I quit reality and started doing what I had wanted to do for some time - own a games shop.

Highlights have been everywhere, The Sydney 500 last December, The Lord of the Rings National Championships in June and the 8th edition Global Celebration in July pretty much select themselves as the most memorable things we've done thus far in the shop. Scott Hunstad's article about us in June on this site also pretty much made everything we've ever done seem worth it, having a beer at night when we're shut with Chris and maybe a regular or two is also something very satisfying. Seeing people who didn't know each other until they dropped into the shop for a game of something become good friends is also very fulfilling.

Lowlights, and there are surprisingly few, have been dealing with the real estate agent, catching kids who you help build decks for them and then try to steal cards from us, and somehow getting caught in a problem between Mythic Miniatures and a big supplier which caused a falling out between us. Thanks to all who've helped make SGC the place it is, there's way to many to name (except Ben Seck, thanks for helping out with pretty much everything). It doesn't seem like I'm working anymore, just hanging around playing games with friends. I really hope one day Foggo also writes his version of events (those he can remember). The reality is, without Chris the place either wouldn't exist or be what it is without him.

For all those who'd like to start their own business, whatever it is, go for it-dont' die wondering!

Thanks all

Kieren Otton

The Sydney Games Centre

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