By popular demand, I’ll start a dedicated thread on my second hand pop culture shop in Turku Finland (Yliopistonkatu 38, pop in if you’re in town).
I’ve been in graphic design/illustration business for basically all my adult life. First I drew comic strips for a living and it soon evolved into a full blown career in advertising. For a couple of years now, I’ve been fed up with working in that field. I don’t want to spend my life encouraging people to consume stuff they don’t really need. Last three years working mostly in food advertising finally cracked the camel’s back (is that even an expression in english?) and I needed to find something else to do in my life than photoshopping chicken burgers as a vegetarian. It was against my nature and my values.
18 months ago I heard from a friend that my favourite second hand book store which has huge selection of vinyl, movies, comics and other pop culture related stuff, was up for sale. The previous owner is turning 70 this year and is ready to finally retire. For a long time the shop has been dwindling just barely getting by and the owner has been basically retired for the last five years and he’s been running the shop as a hobby. For over a year I’ve been working hard filling applications etc. with the goal of buying the shop.
Two weeks ago we signed the papers and I got the keys to my dream job. I paid a hefty price for it but for the amount of stuff included it was peanuts. Even if I sold every single item for one euro each, I’d make a fortune and a huge profit, but I’ve already found stuff like a Frank Frazetta lithography, three mint copies of very rare local death metal (Funebre) lps and dozens of unopened boxes of 90s comic book themed collector cards, during my brief time of owning the shop.
We carried over 400 big cardboard boxes filled with comics, movies, books and records into the basement to make the space more inviting and at the moment I have three and a half huge storage units filled with excellent stock. In the first week I made 150% of the previous owner’s monthly income. It’s been just crazy.
I have a lot of thoughts on what a second hand book store could be in the 2020s. I’ll start new sections in the store for RPGs, vintage video games and maybe even second hand music gear. I’m also going to have in-store gigs there, hopefully I’ll get some of my dj friends to play gigs (with the twist of them only playing the records from the store) on saturdays and I’ll install a screen and a video projector for having things like Tetris championship games etc. I used to also work in event production in my hometown Turku producing all kinds of weird things for the nightlife. Now I have my own space where I can have any kind of happening whenever I like. The only downside is that I can’t sell beer, but I’ll have a corner for coffee and sitting and reading.
All of my upcoming furniture will have wheels underneath them so I can easily push them against the walls and clear out a dance floor or whatever is needed for the current happening. A lot of intricate plans but I have the rest of my life to make them come true. I’m in no hurry.
You can follow my shop on Facebook and Instagram but most of the content is in finnish I’m afraid. There’s a lot of stuff in the basement that hasn’t seen the light of day since the early nineties and the previous owner never had a web presence so I basically have stuff that’s sold out from Amazon and all the other specialist shops on the planet. It’ll take a lot of time to get my webshop up and running but eventually it’ll be great.
