The Blog
This is the first time of writing so I’ll try to introduce me, Steve and give you a bit of a rundown about Morningstar
I’m Alison (Ally) and I run Morningstar Hobby Supplies with Steve my other half and business partner. My experience is all back office, accounts, advertising, marketing… Whilst Steve has retired from the army after 22 years to run the business. Steve is the one who chooses the products that we sell and works with the suppliers to get the best prices and discounts so that we can keep prices as low as possible. It his expertise and experience that allows us to supply the ranges that we have in store and on the Internet both on the website and the ebay shop.
About me then: I’ve spent far to many years in an office number crunching. But that said ‘in the office’ is where I met Steve. We were casualties of the dot.com industry in the late 90’s so decided we didn’t want to work for anyone else anymore. For relaxation I play hockey (not all jolly hockey sticks believe me). Most Saturdays I will be kitted up as a goalkeeper for my local club. Other than that I have two children from a previous relationship. Both, though only teenagers, are quite active in the shop with us.
About Steve: As said, 22 years in the army spending time in a few war zones but we won’t go into that now. Steve left the army and started work as an IT consultant. His leisure time was spent modelling (the plastic variety not in front of a camera) and miniature gaming – hence the nature of shop we set up. As he’s gained more experience and interest in all aspects of the hobby industry he’s identified other areas of interest – the SCX Digital racing system for one.
So, in 2002 we set up Morningstar Hobby Supplies Ltd. We named the business after the book Steve was ready at the time, written by David Gemmell. In the early days we employed two young lads, Thomas and Jimmy. They we both avid miniature gamers and it wasn’t long before we had a large following of youngsters playing games in the shop. Not long after we opened Yu-Gi-Oh! hit the shelves. It’s fair to say we didn’t quite know what hit us. The interest was phenomenal. Jimmy soon learnt the game, became a judge and we were running regular tournaments for our customers. As with all fads, interest has waned but we still have a regular customer base for Yu-Gi-Oh! and many other card games. Another very successful game we came to know very well was Magic the Gathering. Again Jimmy played the game, became a judge and we ran regular tournaments. One of the followers of that game then was Ville, who returned to us this summer (2007) as a temporary employee and is largely responsible for both the idea of me writing this blog and the forum which we have just started.
Thomas and Jimmy both left us to go to University so we turned to regular customer Carl. Gus to all his friends. His took over from where Jimmy had left off with teaching ‘Magic the Gathering’ and Games Workshop Games and running tournaments for our customers. Sadly he also left us for University – the hugs will be missed.
So we took the plunge and employed a full timer, John. Between John and I we continued to run tournaments. John’s expertise is with Games Workshop miniature gaming and we forged a very successful relationship with Games Workshop to become one of their Elite Stores. The most successful years so far being when Games Workshop released their range of ‘Lord of the Rings’ figures.
In 2005 we had to change location – so moved from our slightly out of town shop into the shopping centre in Camberley. We oversaw the shop fit of our new premises and with the immense help of our friends Richard and Marcin we made the move from one shop to the other overnight. We actually closed for business at 5.30pm on a Tuesday night and re-opened at 11.00am the following morning. Believe me, that was a tough nights work.
Since then we have, with the help of casual staff, Wez, Jamie and Kelly continued to offer Camberley shoppers something a bit different…….. A niche market, with experts on hand to help with advice and even demonstrations at times.
Now we’re setting up for Christmas again. Camberley Town is a bit of a mess with all the building work going on. A new shopping is in the process of being built. Once finished I’m sure we will see Camberley thrive but for the moment it’s a bit of a building site.
We’ve just taken on Jamie again whilst he’s finding his feet after his trip to Japan. Hopefully he will stay until Christmas but if the world on Animation makes him an offer I’m sure he’ll be gone. Anyway ehislt he’s with us we are planning to demonstrate the SCX Digital system in the town centre again. Our shows, thanks to Jamie and Becky have always been quite successful. What the website for the dates:
Also, Hornby have kindly offered us a demonstration track to show off their Hornby Digital range. We’ll have this on the floor in the not to distant future. This coupled with the SCX and Scalextric
To be continued………………….2006/07