After three years in business, hobby, games and comic store Gameshack is closing its doors.
Proprietor Stephen Wilkins told the Compass economic realities and the end of the store’s lease had been factors in the decision to mothball operations.
“We are closing at the end of September. It is a short season and difficult to make ends meet when you have a full-year of costs to deal with, plus hobby stores are fairly niche and population size is a factor,” he said. “It’s simple economics – people are spending less and Cayman is a very hard place to do retail, especially disposable income purchases. We have done quite well and it hasn’t been a total disaster, but did not quite reach the levels we hoped or needed.”
He cited high rents and overheads as issues in retaining a healthy cash flow as vital to keeping operations going.
“You get some good sales leading up to Christmas – October, November and December are good months and March to May not bad, but the rest of the year is pot luck,” Mr. Wilkins said. “Summers are dreadful; you might as well just shut your business for three months, but then you have your ongoing costs to deal with; it’s hard to recover from the really quiet months.
“Business costs have got more expensive with fuel increases and there doesn’t seem to be much negotiation on rents. My own feeling is that landlords should be a bit more adaptable to the economic situation, but then if they can rent it for what they are asking, of course they are going to do that.”
Ironically, since announcing the imminent closure, the store had been very busy with bargain hunters. Also popular had been Free Comic Book Day on Saturday, 6 May.
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