The Truth About CardsHQ’s New Store 😱 (Detroit)

All right, Carter. So yesterday we made the big announcement that Cards HQ is coming to the Detroit area in this store. It may not look like a lot today, but later this year, we're going to be opening to the public, and this place is going to look awesome. I couldn't be more excited, Jeff. I am super excited as well. So let's take today's show to talk more in depth about why we chose this area, what has led up to the store opening since, of the risks and challenges that we're going to face getting open here and in the future, and then also what's going to be next for us after Detroit. You ready? Let's get into it. Let's go. The Jeff Wilson show is brought to you by Arena Club, the official home of Slab packs. Now available every day, Slab Packs offer an exciting way to collect rated cards with confidence. Plus, every pack comes with an instant offer to buy your Slab. Don't miss out. Explore the latest Slab Packs and more by downloading the Arena Club app. Just search Arena Club in the App Store and use promo code SCI for 20% off your first purchase. All right, Carter, welcome to Party City. We are here. We are here in a former Party City store in Orion Township. We are just north of the city of Detroit, near Great Lakes Crossing, which is a big outlet mall, serves the entire Michigan region, serves a little bit of Canada as well. And this will be the new home for Cards hq, hopefully opening in November of this year, if everything remains on track. And it should. Yeah, it should. We're going to. We're going to push as hard as we can. Who knows with the construction, but we're going to push as hard as we can to get open this year. I would love to get open before the holidays, but what led up to us choosing the Detroit area and this particular location? I want to get into that. And really, if we go back in time to Atlanta opening, it's really the progression of what happened in Atlanta that set our sights on potentially doing additional retail stores. When we first opened the doors in Atlanta, did you ever think that we would be, you know, two years later, just over two years later, starting to build out a store in Detroit or anywhere else? I don't think it was, like, a question of, like, ever. I think the question was maybe more the scale of it. Like, I think we always talked about, like, the potential of doing future stores, but I don't think we ever thought we would, like, outgrow Atlanta and, like, do that size again. And, like, I mean, you can see it Right now, I mean, this is the same size of Atlanta, basically. So this is gonna be a big format store. I did not think there was any chance we would ever do that because I didn't think that, like, we needed the. The. The space that we. We're using in Atlanta today. So. But I think ultimately, like, I think we knew as a part of the growth plan, I just didn't. We also didn't think retail was going to be as big for us. Yeah, initially. And so we thought online, we thought live selling. You know, we. We did this whole thing, you know, earlier, and, you know, I'll be accountable to this, but, like, you know, we. We plan for live selling from the aisles, and we've yet to do that because our retail business has been so good. So it's exciting to expand the retail business. But it's definitely, you know, it's definitely differing expectations from, you know, when we started. For sure, we were. We were so far off in our original business plan for Cards hq. I mean, crazy far off. We literally projected that we would do a few million dollars a year in retail sales of people walking into Atlanta. We're doing that in a month. Like, you know, we're doing more than that in a month of what we thought we were going to do in an entire year. We were so far off our business plan in a good way. Yeah, like, that's the way you want to be off where, like, you're just shocked by the customer flow coming through the door every day. In a very positive way. As you said. Like, our original business plan called for us to go heavy into live selling and breaking and E commerce. And we've. We've done that, but still not to the extent we want because retail has been so strong. But I'm with you. Like, the idea of opening up additional stores was always kind of something cool. Did I think we'd be opening up this big of a store two years after we opened? And by the way, plans now to open up multiple. And every time we open up an additional store, this is going to be the format we go after. These are going to be huge mega stores. We want to preserve what makes Atlanta special. And part of what makes Atlanta special is the sheer size, the product selection, the space to do these huge trade nights and. And huge tops, rip nights and huge TCG events and everything like that. We wanted to preserve that, and I think this space is gonna let us do that. Yeah, it's super exciting. I think for me, in the big format store, it's that community feel that we're building out. Right. We're not trying to build something transactional. We talked about that when we opened Atlanta. We wanna build an experience. And we realized one of our biggest components of that experience is the size of the store and everything that we put inside it. The hobby can support this. Now, I don't know that. You know, five years ago, and certainly more than five years ago, I don't think the hobby probably could have supported this. But today, the hobby can absolutely support stores of this size and magnitude being in major cities across the United States. And we want Cards HQ to be that brand that opens up stores of this magnitude in major cities throughout the United States. Because I feel like the hobby is. Needs it, like the collector community needs it. And that. And when we were looking at this area, when we were looking at Michigan, Michigan's got a very strong collector base. There are a lot of collectors from Michigan. It's got a strong collecting history. And we said, like, there's. There's good card shops in this area. There's good card shops in Detroit and Flint, but there's not anything this scope. And we said, if we bring this scope here, we think that it's going to just help further raise and elevate the collecting community. Which is what we've seen happen in Atlanta. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think in Atlanta there's a lot of good hobby shops, but the business of the hobby has grown in Atlanta tremendously with us and some other players joining Atlanta. And we're just looking to do the same thing here. Yeah, A rising tide rises. All ships. Exactly. There's another, you know, there's another card shop in Atlanta that, you know, there's multiple really good card shops in Atlanta. I was talking to the owner of one of them, and he said, you know, since you guys opened, our revenue has gone up and up and up. That's what I want to hear. Like, I want to be a net additive to the market. And I think we can be that here, and I hope that we can be that in every city we go to. I hope it doesn't turn into. Oh, we're like, in a lot of competition with the other card shops. I don't think that's going to be the case. I think what's going to happen is by us opening and having this space to do big events and big TCG tournaments and big athlete appearances and all that kind of stuff, it's going to help get new people in and build the collector community, which then will actually benefit the whole community. And all of the other card shops as well. And everybody will kind of raise as there's more, you know, collecting activity in general in the market. Yeah, exactly. I think. I think when collectors get in a community feel and they start talking and creating relationships, they start hearing about other hobby shops that they haven't. And collectors love to go to different hobby shops, even if it's far away. You know, it doesn't mean that maybe a collector, you know, up here may go to a hobby shop south of Detroit very often, but they're definitely going to go if they hear about it. Right. And so if we can create that bigger format store that's bringing more people together through events. You know, people talk and people will go try out different hobby shops and it will grow the industry for sure. So let's talk about why Detroit. And, you know, we picked. So this actually goes back now over a year ago when we, when we made the decision, like, okay, we're absolutely going after store number two, and we actually had like a. We got our leadership team together and we had like a little mini retreat and we did a exercise where we looked at a whole bunch of major markets, major cities, and we scored them, like, based on a bunch of criteria. Do you remember that? Do you remember, like the while ago, though? Yes, I do remember some of the elements we were looking at. I don't specifically. I just remember scores. You're going to have to remind me a little bit. Okay. So I remember, you know, some of it. Right. So sports teams and sports culture. That was a big one. That was one where Detroit ranked very high. Yep. They've got it. They've got the. Not just the. All four professional major sports represented here, but also you've got. We've got the WNBA coming soon as well, but then also the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, which are not too far away. They're. They're going to, you know, draw in regionally as well. This is a. Michigan's a big sports area and it's like generational here. You know, it's like a lot of people that, I mean, there's. You see it. I see it, like even in Atlanta and, you know, I grew up in Florida. A lot of we Michigan people go to Florida, like during the winters. Like, there's a big connection. When you're driving around in Florida, you see a lot of Michigan flags and people wearing University of Michigan shirts and Michigan State, like, the maze and the, you know, the blue and the, the green and the white. You actually see a lot of it, like People are very proud when you think of like the big state schools that have just like major, major fan following, like Michigan is on up there amongst the very top. And when you have that, it leads to a lot of passion and then that can lead to like a lot of collectors who, you know, who are really into the sports. Well, that's meaningful. Like I could just say in Atlanta, like we've talked about how well Braves cards sell for us. Right. And you know, we can't keep in stock Braves cards. Right. Like, there's, there's tradition around the Atlanta Braves. The Falcons are a much smaller team in the sense of the NFL. Like, we feel like in Atlanta there's a lot of people that have migrated to Atlanta that are fans of other NFL teams. Right. We don't have the sell through on Atlanta cards, you know, so I would expect up here we're going to have good sell through on the Lions cards, the Pistons cards, the history with them, the Tigers cards. Right. Like, we actually got to hope that the local, like our local sales volume actually increases up here in Detroit in comparison to Atlanta. Yeah, I actually think that will happen. I think we're going to sell more Detroit team cards up here than we do in Atlanta. Because as you said, Atlanta is a lot about the Braves, the Hawks and the Falcons. Not quite as much of a following. Of course, we don't have hockey. We do have University of Georgia. Yeah. And so that those cards do really well in Atlanta. Just like I'm sure University of Michigan and Michigan State are going to do really well here. So that's going to be, that's going to be exciting. And we want to lean into that. Like, we want to lean into the local sports culture. Really have a lot of, you know, showcases of Detroit cards and really lean into that heavily. So, yeah, the sports angle was certainly one. Then there's the, the TCG component. Right. And there's a good TCG collector community here. There's a good Pokemon collector community here. There's a lot of families here. This is a good family area. And we'll talk more about like, where we went in the metro Detroit area and why. But one of the reasons why was because you've got a lot of. We're in a family area. Yeah, you got a lot of families here. And a lot of families travel into this Great Lakes Crossing outlet mall that we're next to as well. Families are a big part of our cards HQ business. They are, they are. I mean, I think especially more on the TCG side of things. I Think sports. There's definitely a family component, but it's less. You know, I think a lot of people, a lot of kids are really into Pokemon right now. I mean, people are aware of the market. One piece is going really big. Lorcana is getting bigger. You know, there's a lot of traction in a lot of these different TCG categories, and gameplay is blowing up, you know, at all, all cylinders. So I think families, you know, are the demographic for TCG and for the future of tcg. And so. And we've been surprised at how big TCG has been in Atlanta for us. You know, I mean, you and I are sports guys, right. We started Cards HQ as primarily sports, you know, and, you know, we brought in Professor Mike, who's helped us lead the TCG component of our business. And it's been such a big component of the retail part of the business. Right. Like, in totality, we're still big in sports because of our breaking business. But TCG is such a big part of what we do from an in store perspective, and we've made it so much more of a bigger focus in our expansion plans. Yeah, yeah. And when we talk about some of the specific elements of the store. In a minute. Yeah. We build elements into the store to really appeal to TCG as well as. Which we did in Atlanta initially, correct? That's correct. Atlanta was definitely more sports focused from the beginning, and we've expanded TCG in Atlanta. But there's some things in Atlanta we wish we could have done differently, that we are doing differently right off the bat here in Detroit to really serve both, you know, both collector groups really, really well. You know, the affordability of the community was a big deal for us. Right. The financials of the whole thing, cost of labor, cost of rent, you know, accessibility, all these things were big deals. Building off what we had in Atlanta, we wanted to have a spot that could be a big regional draw that was going to be very accessible. Because in Atlanta, we see where we are in Atlanta. We see people traveling all the time from Alabama and from Tennessee and from South Carolina and some drive up from Florida. Like, we get a. We. We definitely have a regional pull. We wanted a regional poll. And as we looked at the demographics of Detroit, and particularly where we are a little north of Detroit, you're. You're pulling from a. From a whole region here. You know, Michigan as a whole will come in, we believe, you know, to this area and even a little bit of Canada. And so that was important to us to be able to build that Same, you know, kind of regional feel to the store as we. As we've been able to create in Atlanta. And then another really exciting element to us when we were looking at, you know, a bunch of cities in comparison to each other, is the fact that the national is coming here in two years. Not next year, but the year they'll be back in. They're in Chicago this year, they'll be back in Chicago next year, but then the year after that they're coming to Detroit. I think that speaks volumes about what the collecting community is here. Right. I mean, I think that for the national to make a move, you know, to come here out of Chicago is a very, very big deal. Like, they expect people to travel in here. They, you know, they expect a local community. I mean, Chicago' kind of known as the mecca of sports cards because of, like, how many locals can attend the National. Right. And so obviously you would anticipate a lot of people traveling from Chicago and other, you know, major cities in the area. But I think that's. That's a very big, exciting component to that. It is. It totally is. And yeah, I mean, it speaks to not just the, you know, collector community here and the growth of that, but honestly, to a degree, it even speaks to the growth of the city and the reinvestment that the city's made. You know, Detroit is a city right now that's on the rise. You know, for many years, you know, Detroit had struggles. I mean, people, you know, people think a couple, you know, couple decades ago about how, like, oh, man, Detroit is on the down, right? And the US Auto Market and everything is on the down, and that's really turned around. And they've reinvested in infrastructure. And the convention center where the National's going to be at is, you know, new and shiny and big and lavish and. And so it's going to be a great spot to host the National. I think it just speaks to the city overall and kind of the. The rise of Detroit, which is pretty cool. It's going to be great for us. We're going to have team members here. Let's travel. It's going to be awesome. Oh, it's going to be really nice. Okay, so this store, this location we picked is in Orion Township, which is just north of Auburn Hills. So you're a little ways from downtown. Right. So you got downtown Detroit where all the sports stadiums are, and then you about. Depending on what traffic is. Took us about 35 minutes to drive up here from downtown Detroit today. And with. With. With like, little Traffic. Right. So, like 35 minutes without much traffic, if you're in rush hour, takes a little bit longer to get up here. So we're a little north of this city, right Where. And we considered, you know, when we said, okay, Detroit's a market we want to go to, we of course, went all around and we looked at all the different neighborhoods and all the different areas. We looked downtown, and we said it would be nice to be near the sports stadiums. Like, that's. That would be a good place to be because you get all the sports traffic. But you also have parking challenges. You've got limited parking. You've got paid parking. And that, to us, was a. That to me at least, was a deal killer. Because when you think about Atlanta, we're doing all these events, and how do you think paid parking, like, would have, like, alter that? I think it may cut our events in 50%. I. I think. I mean, it's just. It's a cost of entry to our door, essentially. Right. And, you know, it's. It's not necessarily money that we care to see. Right. It's just. But it's. It's that restrictive standpoint, and it's also about having enough parking. Like, we. We've also looked at a lot of units that didn't have enough. It's not. It's not only just the paid aspect of it. It's like, how do we have enough parking that supports the people? I mean, Atlanta, we have two decks of parking, but we're in a center with one of the busiest AMCs in the Southeast, one of the busiest main events in the country. I mean, on Saturday night, when we run Trade Night, our parking lots get full, and it's the most unbelievable thing ever. Right? And so it's like, how do we make sure that we have enough parking to support the community that we're trying to bring in and the experience we're trying to bring in, because the more people we can bring into this building for events, add to the atmosphere, adds the experience. And so it's not just about the paid parking aspect. It's, can we get enough? And this unit has more than enough. Yeah, it does. Yeah. This is. This is. I'm super excited about this. And so for those who have been maybe to the Great Lakes Crossing, you know, outlet mall before, we're like, right across the street from it. We're right against i75. Which is kind of funny. Yeah. Which is kind of funny because in Atlanta, our store is right off of I75, and our store Is in. Is in a large strip mall center with a. With a red brick facade. And here we are in Orion township, and we are right off of i75 in a large strip center with a. With a red brick facade. Like, if you squint, you're like, wait, this is the Atlanta store. No, wait a minute. It's the Detroit store. It's kind of funny. Yeah. On the same intersect, we could just drive home straight. Literally. It's literally one turn. We just get on the interstate and it's just straight, straight, straight shot down to the Atlanta store. Someone will do that drive at some point. I'm sure that's kind of cool. That's. It's kind of a cool thing, but it's. It was very important to us. Very important. And this is. This is, like, I think, a big deal point, you know, to make right here when we set out to open up store number two. And the same will be true for store number three and store number four and store number five. We wanted to take what was working in Atlanta and find a city and a location that would duplicate what was working in Atlanta as much as possible. We wanted to as closely model our store in Atlanta to where we're going next so that we just. We had, like. We tried to duplicate, like, the exact model without changing the model. If we had gone to downtown Detroit or any other, like, you know, urban city, downtown or anything of that nature, it would have been a model change. Yeah, it would have been. Okay, now we're in paid parking, and now we're in, you know, limited parking. And now we're in much different traffic patterns. Maybe a lot of people don't live right in this area. So you're really depending on game day traffic or that. That's a model change. We didn't want to do a model change, especially for our next few stores. We wanted to say, how do we duplicate Atlanta? And here it is, like a duplicate of Atlanta. Like, in terms of, you know, the store layout is going to be very similar to Atlanta. Now, we do have a couple of enhancements and tweaks we'll talk about in a second, but the size of the store, very similar to Atlanta. The shopping center, very similar to Atlanta. The placement right off of i75, very accessible from the whole area, very similar to Atlanta. The ability to serve a lot of the family neighborhoods near them, very similar to Atlanta. Like this. This feels like we're really going to be able to replicate the success we had in Atlanta here. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, there were A lot of boxes we wanted to check, and we weren't really willing to sacrifice much of those check boxes, to be honest. You know, I think one of the biggest things that you touched on is the interstate access. Like, we've seen so many great units that are just too far from the interstate, right? And so like, and maybe the shopping center is good, maybe the area is good, but it's like, no. Like we know people come from distance. Like, we know people in Atlanta with no traffic drive half an hour to 45 minutes sometimes to come to our store. We expect the same in other areas just because of like the, the inventory that we're going to have available for collectors, you know, the experiences we're going to create. We just know people are going to make the effort to come to us. So we want to make sure we're in a position to give them access to us. That's the biggest aspect of what we're trying to do now. All of this is not without risk. Yeah, we think this is going to work. We think we could duplicate Atlanta's success here. But we don't know. We're never going to know until we are open and we've actually done it right. And there's kind of almost two phases to risk. Phase number one is pre open and like, can we hire the right people? Right? Do we have the right general manager? Do we have the right team up here? That's hard. We're hiring all net new up here. We're not like, we're probably not going to relocate much staff from Atlanta. Like it's going to be net new hiring up here. By the way, by the way, if you're listening to this episode and you want to be our Detroit general manager or assistant general manager or head of breaking or head of retail or any of that stuff, please apply for jobs because we need you. Go to cards hq.com, go to the jobs page. I think it's linked down in the. Or it's linked in the menu bar under shop info. I think is the job page. Go to the jobs page. We're going to have Detroit job information posted. Please apply. But that's a risk, right? Can we get the right people in the right place? Can construction remain on track? Can we get everything open? That's like the first set of risk. What are you most worried about in terms of like having this store open and operating and working great? Hopefully November. Well, it's, it's, it's a lot of similar, similar risks to Atlanta. Right? But Atlanta, I would Say, had more of a ramp. I think we would expect to start faster here. And that's probably the. The thing I'm most worried about, because there's a people and inventory aspect that we got to accommodate for prior to opening that we have to execute really well because we expect business to be much faster for us. Right. And in Atlanta, it was. It was a slow build. It really was. Like, the first six months, we only had about 30 to 40 employees, and then by the end of year one, we were at 50. The end of year two, we were at nearly 100. Right. So the business was growing rapidly for us. Well, we expect to be more in, like, the 60 to 80 employees when we start. Right. So, like, things are going to move a lot quicker for us up here. So that's like the biggest risk. And then, I mean, inventory. Inventory is a challenge. We've talked about it before. We've talked about for the last three years in our business. We have a lot of showcases to fill, wax and cards. Right now we're about to double it. Right. So now we're going to have to. You know, we're currently going through the process of expanding our buying and sourcing strategy. Right. Because, you know, I know people see us at card shows around the country right now, all those cards that we buy go to the Atlanta store. Right. Well, now we got to buy for the Detroit store, and then we're planning on buying for future stores here in the next year or two. Right. So inventory is going to be a big stress. You know, we're now making investments into expanding that operation. But I think it's the mix of, like, you know, we don't know how fast the business is going to start here in Detroit. And that's the biggest worry is, like, how do we match that and make sure we're executing for the customer base that wants to come here and wants to see the available inventory and interact with us. Yeah, yeah. No, you're right. And inventory is going to be a concern leading up to opening, for sure, to have all the showcases filled with the right selection. Then it will continue to be concerned after we open. Yeah. You know, keeping everything filled here and in Atlanta. It's been a struggle at times in Atlanta to keep our showcases filled with enough cards for everybody, because we're selling through very, very quickly now. We're doubling that concern. As you said, we're combating that with a lot of hiring for buyers over the next few months. I mean, that's one of the big areas. We're hiring both In Atlanta and in Detroit. We're going to be apply for that on our website as well. Absolutely. Please do. Please do. Once we're open, besides for the inventory challenge, you know, probably the biggest thing I'm just generally concerned about is, like, can we replicate the magic that is the Atlanta store here? Like, can you have the same. Can we be the same draw? Can we have the same customer experience? Can we have the same culture? Can we have the same feel? Can we continue to lean into the collector community the way we have in Atlanta? I think we can do all of those things, but now we're trying to do all those things at a distance now. It's like, you know, we're our corporate teams in Atlanta, and we're trying to create that feeling in Detroit. How worried are you about that? I. I'm worried, but I think we're also investing in that in a sense, right? Like, we're investing in a corporate team. I mean, we're, you know, we've been, you know, searching for a VP of store operations. You know, by the time this comes out, hopefully that person's hired. And, you know, so we're. We're creating the process and the system to replicate that magic, right, and put people in place that can lead that charge. But that ultimately does come up to the people, right? And so we got to hire the right people to really replicate that up here. And so. But, you know, I think what's. What's cool and what's fun to do is that we're definitely going to bring some of our Atlanta team members up here, right, to train and, you know, teach them the cards each Q way, right? So hopefully, you know, our Atlanta team members can help replicate it up here, even if they're up here maybe for a week or two at a time. So. But it's still a risk, right? Like, we definitely don't want to get things watered down, but hopefully with the first store, with this store, that's the easiest. I think it's going to get harder the farther we get along, right. When we have more stores. But I think hopefully Detroit, we can execute really well. I hope we can. I think we will. And, you know, as you said, getting the right people in place in Atlanta, and we've been hiring in Atlanta leadership team to help with that. And then also, I think, you know, we're going to hire for some of these Detroit store leaders, like the GM and the assistant gm. We're going to hire them soon. Like. Like, you know, people are applying, watching this video. We're Going to hire them in the next, hopefully the next month, because we want them to be able to embed in our Atlanta store as well. Like come down to Atlanta, work in our Atlanta store for a month or two, get a feeling of everything there so that hopefully they can really get immersed in the Atlanta culture and experience and then they'll be much more apt to bring that up here. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we're going to put them in every part of the business. I mean, you're going to see them on live streams at night, you're going to see them on live streams in the morning. You're seeing them on the retail floor. You know, they're going to be working with inventory. It's going to be a fun time to get those people embedded in our organization. Yeah, yeah. It's exciting. We're going to be flying. Okay. I want to kind of wrap by talking a little bit about the elements of the Detroit store. So there are some things we're doing here that are a little different and special. Right. Like, we took some of our learnings from Atlanta and said to ourselves, like, there's a lot we like about Atlanta, but there's also things that we, in retrospect, wish we had done maybe a little differently in Atlanta. What are you most excited about about the layout of Detroit? I think it's pretty easy, Jeff. It's got to be the rip bar we're building out. I mean, it's going to be a 40 foot long bar where we're going to have packs for TCG and sports. And then we're going to expand our value bin program with a lot more focus, which I'm really excited about. Yeah, I totally agree with you. This thing is going to be awesome. It's going to be like the largest pack bar and value bin bar ever to exist in the world. Yeah. Longer than 40ft. We got so many bar stools there and everything like that. It's a lower section for kids. Hundreds and hundreds of packs. Yeah. And I mean, well, hundred, I should say hundreds and hundreds of products available as packs. Thousands and thousands of packs. If you count all the individual packs we're going to have, plus the value bins, those are both areas that have been very popular in Atlanta that we wish we had more space dedicated to. We wish we had more space dedicated to the value bins and we wish we had more space dedicated to packs. Yeah. And packs have been a huge part of our business, especially on the TCG side of things, and we've tried to improve it on the sports side of things. The sports side's a little bit harder because, you know, you got pack odds with boxes and stuff like that. Tcg, it's just all the same odds, you know, and everything like that. The value bins is what I'm really excited about expanding up here though, because in Atlanta, especially on the sports side, we have not applied a lot of focus to because of our space constraints. Right. And like, we don't have like an Atlanta specific value bin. Our sports cards right now are like all 50 cents. Right. And we plan to kind of, you know, do some of the changes we're doing in Detroit and backfilling it in Atlanta at some point, you know, in the near future. But here in Detroit, we're going to put a lot of emphasis about it. That needs a lot of buying and pricing work. Right. That we have not had the capacity for and we're building today. Yeah, I agree. And so I'm super excited about that. I agree with you. That's one of the coolest elements of the store. And you know, we also are going to have obviously a big TCG gameplay area and trading area, just like we do with Atlanta. We're going to have our customer lounge just like we do in Atlanta. We're going to have three live selling and breaking cabanas, just like we do in Atlanta. So we're, we're expanding our breaking and live selling program up here. That was important to us to have that connected in with a store, you know, to have that same element that we do in Atlanta where you can. It's right on the show floor. The breakers are part of it. There's some things about the, the layout that we've tweaked. Like, for example, I think we're going to have a better display of wax and sealed product up here. We're going to have. I think, I think the way the card showcases are going to be oriented behind us is going to be really good. We're going to, we're going to have better lighting in this store. We're going to have, you know, but we're keeping elements like the giant mural that we have in Atlanta, but we're going to do a Detroit specific mural. So I hope people walk in here and are like, oh, this is like Atlanta. But it's almost like Atlanta 2.0. Like, it's an upgrade. It's just improved. I mean, honestly, actually probably what I'm most excited about is our, is our checkout area that's going to be so much better for customers. You Know, if you guys. If you guys have been to our Atlanta store, you've seen videos, you know, we have our valuable bar. We. We really anticipated that was going to be like the checkout line, and it has not turned into that at all because of people looking at packs at the counter. People are in the way. We still have issues today formulating the line. Detroit is going to be well set up for a checkout line, and we're going to be a lot more optimized with that. I'm very excited. Yeah, that's going to be super cool. Yeah. In general, I think the Detroit experience, it's going to just feel a little, you know, some of the things in Atlanta that ended up being slightly clunky, like, we got it. We hopefully. We got to figure it out in Detroit and it's going to. We're going to kind of take it up a notch. We even have a little private room built into the Detroit store layout where we could potentially do some type of, you know, event, private room, event type stuff in there in the future if we wanted to. That kind of remains tbd, but we've had people in Atlanta ask us for, like a private party room or something like that. We don't really have that in Atlanta. We build it into Detroit. So we've got a little more flexibility in the store, and I'm extremely excited to see how it plays out. Yeah, it's going to be really exciting. One thing that's definitely not changing. Huge product selection, huge number of showcases, huge mix of TCG and sports cards. Just like Atlanta even, plus some in some ways, which is super cool. I think you stress me out. Talk about that a little bit because we got to multiply it. But, you know, it's. It's something that we're going to conquer, though, for sure. Okay. All right, well, we can. We can. We can wrap up here, but I know people are curious. Okay, well, that's Detroit. Right. And hopefully Detroit comes online as we think it will. Hopefully we. Hopefully we're celebrating a grand opening in November. We'll see how construction goes, you know, but hopefully we're celebrating a grand opening certainly before the holidays. But then what's next? What's next beyond Detroit? Because it's not just Detroit we're working on right now. We've got other. We've got one more store currently in the works for opening next year, and then hopefully another one soon after that as well. Right. Like where our desire is to do two more stores next year. We're not going to announce at this moment where they are, but they're being worked on as you look at a few years from now. Carter, like, what's your, what's your goal? What's your vision on, like, where you would love to see us be? Like, cities or. No. Well, just, I mean, just like in general, like, like, you know, two years out, like, what would, what would success look like for you? I think it's stores being built out on time. Right. Having the people in place, the staffing in place, building careers in the hobby. Right. Like, it's something probably we haven't talked about a lot, but like, you know, we have this massive team and we were building careers for people and something that they enjoy. Right. And so it's super exciting to like, multiply that. So to do that in other cities and other regions that may not have career centric roles yet in the hobby, like, we're going to go there and we're going to, we're going to get people, you know, embedded in our organization. So. But ultimate success is building out these mecca centers for collecting and community. And, and I, I know we're going to go do it, you know, and we're not just going to go do it physically in other stores. Right. We're also expanding online, we're expanding E commerce over the next year. We're expanding, breaking and live selling in all these locations as well. Right. And so that's what's ultimately super exciting is that, you know, not just growing the communities in these specific cities that we're going to end up in. It's, it's, it's really being the world's local card shop that we're aspiring to be. Yeah, 100%. I get chills listening to that card. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go. Let's do it. Okay, guys, well, follow along. It's going to be fun. We'll keep you updated on the journey and of course, as we get close to the grand opening, you know, we'll be talking more about it. You're going to be seeing more content about it, and it's going to be fun to be able to film some content in the Detroit Cards HQ as well. There we go. We'll be up here doing content from time to time, for sure. So it's gonna be fun to take our content on the road. Okay, guys, I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did, please, like, please subscribe. And of course, all of these Jeff Wilson show shows are available on YouTube, on the Jeff Wilson show channel, also on Apple podcasts and Spotify. So please subscribe everywhere and we'll see you soon with our next one. Take care.