Monday, April 05, 2010

THEORY CORNER STORE...CLOSED!!!!!!



Holy Mackerel! The response to the Theory Corner store was a deafening yawn...the worst response to anything I posted in at least a year and a half! Well, the consumer has spoken, no doubt about it. Boy, I knew I was entering a niche market, but I didn't occur to me that the niche might be that small. Oh, well...live and learn.

I'll retire the store while I re-think it. Probably I'll take the advice of commenters who said I should have started by selling my own material first. In the meantime, I'll post as before.




31 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey! Just because we didn't comment in droves doesn't mean we weren't interested! I was waiting until the store proper to open (especially with the things you were selling that you made, like the comics and pamphlets!)

I still eagerly await your store!

RuinedJoke68 said...

yeah we didn't even get to see any of your own items. :(

Steven M. said...

WHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

WHAT A RIP-OFF!!!!!

I demand you re-open that store right now!

thomas said...

Ditto w/ Jorge.

Anonymous said...

Wait, wha.... WHAT??! You meaaaaan...

GRRRRRRRRRRRR

Stephen Worth said...

I was busy dying eggs and i missed it! How about a going out of business sale that's so successful, you go back into business?

Nathan W. said...

Hi! I don't get to the computer every day but I was excited about your store; I guess I missed it! I hope you bring it back. Like Jorge I was really looking forward to the pamphlets and such. Anyway, thanks for offering your theories and observations for free almost every day. The ASIFA podcasts have been nice, too - I take notes, meaning to comment with them, but by the time I get to the computer again I have like six new theories to catch up on. Anyway, thanks for doing this and I'm sorry your store didn't go the way you expected.

Dooley said...

I'm pretty sure everyone's waiting for the items that you make. I know I am.

Anonymous said...

Hey! Give it a chance!
I look forward to seeing what the Theory Store has to offer! The last post was incredibly thought provoking, and fun as always.

Keep it going!

Unca Jeffy said...

I saw all the posts that announced you were working on a store. Never got to see it open though. Were you counting on a certain number of sales in the first day and a half?

And I thought I was impatient.

Max Ward said...

Ditto with Jorge

RuinedJoke68 said...

also i would like to point out that the store part 2 post did not enter into my feed reader until 2 days after it was posted. Maybe that was true with everyone.

Sean said...

I am certainly waiting for some of the more off the wall items I am sure I will see at the Theory Corner Store! I was even about to buy the microscope!! I held off for something better in the future. I can promise at least a purchase or two from the store if you open her back up!! Thanks for all the theories though Eddie, theyre always interesting, hilarious, or thought provoking, or all three.

pappy d said...

Where are the pamphlets, the mail-order spider monkeys & Ayn Rand bobbleheads? And when does Uncle Eddie get to wet his beak? We were looking forward to seeing you make money at this.

Once it's up & running, THEN open a New Store like this one. People will miss the taste of the Classic Store & demand to have it back.

Anonymous said...

ditto with Jorge!

John A said...

Don't feel so bad Eddie, it isn't easy starting up a business in this economy. However,I really think that store attendence would have been greatly enhanced by a special appearance of the "Philosophy Girls". Maybe next time.

Severin said...

You mean to tell me that I leave the internet for a week and come back to find you've opened, and then closed your own store?!

pappy d said...

Where are the pamphlets, the mail-order spider monkeys & Ayn Rand bobbleheads? And when does Uncle Eddie get to wet his beak? We were looking forward to seeing you make money at this.

Once it's up & running, THEN open a New Store. People will miss the taste of the Classic Store & demand to have it back.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Sean: Many thanks! The store...or that part of it which wasn't hawking my own stuff...was indeed intended to sell genuinely esoteric and interesting things that are way out of the mainstream, but still worth having, and maybe even essential for people in the know. I may have made a mistake by pitching more mainstream items first. Who knows?

Jeff: Haw! Yeah, I was impatient. Even though the store was intended to be a sideline it ended up taking a lot of my time. I just couldn't justify that if the interest seemed miniscule.

It was never about the money. I just wanted an excuse to research the out-of-the-ordinary things I wanted for myself, and to teach myself how to write copy, which I've always considered an artform.

At the time I decided to pull the plug, I was trying to find out where I could find concrete blocks that were artistic and had character, like the Mayan blocks did, but which were affordable. My neighbor wants me to take down the wooden fence I have up, and put up a concrete one instead. If I do, he'll pay half and doesn't mind if I get artsy with it. If I'd found blocks that were cheap and unusual I was going to hawk them here, along with my own patterns for adapting Mayan-styles to suburban back yards.

There's a lot of stuff you can do for a store format that you wouldn't think of doing for a blog.

Jorge, Thunder, Rooni, Thomas, Anon, Nathan, Dooley, Josh, Max, Sean, Anon, Pappy: Thanks much! I can still hawk pamphlets and comics without having a store.

Thunder: A two-day delay!? Geez, I had no idea. I'll look into that!

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Severin: Haw!

thomas said...

Although I'm disappointed with the store, I really like the the two pics you chose to close it with. The top one, I think you should animate, a la the opening scene of Citizen Kane. An impossibly long scroll up the chainlink fence, past the lock, then CLOSED!!!

thomas said...

...disappointed with the store >>not opening<<.

pappy d said...

I wonder how hard it would be to mould your own blocks. Just beware of unintended consequences:

http://veryvintagevegas.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/penis-20shadow-20block.jpg

Jack G. said...

Eddie,

You didn't leave it open long enough (I don't show up here every day).

I didn't even get to see what you were selling.

I know it can be discouraging, but you can't expect orders to be flying in right off the bat.

Kirk Nachman said...

Eddie, sweetums! I confess, I really found the store a bit opaque... I wasn't sure whether it was merely a conceptual exercise or whether it actually had wares?!

Anyway, I'm all for you profiting as a petite bourgeois, but my wish is that you'd SKETCH your fumetti, (I've never really understood the appeal of fumetti, from Hefner to Kurtzman, I'm at a loss!) Not that the elasticity of your inimitable and darling mug isn't worth the exposure. The drawings in the sidebar taunt me endlessly, after a year, and then some, of pleading for more of your drawing!

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Thomas, Jack: Thanks much!

Pappy: Interesting shapes, but i could swear I once saw a fence that had even better ones. Maybe they were custom.

K. Nacht: Interesting point! I've hardly drawn at all for months because I've used all my spare time for learning programs. The whole thought process that you need for learning programs from books is antithetical to creative drawing. I knew I'd have this kind of trouble because I'd seen it happen to people I worked with over the years. That's why I delayed messing with that stuff.

The impairment isn't permanent, thank Heaven, and the sooner I get back to it, the sooner I'll be drawing up to speed again. One reason I wanted to do the store was to force myself to put the programs aside for a while and draw.

chrisallison said...

Hey Eddie, I saw this and thought of you instantly. I have no idea what this would've been published in:

http://dethroner.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/helpmag_christopher.jpg

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Chris: Thanks! This is from Help magazine. It's the best fumetti of all time, the Mount Everest of the artform!

thomas said...

Glad to see you are re-thinking the store.

I think part of the problem was the way the store was dovetailed into the Theory corner sight. I think your readers, myself included, had the impression that the store was a connected but separate entity to the Theory Corner. We were ready to go down the rabbit hole,yet there was no rabbit hole.
And also as nice as the items were, what would you do, if at a store's Grand Opening, there were only two things on the shelf. I guess, wait and see what happens next. Which is what happened.

Maybe you could have a storefront link on Theory Corner that brings you to the store, and the store itself would have different departments.

How you do this, of course, I have no idea. Of store websites, the band, Sparks has a nice site. I think Sparks qualifies as hip also.

Anyway, hope you don't mind the comments.

Anonymous said...

I agree, thought it would be separate and that the post was only a small taste of what was planned for it

kellie said...

A friend of mine makes his own concrete blocks:
http://www.kberge.com/cast.html