Today I was in a part of town I never have before.
I saw a store JUST for badminton.
I just bumped into another oddly specific store: Darts Central in SF
Rubber stamp store. Just shelf after shelf of rubber stamps and rubber stamp accessories.
Childhood me gasped. We loved stamps!!
The royal we?
Me and my twin. I just use we a lot cause of that.
Wouldn’t be a surprise somewhere in Japan, but still pretty cool!
Screws. A whole shop especially for screws and nuts, and you could buy bigger boxes, or smaller boxes, or only one or two, and they took their time to give advice, always with the same friendliness and helpfulness, whether you left a few cents or some real money.
I wouldn’t go in there often, but I’d be grateful for it when I did.
We have a ‘Mr Gwint’ shop in my city (‘gwint’ means ‘thread’ in Polish, and the word is probably familiar to The Witcher players). They mainly sell various fastenings, but also tools and other related stuff. They have a big note on the door ‘Only wholesale, no retail. Only full packaging.’ But whenever I went there and asked for some screws, they would sell me much less than the full package. Friendly (to the Polish standards, that is) and helpful, unlike the sign on the door. But I wouldn’t dare asking for just one or two basic screws.
Würth?
I came across a very narrow, 5 story store in Japan, a bit off the beaten path in Akihabara, selling exclusively N scale model trains. They had a floor or two dedicated just to the models, another one for scenery, and at least one just for repair parts for your trains. It was really cool to get to see a store that was pretty clearly a passion project for the owner(s) apparently doing well, and filling quite the niche in the hobby (I imagine)
I think my favorite is Nothing Bundt Cakes that sells Bundt cakes. It’s a chain, and yes I only like it because of the pun.
A good pun will get me in the door every time.
And the delicious cakes will keep you coming back.
I have read it is ‘nothing but burned cakes’ and thought, that this quite specific and weird.
An entire store full of african-american romance novels. In a VERY white area. It did not stay open long 😞
The existence of that store feels more like a statement than a business decision
What statement do you suppose they were trying to make?
https://youtu.be/ilsef7LrrYw?is=HrIRX-yHF2gJ8dxa
In all seriousness, I didn’t take the time to really think it through before, but: the store chose a narrow market and went out of business rather quickly, so it didn’t have a good business plan; but it would make an interesting statement to see that store close so fast compared to bookstores which sell romance novels with characters likely to match their clients’ race, which might reveal a sort of widespread casual racism. Or just that readers prefer characters they think they will relate to more strongly. It’s an interesting conversation point whichever way you look at it, is my point.
I’ve been in a Christmas store that all year long only sold Christmas stuff.
I used to live in Lancaster, PA and the outlets had one of these. I’ve only ever seen the one, but I was given to understand they are a chain.
True story. My niece went into a Christmas shop in our home town looking for a nativity set.
Assistant: “A what?”
“A nativity set - you know, Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus…”
Assistant: “What’s Jesus got to do with Christmas?”
There are at least three of them in Germany.
Those stores that only sell Rubber Duckies come to mind.
There are several, for some unknown reason, in Amsterdam.
It’s because of the river, duhh
We live at the same river, but I have yet to find a rubber duck store anywhere closer than Amsterdam - which is hundreds of kilometers from here.
I was being facetious, because otherwise there would be rubber duck stores at every river. Also it would be an environmental disaster if the ducks were for the river
In Turkey we have shops that only sell pickles!
I could be into that. A good pickle is something to behold.
My town has a mushroom shop.
Bah, Morrowind has a ton of shops in mushrooms too, a lot of cities have several
It’s very recently closed its doors, sadly, but you’d be hard pressed to find a more specific shop than long-time Edinburgh landmark, Borland’s:
I used to live across the street from a ballbearing shop.
Must take some balls to open one of them.
Cycling clothing. No bikes, no helmets, just more lycra than a gimp convention.
spirit halloween seems just the place for a certain one night event.
For some of us, Halloween is not a night, but a way of life.
indeed. that’s how the store stays alive 😄
I’ve been in a knitting store before. Just yarn and needles and patterns. I can’t imagine how they stay in business.
There are lots of those. Many people knit.
yep, I have two in the family, it just didn’t seem like there could be enough knitter-foot-traffic to keep the place open selling $4 spools of yarn
That’s because the skeins are $40.
It’s been a long time since I’ve bought a skein of yarn, but surely one can get one for less than that.
hits Amazon
It looks like on Amazon, they start at about $4 individually. If you get a pack, it goes under $1/skein.
Those brick-and-mortar stores much have a pretty substantial markup, unless we’re talking premium yarn of some sort.
Yes, it’s not acrylic baby-melting trash. You’re comparing McDonald’s to omakase. Try visiting your local yarn store before making any more assumptions.
Looking over at the lantern moon knitting needles and the merino wool skeins nervously, as though they’ll start tattling on their costs!
Is that… uncommon? There was one in the town I grew up in.
Actually I looked it up and it also sold thread, ribbons and stuff like that. I guess you’d call it a haberdashery. Maybe one just for wool is less common?
Haberdashery? Poppycock!
Those are fairly common in North America and in a lot of places in Europe are found everywhere. Knitting is having a resurgence with young people.
haberdashers are still relatively common in the UK.
