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- February 25, 2021
- Posted by: Professor Penelope Presto
- Categories: NEW!, Shop news
NEARLY LEGLESS MICK and his small team of newly-recruited staff had about two hours to get 40 boxes of newly arrived merchandise on the shelves before Quizzic Alley’s brand new Sydney store opened on 4th December 2020.
“It was manic,” said the six-time Paralympic athlete and Harry Potter fan who opened the first Quizzic Alley in Canberra two-and-a-half years ago.
“The pandemic messed up shipping and delivery times. We’d ordered up big for the new store and for Christmas and, in the days before we opened, most of it was sitting off-shore somewhere in containers. There were no guarantees anything was going to arrive on time,” he explained.
Excited Sydney-siders had been asking for a specific opening date on social media for weeks.
“We’d committed to ‘the first week in December’ and we just kept saying it over and over again because we had almost no stock.”
As luck (or magic) would have it, about half of the stock arrived within a few hours of opening and the mad rush began to get it priced, entered in the system and on the shelves.
“I’m sure the new staff were about to quit on the spot and even my kids were running, racing products from boxes to shelves, pricing like machines. It was so stressful and all the while I’m yelling out how many minutes we have left. With 20 minutes to go until the doors opened, we just crammed what we hadn’t opened into a spare room.”
Almost three months later and after being open seven days a week for December and January, Mick’s finally catching up and says Sydney’s Harry Potter fans have embraced the store.
“Thank you Sydney for the amazing welcome. There is still such a buzz in the store as fans of the franchise visit for the first time. It’s so much more than just a store and people really are quite overwhelmed with what we have created.
“And the good news is that all our staff have stuck around, despite the opening day and how crazy it was,” said Mick with a smile.
Quizzic Alley in Sydney is open five days a week from 10am, closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Find the store at 191 Victoria Rd, Drummoyne.
