Stephen Holland runs Page 45, a comic shop in Nottingham, England, with Mark Simpson and Tom Rosin. He has a monthly column in Comics International, and appears perennially as a small Japanese Maple in West Bridgford.
Who is... Alan Donald?
In his dreams Alan Donald is a multi-award winning writer of comic books, animation, theme park shows and rides, children’s books, novels, television, internet animation and more.
In real life Alan writes this column, which has been described as more than a lifestyle than a weekly column. He used to write SBC's All The Rage.
You’ve probably heard of Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain and Avebury. You may have heard of a few of the towns: Chippenham, Trowbridge, Salisbury, Swindon and Devizes.
Wiltshire. Rolling countryside, tonnes of history and a town that should be a city. Wiltshire is famous for its farmlands, the military ranges, stone circles, white horses and, of course, its Celtic history.
Wiltshire is our home. I’d spent 4 years away in Essex doing my degree and then Dawn and I spent a year in Berkshire as Assistant Managers of a hotel. We had our cash – we were starting our business and we wanted to stay in our county. I’m Scottish but there is something about this county that is welcoming to Scots and damn it - we live here.
One thing we decided early on was that we didn’t want to have too long a journey into work every day. We knew we’d put a lot of extra hours into it and we just thought it would work out for the best if we were nearby. That left us two options – a shop close to our home or a shop with a flat above.
We started our search.
Chippenham, our home, was out of the question. I’d spoken to several friends who ran businesses and the rates and rent would have presented an insurmountable challenge. On top of this the very nearby town of Corsham had a very successful small comic book shop. Going up against Automattics would have been suicide but it would also have been a horrible thing to do and simply not us. Matt was and still is a friend so we didn’t want to cost him any business. That took out Chippenham and, obviously, Corsham. Melksham – another nearby town – was close to Corsham but few people travelled between the two towns. The only problem was that Melksham at that time was nose-diving as a town, the centre seemed to be falling apart, and it had a reputation…
…hark at me dissing Melksham! I teach in Melksham now. I also used to manage a burger bar there. I know what it used to be like and to be honest there was a period where it was looking like the town was going to be in real trouble. Now it is a different story. The new housing estates have helped – new businesses have come in and new shops are opening up. I like Melksham now, I didn’t then - I feel I have to apologise for my feelings then. It is a nice town.
Malmesbury is an odd little historic town. It, like Chippenham, sits just off Junction 17 of the M4 Motorway. Malmesbury is a nice town, my church shares its minister with them and Chippenham shares its MP with them. The daft thing is NO-ONE from Chippenham goes to Malmesbury and vice versa. Why? I don’t know. I’ve asked several people and it seems endemic each town simply forgets about the other! Think about Flash comics (I read this in the ‘biography of Flash’) – remember how there was this whole city just across the bridge from them and they simply forgot about it? That is what it is like. Needless to say we simply didn’t even consider the town. Daft huh?
We looked around. Every spare day was given over to touring estate agents and local towns. We quickly got an idea of what we wanted and what we wanted to pay. At this point I even started to sketch out rough plans of window and shop layouts. We started to think about extra things we’d need such as shop fittings and manikins.
You know what? Try it. Claim to be starting a business and spend a day touring shops. It is a weird feeling. The feeling you’ll probably have will almost certainly be the same one we had. We felt utterly fake.
Once upon a time Dawn and I had use of my father’s rather posh car for a weekend. We drove around for a bit and then decided to have some fun. We visited all the top garages (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volvo, Rover, Saab and so on) and asked to test drive some pretty damned good cars. We claimed I had a new job and we wanted to trade in the car and move up a level. It was fun. It was fun but it was scary. It was scary because it felt utterly fake. It was the same feeling we had as we visited the shops.
The really daft thing was that we weren’t fake. We were really doing this. We were starting a business – together.
Our search for the premises was well under way but we still needed to find suppliers. We contacted Diamond and started the process of opening an account – but that is another story for a future column.
We knew that we could get a lot of stuff from Diamond thanks to their Previews catalogue but we wanted more. On the news we heard about the up-coming Toy and Hobby Fair in London so we booked ourselves in as traders and went along.
The Toy and Hobby Fair is an annual trade only event. The Fair travels around the world picking up different companies along the way (and different exhibits – at one Fair there will be a text announcement of coming things, at the next a picture, at the next a mock up and the later Fairs will get finished products ready to roll). This is a massive and extraordinary event. Dawn and I have been there 5 times now. We always feel fake.
The Fair is awesome. It takes some getting used to seeing things on display that don’t appear in the shops for anything from 6 months to 2 years. Those roller boot things with the wheels that go into the sole? We saw them there 9 months before they became a cult. Same for the scooters.
We wandered round, signed up to a few people, chatted with some more but mainly just gathered catalogues. People wanted us to order SO MUCH stuff. We did our usual job – we gathered info and absorbed ideas for later use.
Even though we still go (as ‘journalists’ now) the Fair was a big mistake. What the hell did we need that for? We were aiming too big, right from the start, too big.
One thing that came out of the Fair was a local toy wholesaler. Hasbro refused to do business with us. We needed to sign up to several hundred pounds a month or something with them but they did tell us about the wholesaler (“our whole range will be there”). The wholesale shop was hard to find and it was a pain once we were there. No explanation of what to do, half the stuff didn’t have prices and… we aimed too high, we spent a fortune on junk.
I’ll leave it there. I want to play computer games and this remembering is making my brain ache. It is always an idea to stop reminiscing before the tears well up.
