Longtime De Pere game store making move to Appleton

Heather Graves

Staff

September 9, 2024

DE PERE/APPLETON – After spending its entire brick-and-mortar existence in the City of De Pere, The Game Capital is relocating to Appleton.

“It just became not a good fit for us anymore,” Owner Jeff Wiza said. “This was not an easy decision to make, but ultimately, we felt this was the best option that worked for all of our business needs.”

With a planned opening of Sept. 9, Wiza said though it’s definitely a change, he’s looking forward to the potential the new location – 600 N. Westhill Blvd. in Appleton – offers the business.

The journey to here

Wiza said he started the business as a freshman in college in the fall of 2004.

“That’s when I discovered eBay and started buying boxes of Pokémon cards for myself as I played competitively,” he said. “I could maybe afford the next set in order to stay competitive, so then I started selling the cards I didn’t need for my decks on eBay so I could afford the next set. That was the ‘official’ start of the business.”

Within a year of that, Wiza said he started to purchase things specifically for resale.

“Basically, every two years thereafter, the space of the business or inventory occupied doubled until we got to our brick-and-mortar location in De Pere,” he said.

Wiza said Game Capital opened its first physical location in 2017 on Reid Street in De Pere.

By December 2019, he said the business’s success prompted the move to a larger location across the bridge to 805 Main Ave.

Game Capital has been at the Main Avenue location ever since.

No longer a good fit

Wiza said when they first signed the lease on the Main Avenue location, “it was with different owners.”

“They sold the building two years into the lease, and in short, it hasn’t been a good fit between us and the new building owners,” he said.

A currently-under-construction development, Wiza said, also presented issues.

“Earlier this year, we learned they were planning to build a Caribou Coffee in the parking lot of where Game Capital is located,” he said. “We were told it wouldn’t impact visibility from the corner of Main and Eighth, but it really does.”

Wiza said the development has also decreased much of the store’s primary parking spots.

“We had to decide whether or not to renew our lease at the end of May – and we could already tell at that point that our visibility and parking was not going to be great,” he said. “We would have locked in for another three years to stay in that location with the unknown of how it would fully impact business once the coffee shop was open.”

A widespread search

When the decision was made to move from the Main Avenue location, Wiza said the search for a new location was widespread.

“Being a business with a lot of online and warehouse operations, it’s difficult to find a space that has ample warehouse space, has ample sales floor space and is in a location that has ample visibility,” he said.

Most places that check off the first two boxes, Wiza said, are in industrial districts – “which don’t have a lot of customer traffic going by that is going to happen to see you.”

“Then, if you are in a major strip mall location, you are usually paying per square foot for a sales floor, and then… paying separately for warehouse space,” he said. “It’s very hard to find a building that fits our unique needs.”

Recognizing the store’s longtime presence in the De Pere area, Wiza said the search included De Pere as well as Green Bay.

“The best option I could find at the time within the Green Bay area was half the square footage we currently had, which wasn’t going to work for us,” he said. 

So the search expanded further, Wiza said, which eventually led to the Westhill Boulevard location.

“It still gives us an ample amount of sales and event space, while increasing our warehouse space – which our online operations have grown as of late, so we needed a larger space dedicated to the back-of-house operations,” he said. “There is plenty of traffic flow in the area for customers – so it has good visibility.”

Two-month crossover

With plans to open the Appleton location Sept. 9 and the lease on the De Pere location running through Nov. 10, Wiza said they will operate in both areas – to a point – during the two-month crossover.

“Our warehouse operations are already moved and we are in the process of moving over our sales floor,” he said.

At the time of the interview with The Business News, Wiza said though the plan was to open Sept. 9, it could be pushed to Sept. 13.

In September, Wiza said the De Pere location will drop to five days a week, and “the sales floor will be greatly reduced.”

“(We will still be open), but there will be a lot less display cases because we didn’t want to get additional display cases for the two months of crossover,” he said.

Mixed reactions

Wiza said the feedback the store has received since announcing the move has been mixed.

“Some people are thrilled because we have customers that travel to us in De Pere that are from Appleton or Oshkosh,” he said. “Then we have customers from north of Green Bay or in east Green Bay that were already a bit away from the store, now they will be even further away. So, they are the ones that are not thrilled with the move.”

Wiza said they did look into the option of keeping a smaller store presence in the De Pere area, but “that didn’t pan out, unfortunately.”

The Game Capital website, he said, however, will continue to offer a shipping option – for those customers who can’t or don’t want to make the drive to Appleton.

“We hope to retain as much of our existing customer base as possible,” he said. “But (we recognize that) we’ll lose some customers.”

At the same time, Wiza said he hopes the relocation will expose The Game Capital to a wider customer base.

“Hopefully, we’ll see a lot of new faces that are excited for another option in this area,” he said.

For more on The Game Capital visit thegamecapital.com, or check out the store on Facebook.