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- [Terry] It's weird, I ran a concert promoting agency for 27 years, and I mean, we did an average of 680 shows per year in about four different states and about 30 different venues, and I feel like the little store is almost most more work.

(dramatic music) - I think one of the biggest questions you have when you step inside 1313 Mockingbird Lane, and I'm sure you get this a lot, Terry, is I've come in because I know you guys care about these, so maybe I wanna sell some of my old favorite things, but maybe now I just want to add to my collection, so today we're with Terry Terror and we're at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, one of the coolest stores I've been in in quite a while.

So, Terry, where did this idea come from?

This is fantastic here.

- My wife actually is kind of the director of how this all happened, but many, many moons ago, we had some medical stuff we needed to pay for, and one of our biggest assets was my toy collection.

I've been a touring musician for 27 years, so I bought stuff over North America, Canada, Mexico.

I had amassed four 20 by 20 storage units, so my toys never really- I know, trust me.

It's one of those like hoarder situations where you open up the door to the storage unit, and it's like, stuff falls out.

You can't even, like get in there.

I would tour for like two months, be home for a month, tour for a month, be home for three months, tour for two months, be home for two weeks, and that was my life for most of my life.

But I would buy stuff 'cause I just, I love collecting and toys and typical hoarder mentality.

Like I'll get it and I'll deal with this later.

So when I stopped touring, I had this huge collection, but then when we needed to raise money, I started going to like Planet Comic-Con, KC Comic-Con, which is very shortlived, Comic-Con, other conventions around here, and I started selling toys to put towards our medical fund essentially, and once we were kind of through that, I had enjoyed selling toys so much that my wife was like, "We should really look at opening a store."

And for Lawrence, Borders had closed, Half Price Books had moved their location, like Independence.

They had moved outta, they didn't like close a store, they just moved their inventory.

Toys R Us had closed nationally, so lost Toys R Us in Topeka, Kansas City.

So there really wasn't anything, and then Hastings was the last one to go.

It was like October 15th, like 2015.

Hastings closed, which I loved.

I went there all the time.

- Oh yeah, 'cause they had little bits of what you- - Everything.

- Not the selection you have here, but that have little bits over time and yeah, it was always one of my favorite little geeky stops to stop in at.

- Well my wife was working, she was working overnights as a nurse, and I'm a non-smoker, non-drinker, I don't go to bars, whatever and stuff, so my wife would always be like, "So what are you gonna do tonight when I'm at work?"

She's like, "Ha, ha, ha, you'll be at Hastings."

So I'd go to Hastings, but then there's people you'd only see at Hastings, like, and there was like this community, whatever.

So after Hastings closed, the gears kind of started turning, my wife's like, "You should really do this.

You love selling toys," and I had still had a humongous collection of toys.

And so years went by, and I went to respiratory school since I wasn't touring or being a concert promoter, I was like, "I don't know what to do with myself," and my wife was in the medical field, so I went to respiratory school, graduated student of the year, top of my class.

I mean, I went to it, like I went full guns a blazing, all in, but then once you get in the hospital, the realization happens.

It's like, "Wow, people die.

This is awful."

I mean, you get to help people, but you really have to have a- - You have to be able to process that.

- Yes, and my wife even said that when I said I was gonna go into the medical field.

I'm a little more, I think, emotional than most what you consider standard male.

Like, whatever, I mean, I'm really empathetic, and I really had a hard time dealing with it, though I loved the helping aspect of it.

But it's still, after a while I was like, "You know, this isn't for me.

I don't know if I could think 30 years down the road that this is what I'm gonna be doing.

I think emotionally I would just be a wreck."

So Liz was like, "We should do the toy store thing.

We should, you know, you should look at it."

And I was like, "Oh, rent's so expensive, insurance."

You know, I just, I always have reasons not to do things, and my wife's always like, "Maybe you should do the research."

She's like the, I don't take risks, and she's more of a risk taker, but we were literally walking our dogs downtown Mass and it was no joke.

Literally, and this was like three doors down from where we're at now, a little 200 capacity place that like the ceiling was falling in, there was like spare tires in there, and this like "for rent" sign was literally going up in the window when we were walking by, and Liz was like, "Oh, that looks interesting," so we just kind of peeked in the window, "Huh," snapped a picture of the phone number and got home, Liz was like, "You should call 'em.

You should call, you should call 'em."

"I don't know, I think I'm just gonna delete this up."

She's like, "Call."

So I called and then we met with the landlord Mohammad, who owns Aladdin's Cafe, met with Mohammad, he was great, and so he is showing us this place and he is like, he is very sweet.

And he was like, he gave us a really good deal, especially for Mass Street, even with a tiny thing, but he was like, you know, "But you guys gotta take care of any renovations, whatever," 'cause it was a mess.

But the selling point for me, so 200 capacity, so 200 square feet, that's like your bedroom, that's like tiny, you know.

He's like, "Oh, but you still-" Because we saw that there was a locked door and we were just assuming that was just like landlord storage.

He's like, "Oh, I forgot to mention, you get the basement."

So we open up the basement, we go down, and it's like, spiderwebs, pipes going everywhere, 800 square feet, so this store here is only about 600 square feet.

So add 200 square feet, so we have this huge basement to move a bunch of our, so I can stop paying on storage units, move stuff, and it is just creepy as all get out, perfect thing, and we actually, that basement was so awesome that we would have, like around Halloween time, we would curtain it off, we'd move product that was stored down there with black curtains, and we'd have tarot card reader come down and do tarot card readings in October.

So people would go down this (Terry make creaking noises) creaky basement.

- Oh, the ambience, yeah.

- His name was Dr. Topor, and he wears, like his real name's Paul, but he'd wear skull makeup, and then we did LED candles in there, and it was, we've been talking about doing that here actually in our... - [Jay] Oh my, are you serious?

- Our secret room.

- [Jay] That's amazing.

- So we were talking about, this is our store room for here, but we were talking I think this October we might do that where we might section it off and do like a, a tarot card reader or something, something fun, thematic for the Halloween season.

But so yeah.

So I called and so yeah, we literally just signed the lease that night.

After he showed me the basement, I was like, "Okay, I can make this work."

And yeah, then we went into construction, and we took out a home equity loan, a home line of credit to finance it, so $15,000 to redo this tiny, we might say that number to people, they're like, "How?"

Well we had to repair the ceiling, all the electrical needed to be redone, and then, I don't know why I got fixated that the bathroom didn't have hot water.

Didn't need hot water.

I don't need it.

Like what?

Like Terry, why?

But I got fixated on this.

So I was like, "No, I have to get the hot water fixed."

So, you know, downtown Lawrence is super old and the plumbing went into three different basements, three different business basements downtown.

$3,500.

So once they started and they figured out what was going on, I was already like $1,200 deep, so I could have either just called it and said no, and I'm like, well, and they can't tell you exactly what it's gonna cost.

So that was like almost a third of our budget was just the plumbing, but then like all the racks and everything, so, but yeah, so we did that, and then COVID hit, which was a whole other thing.

But during COVID we got, right before COVID, we started filming for an Amazon Prime TV show called "A Toy Store Near You."

And it was funny, they called me at our store, and they did a show called "The Toys That Made Us" on Netflix where they took like.

- Oh no, yeah, no, totally.

- [Terry] They had a whole He-Man thing, and they just break down the toy line from beginning to end or where are they now.

And I was actually watching it on screen, sitting in the toy store, just waiting, just praying customers are gonna come in.

'cause we were still a premie business.

Please, please have someone come in and spend money.

You know?

And I get this phone call, it's like, "Yeah, is the owner there?"

I'm like, "Yeah, this is him."

I mean, you get solicitations all the time in a retail spot, especially when you have a landline.

And I'm like "Yeah," he's like, "Oh, my name is Rich.

I'm the producer of a show called "The Toys That Made Us" on Netflix.

We're starting a new TV show for Amazon called "A Toy Store Near You," and your store's been highly recommended from a lot of people.

I was like, "Oh yeah?

Uh huh?"

Like I thought it was a joke, because I was watching "The Toys That Made Us" on the screen.

And I have some friends that they play a lot of pranks on me, like, I mean we're talking like high profile where they go through like, have people from outta town mess with me.

Because I'm super gullible 'cause I want to believe the best in everybody.

So I'm like, "Oh yeah?

Yeah, yeah, Toy That Made Us?

Oh yeah."

I literally was just barely holding the phone, and he was just like, "Well if I get your email, I've have Amazon send the contracts over," and blah blah.

"Yeah, sure."

So I give him like my spam email address, you know, that's like, not even for the store, and I was like, huh, so I get off the phone, I was like, oh, that was a good laugh today.

Oh geez.

It was kooky working at a store.

And so I'm like kind of, so I'm bored and I'm like going on.

I'm like, I'll just check and see if I got some spam, and no joke, within two minutes of that conversation, I had contracts and I was like, "Oh, this is real."

Called my wife, I was like, "I think that might have did something wrong here."

So I called Rich back, I was like, "Hey, funny thing, I thought this was a joke."

And he was so sweet.

He was like, "Oh we've been cold calling a lot of toy stores and that's actually, that's kind of the consensus."

So then the episode came out in June of COVID, and we were gonna close right before that because it was just too tough being a medical worker part-time, dealing with COVID, and then dealing with the problems that come with a pandemic.

And this episode came out, and like overnight a hundred people.

"How do we keep you open?

Where can we order stuff from?"

I had like, like Lars from Rancid, I had like people, like high profile people who saw the episode and said they were so inspired to keep us open, and that was really the gas I needed to keep going, and then during COVID is actually when we moved into the first spot over here because this spot opened up, and I didn't feel it was safe for my customers to have them in a 200 square foot with a respiratory virus going on, so then we ended up there, and then now we just expanded in here.

- It sounds like community has played such a big part.

Everything from the clientele to even finding Mohammed to a local owner.

So when we get back, we're gonna talk a little bit about more community and also maybe some of the toys that inspired this way back when we were younger, so join us after the break.

(upbeat music) Okay, so we're back at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, and of course this place would not be here unless people like you and I, like some of the people here behind the cameras, didn't fall in love with certain characters or certain, you know, play things when we were younger, so there's definitely an emotional attachment.

You kind of talk about how you're an emotional guy also, but some of us when we're younger, these just go away.

You blow 'em up.

Some of us, it's a lifelong thing.

Like this one, these are original of mine that I brought in.

So what was the first thing, you said you had a huge collection.

What was your first thing you collected from when you were little that maybe started this kind of fervor?

- A hundred percent, it's a late 1970s Godzilla Shogun Warrior, which I actually have one over here.

Now this obviously isn't my childhood one, but I have my childhood one, I have pictures of me carrying this Godzilla around, and favorite toy of all time.

Godzilla kinda started everything for me.

But then, you know, once Star Wars started coming out in the late seventies, early eighties, 'cause like they weren't pumping out a lot of Godzillas in the seventies.

It was kinda like that and some other random things.

Then Star Wars was kind of like, "Oh, like there's 17 new figures and there's this spaceship."

- It changed everything.

- Yeah, and that's really, I think, how and then all of a sudden GI Joe and then Transformers and He-Man, and you know, companies figured out how to market these things.

But for me, end of the day, where it all started was the Shogun Warrior Godzilla.

Mine is so precious to me, it does not come to the store.

I'm too scared of fire, break in, and I love it so much that a friend of mine, Colby, who works at Supersonic Music next door painted it in the doorway outside for me.

So it's kinda worn away 'cause it's been there for like four years, but he did his own take where he painted that Shogun Warrior Godzilla for me.

So that is where it started for me, and it's still there.

- I love that it's Godzilla, 'cause when I was younger, and where I grew up for the first few years of my life, didn't do Disney movies, didn't do other kids movies, but we'd go to the summer film fest that featured all the Godzilla movies, people always talking, that kind of stuff, so granted, I was never able to get the Godzilla.

Oh, I wanted the Godzilla toy so bad, but I get why it's kind of a holy grail, especially before there was huge toy lines.

But now because of Star Wars kind of starting that, and the tie-ins with all the cartoons, which, you know, now there's new marketing laws because of, you know, back then, kids wouldn't know when the cartoon ended and the selling point started type of deal, so.

But without that kind of community that bought in around this, how could you start this?

So you say you first started at a Comic-Con, and then you have your store, so how do you build from there?

How do you get people in the store all the time when, you know, like Toys R Us has gone outta business.

How do you run a toy store on Mass Street?

- It's not easy.

Every day is a challenge, every day is a challenge.

But it's all about, I'm very much about public engagement, I'm very much about, you know, like I tend to talk too much to the customers sometimes.

You know, like I can feel like sometimes someone's waiting in line behind somebody, especially on Saturdays and Sundays when we're really busy.

I said this on the Amazon show too, if the store, let's say, ever had to go to, let's say it just wasn't working out here.

Like, just weren't business with 'em there, but online sales were great.

I have no interest in being eBay.

Yes, I wanna sell product, I want to pay my bills, and at some point I would love to get paid for being here 'cause I don't pay myself from being here.

I work at the hospital one day a week to kind of help pay the bills, but this is a true labor of love, and people are always like, joke me about like stuff and I'm always like, "Oh, if I wanted to make money I would just go back to the hospital and work three days a week and make a lot of money."

You can have four days off, whereas here you get zero days off, but I truly, I love it so much.

But it's definitely a workout.

But I love the engagement, I love interacting with people.

The community, word of mouth and the internet as far as like, just funny engagement with videos and stuff is what keeps people coming in, and I don't think the store would be open if we... We originally looked at, like when we were moving into here during COVID, we had looked at some other spots that were way less money, way more space that were on like some of the side streets, still kind of in downtown proper but not Mass proper, and I don't think we'd be around, because we get so many new customers.

- The foot traffic.

- Yeah, because eventually, people who are in the Secret Wars or Masters of the Universe, like our age bracket, will phase out.

I mean that, that's one thing I talk about with other toy stores around the US, 'cause there's some toy stores, like we do half vintage, half new, and there's a lot of toy stores that are just straight up vintage, and I do talk to 'em like, "Were you ever worried that, you know, that the toy stores will almost be like an antique mall?"

- Yeah.

One day you open up and then the sales have just you know, you see 'em going down, but all of a sudden it's just stopped.

- Yeah, so I feel like you still have to stay fresh, but that's why we've always called the store Toys and Collectibles 'cause I never wanted to be just a toy store.

I mean, we sell taxidermy and bones and statues and plushies and shirts, and essentially Liz and I are like, "What do we get?

Or what do we collect?"

and we bring it in the store and trial it, and it's like the patches, like this is a whole cabinet of patches.

- If you like it, you know people will like it.

That's like, one of the best investors of all time, Warren Buffet, he would only invest in things that he could talk to you about or he loves, so Wendy's, Pepsi.

I mean, so yeah, you know it's gonna sell because you're looking for this in the stores you've been to, other places.

You've kind of done your testing there.

- We've been very lucky that when I was a concert promoter, generally if it was a band I liked, if I booked it, it generally would not do well.

But this store has been very nice that like when we first started, we just had like a little cabinet of like a few patches, and now since we moved in here, I mean, I've got, who buys patches?

You wouldn't think people are buying patches?

We do, my wife and I do.

- I do.

- Yeah, but we sell a lot.

I mean like, there's just fun things that we trial, and every once in a while there's a dud, we'll trial something, it's like, "Oh, I thought for sure this would be gangbusters, and it's not," but for the most part, people really want to have a tangible thing that they can see rather than being online or whatever.

- You're kind of selling just little hits of endorphin everywhere around, I mean, you're getting so, and one thing you mentioned when we first came in, which I loved just kind of customer service and building your community, you're not afraid to tell someone, well here get this instead and maybe a hundred dollars less, but you know, they're gonna trust you and come back later on, and they kind of took your expertise on it, so.

- Yeah, my wife always says this, that I'm the only salesman that talks people outta stuff, and like, especially like during COVID when people are getting their checks, obviously I'm very close to all my regulars, and there's some regulars that I know don't have as much money as other people, and so I had several of them that came in, "Got my check," and they were like literally racking up like stuff.

- [Jay] I'm gonna spend it all today.

- And there was a couple of them that I flat out was like, "Hey, how about," I was like, "These couple things here are things that are like vintage that probably don't come in very much, this is other stuff I mass buy, so maybe squirrel that money away 'til we know," 'cause I worked in a hospital, so I knew it wasn't going away right away, as much as everyone else, you know?

You know, so, and I had a few couples that came back and they were like, "Thank you so much," because you know, like one lost their job, and didn't expect that, and they were like, "We really appreciate you kind of like almost parenting us a bit," and because, you know, it doesn't do me any good if people are buying stuff that they can't afford.

- And yes, and then they don't come back in anymore, and they almost may feel bad.

- Yeah, yeah.

- [Jay] That's great how you take care of your customers.

So when you take care of community, they can take care of you, so when we get back, we're also gonna learn about how after creating this fantastic spot and community awareness, you're kind of giving back a little bit to the community also in certain artistic ways.

So stick around, we'll be right back.

(upbeat music) All right Terry, so this store and building this kind of family around here, so you have a lot of regular customers and all, this has kind of afforded you to buy in I think to the Mass Street and the Lawrence vibe a little more.

You give a lot back and just kind of, well to me some of your funny posts on your social medias, let's talk about that, and also just some of the concerts and some of the other artistic endeavors you kind of sponsor and you get out there into the ether, so tell us a little bit about your happenings down on Mass Street.

- Well our dream at the store always has been to involve the public, a community thing, because I was a little skateboarder that came from a little South Dakota town, and I had no one that I could really bond with, whatever, and there was a little record store that let me hang out all the time, and they did a lot of stuff like that too, and it was so important to me to have a store growing up that also kind of did other things, so that's very much what I model this store after, and it's like we work with Liberty Hall really close, so I'm always like, "Hey, if you guys ever do any Jim Henson movies, we love Labyrinth, we love Dark Crystal," like "Hey, we're having some coming up," so we work together, 'cause I also feel like a lot of my customers that, you know, aren't from Lawrence, they're maybe Kansas City, maybe Oberlin Park, you know, whatever, travel now, 'cause they're like, 'cause we have Dark Crystal this weekend.

So like multiple of my customers are like, "Yeah we're gonna come and see Dark Crystal Liberty Hall," so that gives Liberty Hall some business.

'Cause what's good for one business in downtown is good for the whole.

You know, it has to be an experience.

It's not about one store.

Like a lot of times, couple times a year I'll go and I'll pick a couple of my favorite stores to try and feature and do like a post like, "Hey, when you're down also hit these other stores."

And then being a touring musician and concert promoter, being across the street from the Grenada Theater, I still get to dip my toe in being involved in music.

So generally I'll be like, like we're doing this band Twin Temple in October, and it's one of my wife and I's favorite bands, so I've been working with the Grenada and Jackie Becker who was helping book the show like, "Hey, we would like to present it."

So when we present it, it means that we feature it on all our social media, we get like handbills made that we put in every bag.

We just go that extra mile plus selling tickets here.

But we do that extra mile to help get bodies in there, 'cause like I said, if people are traveling from all over to come to a show at the Grenada, that's good for the downtown, and that's good for everybody.

- You know, and Mass Street still is for the most part, it's still homegrown businesses.

I know they, for a while, and I'll admit I did work for a corporation here on Mass Street for a while and it did pay the bills, but they had a little section where you could have those, but they really died out also.

I mean, so it's nice that, like you say, one business kinda helps bring other businesses in, kinda like, I'm guessing maybe having the ice cream store at the corner of the next spot brings a lot of people our age and little kids by, they're like, "We gotta stop in there, I mean there's the droid from Rebels."

I mean there's choppers so let's go inside.

So other anchor stores kind of help bring the business, so.

- It's true.

Yeah, we're very, I mean like I was telling you before, like we had a guy fly in from London.

We had people every weekend that come from Oklahoma, Texas, Joplin, Springfield.

I mean, we've had people from all over, and it's kind of nerve wracking when they're like, "Hey, I'm here from New York."

I'm like, "Really?"

Because there's big stores all over, you know, like I get really nervous, like, 'cause I don't want someone to be disappointed.

Well as far as I know no one has been, but I don't know.

- I don't think you can get disappointed.

You may be like, "Oh, they didn't have this.

I was hoping they'd have this."

But there's so much to draw you to that I don't think anyone leaves here with a frown.

- Well, and for me, anyone can open a store with four walls, shelves, and great product, and you will not remember the name, you'll not remember where the store was at, you will not remember anything about it.

So for me, when I set up this whole store, the aesthetic was almost more important than the product to me, and that's why the outside of our building's lime green.

Beetlejuice green, the gargoyles, and I mean we had to search kind of all over to get like these chandeliers and everything we've done.

There's a lot of little intricate things.

Other people don't know this, but we do like having custom coffin shelves built.

You know, anyone can go to Ikea, buy Ikea shelves.

- I grew up around funeral homes.

My parents were funeral direction, mortician, so this kind of stuff, not saying their's look this Victorian-esque, but I love this kind of stuff, you know, and I have a coffee table at home that's made from a casket cart and stuff.

- Oh, I love it.

- This just fits in, so you're right, the aesthetic, 'cause that's one of the biggest parts of having a business, so it is that feel and whether they notice it or not, they did notice it.

- Yeah, because I guarantee even if you don't buy anything here, you're probably, even if it's not your jam, you're probably gonna talk about like even if- - You're gonna know someone who it is their jam.

- Or even if someone that leaves like "That store was weird."

I take that as a compliment.

I've had people say that to me at the counter.

Like, "This store's really weird."

"Thank you."

- And you say people are coming in from outta town too.

Now the main thing for you is the store and the interaction, but I will say you also do have a second side that is the online sales for some of your overstock, and also if you can't make it in, you live far enough away, you can check out some of the stuff that may, you know, hit your nostalgia buttons just right.

But so, what's coming up?

I mean, do you do online auctions?

What other stuff do you have going on?

- We do Facebook live auctions the last Sunday of every month, so we have one this coming Sunday.

We started it during COVID, and everyone got so into it that we've just continued to do it, and so yeah, it's a Facebook Live.

Generally unless we have something big going on that month, we generally do it the last Sunday of every month.

- Oh my god, that's awesome.

Terry, this is like I say, one of my favorite stores.

Hopefully if you guys stop in, it'll give you some smiles also.

Thank you so much for being on the show.

- Oh, thank you, I appreciate it.

- And you know, I'll be in probably next week and the week after, so I hope you enjoyed today's Working Capital.

So don't be afraid whether you need to clean out your favorite old collections and find someone who will love them also, or if you just want to add to 'em, make sure you check out 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

We'll see you next time.

Thanks for watching Working Capital.

(soft music) - [Narrator] Funding for Working Capital is provided by the Friends of KTWU and Go Topeka.