After about 20 years of running bricks and mortar shops in Brisbane I have closed the doors due to the high price of rent made even more difficult by a global pandemic and recession.
While my spaces have never been about money it's pretty obvious to anyone that I needed to make enough to pay all the expenses that come along with physical spaces including rent, wages, power, super, POS, insurance and Govt covers, etc and starting in March 2020 this became increasingly more difficult.
In Feb 2021 with the external factors mentioned above affecting income, and with independent retail, the music industry and manufacturing all still decimated with very little sign of recovery and almost no help from the government the very hard decision had to be made and I was given till the end of March (today) to vacate the premises.
Over the past 13 years the Valley has played an important part of why that space was so important to so many, but with rising rents and gentrification of the area, the culture that thrived so well, and in fact defined the area is being forced out of the very community it built.
With rents rising during this global catastrophe and Brisbane having some of the highest retail rents in the world it's uncertain as to when and even if I will be opening another physical space in the future. I could have afforded to stay in that last space (where I had been for about 9 years) if I stopped subsidizing and supporting music and my local scene, putting on free all ages shows and stopped doing so much charity work, but, it wouldn't have been the place I wanted to run, so, here we are.
I'd like to say a HUGE (and I mean HUGE) thanks to anyone and everyone who has ever gone into my shop and supported it and everyone who has done so online to keep that space active and open to help my local, and not so local community.
This new site will be updated soon with some stock from the shop such as 2nd hand guitars and effects and new effects with more Tym products coming back soon.