Our Little Starter Shop

With the creation of Aromas of Adventure, we wanted a name that would also encompass everything we were actively working on or had thoughts of creating in the future. This would later on cause a little bit of brand confusion for us that would take a few years to clean up. So, we came up with the name "The Crafty Gamer" as a one stop shop for all things tabletop. It was simple, clean and effective and so we got to work on logos and socials. We started up an Etsy store, got a domain and started selling our candles immediately.

We made enough money at first to keep doing it, investing our earnings into conventions and other local markets. The reception of our main products earned us some amazing popularity with the locals. Soon we started doing other products like key chains, stickers, coasters and other knickknacks that people would enjoy, really embracing our "one stop shop" ideology.

Everyone involved was still working full time jobs, I was personally up to three at this point. Being a hotelier, designer and now e-commerce owner occupied a lot of my time, but it was a journey worth taking. Within the first year, we went to over 12 events, and before our first anniversary I noticed a lack of something very important in our state of Florida; there was no large tabletop focused conventions around us. A lot of these conventions were gaming events or part of a larger pop culture show and tabletop at the time was a growing hobby.

Tabletop gaming was booming, with shows like Critical Role and Adventure Zone getting thousands of viewers and listeners a week. The industry itself was growing at a rapid rate of over a billion dollars a year. When I had some free time at home, I began dreaming up of a convention of my own. I researched things like GenCon and how it started, looked up shows like GaryCon and Gamehole Con in Wisconsin and how much they grew over the last decade, and I set out a plan to host my own gathering. If things went well, I could grow the community of Central Florida and give us a gathering hub. I booked a venue at a Double Tree and started building a list of vendors and gamers I could work with to make the event happen. The plan was to launch our event in 2020.

Right after our first anniversary, the world shut down. We kept our Etsy shop open, ramped up our Shopify store and hunkered down for a few months. Our popularity grew significantly, since a lot of people were playing TTRPGs online. The hobby itself grew exponentially, and with that a lot of new companies began replicating what we did as well. I believe in healthy competition, so the introduction of new candle brands and creators just meant more people were being introduced to the handmade market. Once the pandemic began to subside, events opened back up but with restrictions. I made the decision to not operate my own event in 2020 and 2021, pushing the dates back until I felt I could host it successfully.

We set our sights to larger shows, traveling across the east coast to over 20 shows in 2021. and over 30 shows in 2022. The Crafty Gamer was growing, and we were running out of space, so we got some storage units for surplus product and supplies, but we soon outgrew it. In the beginning of 2022, we set out with a goal of getting a larger space. The world also felt as if it was in a recovery period, so we announced dates for our convention as well for August 2022.

Originally, our goal was to create a warehouse near my home in the west side of Orlando. Warehouse space was scarce or incredibly expensive. Pivoting from warehouse to flex or retail would enable us to build a small shop for our local fans and give us a gathering space as well. We settled on Winter Park, where a majority of our fans resided, signed a lease and began construction in August 2022. Announcing it to the community was met with so much positivity and excitement, we were through the roof.

We went through our own trials and tribulations with build out, coupled with the organization of our event in the same month. But with the support of the community, our self-dubbed "Starter Store" was born and people had a place to discover tabletop and find community alongside our event Quest Con Orlando.