I am incredibly excited to announce the news that The Grinning Frog now has official office space – i.e. not just my spare room converted into an office. We have taken up residence in Market Weighton Business Centre. No, that’s not the centre of the business universe but it is an easy twenty minutes commute for me, (ten for Ryan), gives us bags of room and is at a reasonable price.
Clocking in at 500 square feet we have ample room for our desks, flipchart, reference library (i.e. bookcase), stock storage, dragon table (named Carson), a logistics centre and a break out area – when I find a sofa I like!
We also have lots of wall space which we intend to heavily adorn with geeky displates (www.displate.com) and other pictures. So far, the walls are home to fantasy pictures by the legendary Frank Frazetta and then images of Judge Dredd, Servalan from Blakes 7, (the coolest and slinkiest TV villain ever), Doctor Who in his Tardis with companion, Spike from Cowboy Bebop, Wonder Woman, Batman and Venger from the Dungeons and Dragons TV show. (Jessica Jones is due to arrive soon.)
Figurines of Solder 76 and Wonder Woman stand proudly on the bookcase between Ryan and myself and Orcus, Tiamat and Shadowmire stare down from on top of the bookcase – sorry, reference library!
Yes, my inner geek has spilled forth – with, I would state for the record – Ryan’s blessings.
More importantly than all that though, for the first time, Ryan and I will be able to work together in the same room on a daily basis. This is going to have massive implications for everyone. For you, our wonderful backers, supporters and friends it means that we will be faster with our fulfilments and more responsive to emails.
Those of you who have been following and buying from us for any length of time will know that I always reply to emails – eventually – well, Ryan will be handed some of parts of the business and be the front man for those. By sharing the load, you will get quicker updates, resolutions to matters and simply more efficient service. To be clear, I think we’ve been pretty good. I personally backed a Kickstarter for a single magazine type booklet and it’s eight months overdue I think now. In the time I’ve been waiting for that I think I’ve put out over eight magazines and three or four books. Not too shabby and all that.
Yet, I’d like our fulfilment to be sharper and now, with Ryan directly on hand to deal with that AND the room to actually store all the materials needed for packing and posting in one location it will be significantly more efficient. The logistics centre is key to the office layout and was created a week before we ever moved our own desks into the place.
We move in officially on the 1st March however we won’t have access to the internet until the 14th March. That means I’m doing things such as updating the website and printing postage labels at home and then going to the office for offline activities – such as creative writing and packing envelopes. That’s a faff but it’s just how it’s happened. Office space is hard to find where I live and comes and goes on the market at incredible speed. It was a touch of luck and old school sales techniques that saw me able to bag this one!
It's only been ten days since I first saw the unit so we are moving, as always, at a hectic speed. Realistically, this move has disrupted my writing schedule – I hadn’t planned to spend the best part of a week sourcing, buying, collecting and building furniture for example. That said, any short-term disruption will be more than compensated for by the gains in future months.
Yes, the logistics and the sharing of tasks is going to be much easier, but Ryan deserves a shout out for his creative input into my writing in recent months. He has drafted up several pieces of content that I then used as a springboard to produce something from. A collaborative process that strengthened the material which is fabulous. Having him in the room with me through the week will provide for ever more chances to collaborate in such a fashion.
We also have two spaces we can use to record videos and we are working through some plans for regular video content. More on that when we have firmed up the ideas.
So, this is amazingly exciting for us here at Frog HQ – and yes, that’s going on the door although I quite like The Frog Cave…
On a serious note, I’d like to end with the most heartfelt of thanks to the people who have made this possible – you, and everyone who has bought from us. The funds for this enterprise are coming from our recent Kickstarters. This is absolutely and genuinely a crowdsourcing success story. You have all made this possible.
I promise to use this opportunity to maintain and build the quality and volume of content to ensure that we are offering you the very best roleplay material that we are capable of and getting it into your hands in a timely and consistent fashion.
Thank you.
Stephen Hart
From The Frog Cave
PS The first campaign that will likely launch from the office will be this one:
