For more than a decade, drivers headed north from the brick-lined streets of St. Big Bill's Die Cast stopped working in February. Bill Johnson says he won't be on this Earth a lot longer. It got out of hand because I was doing it as a hobby.
It is a lot of work to go out of business. Johnson drives to a pair of storage units on the city's outskirts almost every morning before the heat and humidity sets in. He spends a lot of time photographing the toys in his collection.
The first thing Johnson thought of when he heard about a web store was "Are you kidding me?" He was losing his lease because the building was being sold. He didn't want to shut down completely, but he didn't want to open a new shop. He says he might sell his online business when he gets older.
Johnson is trying to figure out how to move on, whether by selling the company, liquidating it, or leaving it to an heir. According to the US Small Business Administration, there are less resources for closing a business than there are for starting it.
Tom Sullivan is the vice president of small-business policy at the US Chamber of Commerce. He says that it can be difficult, but that the emotional attachment that comes with it makes it hard.
After four decades in furniture sales, Johnson realized that he didn't want to sit around the house. He said he was bored to tears. He opened a stand at a flea market in Jacksonville in order to cut down on his collection, which included die-cast cars, trucks, airplanes, and military vehicles. As his collection grew, so did the business.
The space he occupied at the flea market doubled in 10 years. He wanted a more permanent home so he opened a shop in St. Augustine with a slogan "If I don't have it, they don't make it"
Big Bill's is not large. Johnson was the only employee who worked six days a week at the store. Johnson didn't expect to get rich while sales were brisk.
His reputation grew over the years. Whenever his Jacksonville landscaping company brought him to the area, Kirk Wurster stopped by. The pleasure was simply chatting with Johnson, often without buying, because of their mutual appreciation for collectibles. The type of store that Wurster is talking about is no longer around. He knew where everything was and what it was worth, even though it was packed to the rafters.
During World War II, Johnson was fascinated by military convoys that passed by his house in Connecticut. He bought his first toy vehicle after the war, a three-piece replica of a British army tractor and cannon. Johnson took great care of the toy after it took him weeks to save up for it.
With little in the way of digital inventory management, Johnson had been using a lot of notebooks to catalog his cars. He paid a company $3,600 to build his website and teach him how to make entries for toys. A fifth of Johnson's collection has been photographed, and he has posted it on the site.
At the shop business is quicker than online. He says that sales don't match what he's paying in storage. He is considering getting out completely, even selling his childhood toys. He thinks he'll get a better price if he sells a well- functioning web store. Nobody wants the product unless the company comes with it.
People who only wanted to complain about how their parents threw out their childhood collection of cars or kids who handled expensive items as if they were hammers were some of the shop's annoyances. The online version of Big Bill's can't compete with the original He could talk for hours on virtually anything, though the conversation inevitably turned to the toys, with many customers looking for a replica of a car they drove in high school or a model they'd long coveted. It was a lot of fun and I would like to go to work in the morning. There is a tear in my eye.
Next, read about adults who love toys. The toy industry is fond of the same things.
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