The week our loan got approved should’ve been the easy win. Instead, the space we’d picked for Big J’s Replays got rented out from under us, and we had to pivot hard—calling brokers, scouting a strip behind the mall, and negotiating shelves, gondolas, glass cases, and rolling racks like we were speedrunning retail Tetris. We get honest about the messy middle: protecting cash flow, asking for written holds, and buying fixtures that make a store feel intentional on day one.  We also open up abo...
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