 | Hi there, I'm Roger Kolikas. I'm the owner of a small construction/woodworking company called Munchkin Metropolis, where I specialize in custom items for kids mostly, but I've gradually been growing in the gaming accessory industry. Fancy custom deck boxes are pretty neat and add a bit of flare to anyone's deck!
I never did care for talking about myself much, but since this is the only way you can get to know me for now, that's about it for the business side of me. I've linked all my pages so you can get a better feel for who I am as a person and the quality of work you can expect from me should you choose to back one of my projects.
On to the personal side of me. (I don't have one, I'm a mystery....if mysteries weren't mysterious)
I was born and raised down south in Mississippi. My earliest memories are of playing outside with a stick (Sword) and fighting a terrible beast (Pet hamster). We had recently moved to a piece of property that only had a well for water. No house, barn, building of any kind, we lived in a tent that first summer. We were to build our house during our first summer there. And we did! (Sort of...I mean, it was a single room with plywood floor and 3 walls, the 4th wall was just plastic stapled to the studs. But on that wall is where we had our wood burning stove/heater. (I've never been as warm in a house since, and we had 3ft of snow that first winter!) We had a 5 gallon bucket and a sheet hung up as a bathroom. But it worked, and I loved it! We had a 55 gallon drum mounted with a draining hose that had a shower head attached, so we could shower on warm days...cold days too, but I don't count that as a shower. It was more like scrub scrub scrub, fast fast fast, let me out!
As you can tell, I had an AMAZING CHILDHOOD! It was like camping all the time. Booyah!
I go my first job at the age of 8, as a gopher (Go for this, Go for that) on the construction site my grandma's husband worked at. It paid $2/day....and that was a lot for me back then. I could go to the $1 theater on Saturday, play arcades, get the LARGE popcorn/drink combo and watch movies all day long with my own money. (That's right, MY money)
I learned at a young age how to live broke, and I'm glad I did. That knowledge comes in handy whenever life tries to knock me down.
I grew up proper and joined the Marines at 17. Stayed there a few years before coming home and starting my own company (Woodworking, right?....wrong!) Selling at a flea market. It was good money sometimes, bad money sometimes, but I was the boss (Of myself only, but still, it counts....right?) I worked the market and craft shows for a couple years before stumbling into a mom & pop Video store (Old school, still did VHS and only had like 7 DVDs at the time). I bought out the bin of VHS they had for sale (At a discount so I could resell them) and I left them my number in case they had more to sell later on. Business must have been bad, because not even a month later they called and asked me to offer a price on all the movies they had left. I did them one better and offered to buy the store as it sat. That store's name was Reel World. Little did I know that one decision would change my life forever. I took that store and turned it into the first DVD only store around (This was back in 1996).... It did well until not 1, but 2 large movie rental chains came to town. But, you know the drill (Improvise, Adapt, Overcome)....So, I made a switch and started carrying more games. More and more kids started hanging out at the store and eventually one of them requested I start carrying Magic the Gathering (In my mind, wth is that?) Fast forward a year and we are the only shop around running FNM and JSS events. I cut the DVD rentals down to a single shelf, the rest of the space was for couches, TVs and original Xbox systems (We had 16 and they stayed full with kids play 16 player Halo over the LAN). It was a great time to game!
{But wait, you said you've been woodworking your whole life, how'd you do that while you were doing all this other stuff?}
The answer? I never stopped, it just wasn't a business, it was a hobby I did for fun. I also picked up leathercrafting along the way, just fyi. Munchkin Metropolis is a company I originally started as a home improvement company that specialized in Children's playsets, playhouses, furniture (We did grown up things too)
Eventually I married and got talked into selling the shop.... 6 months later they had ran it into the ground and all the local kids had nowhere to go. Of course I had to reopen! They must have a place to go! Throughout the years I've had 7 renditions of Reel World Games (We added the "Games", but kept the name of the original shop). And just 3 years ago, I moved right back into the same building where I purchased Reel World 20 years ago. Life is funny sometimes. Now I get to do both, Reel World & Woodworking, in the same building (Different bays).
I don't make a killing, but I'm pretty happy most of the time (Except on Sunday, that's when we count the register)
Now you know my story, why not message me yours? I love listening to how other people have lived. |
