Wesley November: 00:20 What I had started doing was jotting down some ideas, getting
a picture in my head of what it is that I wanted to do.
How I would want people to interact if they walk in, what they wanted to see first.
What bright colors, logos.
Kind of taking the excitement from a comic book cover and what the movies are doing now
and put that into an active environment so when people come in, they know they're in
a comic book store.
It's not just a book store.
It's not just something that is someone's hobby for a weekend.
I wanted somebody to see that there was so much heart and work that went into the actual
experience.
So, I created Strange Cereal to be that.
Wesley November: 01:02 Hello, I'm Wesley November, entrepreneur and artist.
We're inside my beautiful comic book store, Strange Cereal, in Huntington Beach, California.
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted a comic book store.
The comic book stores that I was going to as a kid were more dimly lit lights, a flickering
bulb, taped posters on the walls, and dirty carpet.
It looked like a 14 year old's bedroom, not what I wanted.
The excitement of the comic books, the characters, the covers, the colors was something that
I found so creative and turned part of my childhood into the artist and the things that
I do today.
It was the perfect dichotomy of comic fandom and the love from comic books that I have
and just pushing those two together to create what I did with Strange Cereal.
Wesley November: 02:05 Found a location and I moved in, and then I had my blank canvas
but I had no displays.
There was walls that need to be built.
There was so much stuff that needed to actually happen to create the store.
I just had a front door and an open room.
Funds were limited and time was too.
The greatest thing that I had for my benefit was I had the Laguna Swift, so I just thought
everything I'm gonna design, I'm just gonna maximize everything I can put on a four by
eight sheet.
All of my logos and everything were I'm gonna do a three quarter inch back of MDF and then
I'm gonna do a quarter inch on top of it, or three quarter to three quarter, depending
on which one you're seeing.
If I'm gonna do the quarter inch sheet, I would just nest every single piece that I
could, cut out all of those.
This is the pile I'm gonna paint red, this is the pile that's gonna be blues and yellows.
And then, I would just start stacking everything and creating that whole 3D effect quickly.
I was able to build this entire store in roughly about three weeks.
Wesley November: 03:15 As we were putting more comic books out or we'd get more merchants,
say okay, we need another display for this.
I'd just run in the back, program a couple things up, and then within an hour I was bringing
up beautiful pieces, like this Iron Man piece that was done, designed and built and painted
and stained and put in the store within three hours.
I could make a piece by hand and a piece with my CNC and you can't pick up the piece and
smell it or taste it and go oh, this one had more hard work.
I look for efficiency and consistency of product, and with the CNC I was able to do that and
to create my pieces over and over and over.
Every one of them is the same and I know how quickly it can be done.
I know the time on the computer, how long it would take to make the cut.
For me being able to use the CNC, made this whole experience unbelievably quicker, better,
and beautiful.
Wesley November: 04:13 We just had the grand opening, and it was so exciting to be able
to see people as they would walk in.
As soon as they came through the door, that they would just look up around.
Little kids were so excited.
Parents were coming in with their kids who, they have been comic book fans since they
were a kid and now they're bringing in the next generation of people to come in to see
this.
There's so much excitement from father to son, mother to daughter, the other.
The whole fam is coming in here and just enjoying every single thing and seeing the detail that
was put into every display and how much the store meant to me.
It made this weekend perfect.
It couldn't have gone better.
We had a great grand opening here at Strange Cereal.