Help Us Save Family Fun Hobbies

Hi all, my name is Miranda and I'm the General Manager at Family Fun Hobbies in Hamilton NJ.

Family Fun Hobbies is a small local game store founded back in 2009. This November will be our 15th anniversary! We offer a wide selection of what we like to call "unplugged" hobbies, such as trading card games, board games, card games, miniature war games, role-playing games, toys, models, and hobby supplies.

We aren't just a store though. We like to think of ourselves as a pillar of our community. We host daily events at the store for different games--Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, Warhammer 40,000 battles, Magic: The Gathering tournaments, Disney's Lorcana League, family board game nights, and my personal favorite is our Pokémon day. We love having kids come in on Sundays so we can teach them how to play the Pokémon trading card game. We host birthday parties, we have a Report Card Rewards program which rewards good grades with store credit, and we collect toys and donations for Toys for Tots every holiday season.

All of this is only a fraction of what we do, but my staff and I work hard to make sure our store is a safe and fun place for everyone.

About two weeks ago, the owner & operator of the business suffered a stroke. Given his long road to recovery and myriad health issues, his wife (the co-owner) and I mutually decided that it be in his best interest to step away from a position of store operations. So with the owner out of commission, his responsibilities became mine. Sadly, what my staff and I found was both disheartening and demoralizing.

Upon inspection of our finances, I discovered that the owner had been keeping from us how deeply in debt we are--likely to keep us from panicking. We believe his mismanagement of our funds likely stem from a previous stroke he had last year. While he had made a quick recovery and was able to quickly regain his motor and speech functions, we now understand that a stroke can alter cognitive abilities, organizational skills, and sometimes even personality. At the time, he seemed to be back to normal. We didn't have reason to believe that he was silently struggling.

That all being said, this unfortunately doesn't change the fact that our business is now being strangled by a massive amount of loan debt. The monthly payments alone are just over $12,000. With this on top of rent and payroll, we are simply unable to make ends meet.

On my end, I'm more than confident that I can manage this business with a smart budget, proper bookkeeping, and the help of my amazing team… under normal circumstances. But clearly, our present circumstances are anything but normal. These loans make our current situation completely and utterly unsustainable.

We desperately need any help we can get to support our business and sustain our livelihoods. The loans taken out by the owner total at just over $250,000. Our goal is to raise enough money to pay off the loans in full so we can get back to focusing on what we do best: bringing joy to our community through hobbies, games, and fun.

If we manage to survive this, either by meeting our fundraising goal or by taking on investors, the owners will of course still retain ownership of the business; however, going forward, I will be taking the reigns and leading the business and our team with new and fresh ideas.

Any money we raise from this campaign will go into a separate account specifically for loan repayment. Even just a few dollars from enough people will be a huge help to us. If this fundraiser is seen by 200,000 people and half of them donate just one dollar, that would be enough to pay off at least the more predatory of the loans with an obscenely high interest rate.

Please consider helping support a friendly local game store that still has a lot of love left to give. If you've made it this far, we all sincerely and deeply thank you for your consideration to our plea.

--The Family Fun Hobbies Team

Miranda, Julian, Nick, Jae, and Gill