Hey fellas!
Well since people want to know what is happening, I've been trying to come up with some kind of "professional" looking statement that explains my position, but to be honest, I've not decided on a clear direction to take yet.
Put simply, I want out of the pinball business.
I am miserable and unhappy. I knew I would have to have thick skin when I started making replacement parts and selling them via Retro Refurbs, but I didn't expect to have to deal with the level of abuse I take every single day - over email, over Facebook, and of course Pinside but everyone already knew that place was toxic. I just find that most of the people in this hobby are unreasonable and extremely demanding. I've not experienced treatment like that in any other job or business. Like when you get an email or order at 11pm on a Friday or Saturday night, and the guy expects a reponse in under 1 hour. You then wake up to a nice PayPal dispute on Monday morning and a ton of abusive messages.
Having said that, I do find most of the people on this forum (and generally the UK) and also all the guys in Australia to be very nice, helpful, and supportive. I'd say normal? It's these people that make me want to tolerate the assholes.
Last week brought things to a tipping point. I had a weekend trip away planned and I needed to switch off from it all, so shut the website down, closed Facebook, deleted forum accounts, logged out of email. It's made me realise that I need to change a few things.
To start with, I'll no longer be providing support or getting too involved with people via public fourms. I plan to stay on here but only as a personal user, not representing Retro Refurbs as a business. I'm making changes to all social media as well, so that I/we only interact with customers privately.
I've also gone back to my old full time job where I was much happier, doing something I loved, and will continue running Retro Refurbs as a small sideline. I'm also excited to get restorations on actual pins finished and back to their respective owners, something which has taken a back seat lately due to too much focus on replacement parts. Going back to my roots.
As for how Retro Refurbs will change over the coming months, my initial idea is as follows. The short term plan is to remove Bally Williams products which are available via other outlets, and then eventually all of the others. This gets a few key assholes off my back, and the whiners will just have to put up with not being able to get the stuff they need. We're going to focus more on custom artwork for things like decals and translites, but as this is a very niche market we're also going to start moving over to doing artwork for things like virtual pinball and arcade video games. In fact, 2 video games side arts are being added today. Eventually all traditional pinball products will no longer be available for sale.
There are currently a number of projects going on however which I need to get my money back on. Plastic sets being made and also the 3D translites - which by the way are are absolutely stunning, far more depth than the others currently on the market, and as we are focussed on lesser popular games I think these would have been fantastic. Also, the hologram replacement for
CFTBL has been scrapped with minimal loss, as is the T2 Mirror Chrome plastic set which would have been incredible, and inside art / blades.
So a small number of 3D translites and plastic sets will still be available to buy for some time yet, but all further development of new stuff has stopped.
That's pretty much it. It's not a shut down, but scaling down and just evolving in to something else. Please don't send messages asking if I'm still supplying X product - just look on the website. If it's there then you can buy it. Once it's gone, it's gone.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me over the last year since I started doing this. I know there are some people here who I still owe huge favours to, and I'll honour those favours. Promise!
Cheers,
Pete