Three days, a folding table, and the reason I do this

I spent the first weekend of July behind a table at Imaginarium, three days, one small stand, and more good conversations than I could count. I came home tired in the way that only means something went right.

The people, mostly

Here is the thing nobody tells you about running a curated shop: the products are the excuse, the people are the point. Over three days I heard dozens of stories, someone's first campaign, a group that has played the same characters for a decade, a father explaining to his kid why the dice have that many sides.

One line stuck with me more than any sale did. Someone picked up a book, turned it over, and said: it is so nice that you do this, what a lovely assortment. Not a review, not a rating, just someone noticing the work that goes into choosing carefully instead of stocking everything. That is exactly what I hoped a shop like Netherbook could be, and hearing it said out loud, unprompted, by a stranger, landed harder than I expected.

Small hands behind the table

My sons helped out at the stand across the weekend, and watching them hand people their bags, answer questions with more confidence than I had at their age, and get genuinely excited when someone bought the game they had just recommended, that was its own kind of highlight. One of them had so much fun that he has already announced he wants to help again next year, and that he intends to be Netherbook's first official employee. The other spent the weekend generously helping me work through my stock of corn snacks, a form of quality control I did not ask for but appreciated anyway. Running a small business is a lot of spreadsheets and shipping labels most days. This weekend it looked like two kids proud of the family shop.

The unexpected favorites

If you had asked me before the weekend which two titles would get the most attention at the table, I would not have guessed right. Be Like a Cat, a quiet little solo game, and Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme, which is exactly as gloriously silly as it sounds, turned out to be the two games people kept coming back to pick up, flip through, and put in their bag.

I love that pairing, honestly. One is gentle and contemplative, the other is pure absurdist chaos, and somehow both spoke to the same crowd wandering the same aisle. It is a small reminder of why I curate the way I do: this hobby is wide enough to hold both, and a good shelf should reflect that.

Ideas that will not leave me alone

Somewhere between customers on day two, I started scribbling down ideas for the range on the back of a receipt. Cowboy Bebop and Alice is Missing were among them, two titles I had never properly looked at before, and I have not stopped thinking about them since. Nothing is decided yet, but that is exactly the kind of idea that quietly reshapes a catalog over the following months. I will let you know if either of them earns a spot.

The neighbors

The stands on either side of ours turned into some of the best parts of the weekend, trading recommendations during the quiet stretches, watching each other's tables during bathroom breaks, comparing notes on which games kept selling out. There is a particular kind of camaraderie among people who all chose to spend a weekend behind a folding table for love of the same odd little hobby, and I felt it the whole three days.

Why I keep doing this

I could tell you Imaginarium was good for sales, and it was. But that is not what I will remember in a year. I will remember the stranger who thanked me for the assortment, my sons handing over bags with more pride than the job strictly required, two unlikely bestsellers sitting side by side, a scribbled receipt full of new ideas, and a row of neighbors who felt more like colleagues than competition.

That is the whole point of a small, curated shop. Not to stock everything, but to care enough about a few hundred good games that the care shows. Three days at Imaginarium reminded me why that is worth doing. See you at the next one.