Stepping Stones

Published on 1 March 2023 at 12:34

First month, May 2022, the big decision just happened. What now?!

I will be trying to remember everything over here so I might not remember everything to the tiniest of details but I remember the first course of action:

Starting a Business

This was one of, if not the hardest thing in this whole project.
Research, research and more research, and after that, more research.
Looking at all the laws, the types of activity I was able to open, requirements, import? export? will you be doing that? I'm not going there since it will be a ton of legal stuff that I don't feel like it would be a good read, laws are always a shitshow made for you to not understand them 100%, so, just keep in mind that I researched a ton, and might have still made a mistake, more on that later, will you find it funny? Lets see! Ha ha ha..

Finding a service to host our stores website!

This was easy and hard at the same time, I remember looking at the more well know services like SquareSpace and Wix but I couldn't really try them out for real without paying (orrr it was something like that ahaha), and then, I came upon this one "Webador", what cought my atention right away was the fact that they where giving the first 3 months basically for free, a deal for a fully hosted website with unlimited products for not even 1€ a month for 3 months? Sign me in!

What do we have next? Right, we need a brand.

How did the name came to be?

Right, for the name, I don't have much to say. If you don't know already, the word "Eden" means something like "Paradise", its usually used when refering to the "Gardens of Eden". So it wasn't to hard to get to a name, I was already using "The Garden" as a name for the Discord I put up for me, some friends, and future Youtube Subscribers and I wanted the store name to have something to do with Cards since, at the end of the day, its a card store right? 
Since card games where always a big part of my life, adding some fun to my life, meeting new people through these games, tournaments, school breaks playing yu-gi-oh or Pokémon, I always associated these games to having a good time, have a space outside of the daily hassles of life, a moment to be with friends and have fun.
Trying to pair up the "Paradise" conection with these thought, the name was born:

Now you might be thinking tho, "But Eden, and the logo? Where did that awesome piece came from?", well thats our next point:

The Logo!

This, came as a surprise to me to be honest with you, at the time, as I've said, I had the youtube channel going, and I was invited to be part of the "Wixoss Content Creators" to help creating and participate in the "English Content Creator Wixoss Circuit".
In that server, as someone helping with prizing and such, was non-other than Luky Yuki (If you don't know Yuki, click the name, see the work, you will not regret it, I swear!). Since Yuki is an artist and we had talked briefly I decided  to ask if Yuki did any kind of logos or knew about someone that did them since I really needed a nice Logo and I was 100% sure I could never do anything decent in that regard.
After a bit of a back and forward, not really knowing anyone, I was told that, if I had anything started Yuki could help polish it, and oh boy was it polished!




This was literally the first message I ever sent to Yuki. Oh boy, am I really putting this here? ahaha

I feel like "polishing" is too small of a word for what was done here.
Just so you have an idea I went looking for the original design, are you ready for it?
Here, compare both of them, what do you think? (Can't find the original one without background, so I have to damage your eyesight a little bit with this one, so sorry)

I just can't say enough how nice and good Luky Yuki is, so if you have a little bit of time go check the work, and if you play Wixoss and you still don't know Yuki, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? ARE YOU LIVING UNDER A ROCK?

Distributors?

Soooo, another dificult part I think?
I don't know or think there is much to talk about here to be honest, if you are opening a store, you have to look for them, the more you have, better the chance of finding the products you are looking for to sell!
In my case, over here in Europe, we have only few, and from those few, that I could find at a time, there was only 1 that had Wixoss, Gametrade Distribuzione, which was the game I wanted to start the store with. (I just recently found out about another distributor that has Wixoss, but Gametrade is the one with tournament support and all of that, so if you want to host tournaments, they are the way to go).
The process wasn't too bad, I tried applying the day I started the business, but forgot that it might take a little while for my code to be registered as a store (dumb me thinks stuff can take just a few seconds and its done ahaha) so we ended up trading a few emails back and forth until it was finally registered and appeared to them that I was, indeed a seller!

Of course, if you are like me, you will not want to have just 1 distributor, thats why I kept searching, BUT, the name that always comes up when you go looking into European Distributors, the biggest one and the one that apears on the first line when you google search is... BlackFire! Thats right, thats the biggest Distributor in Europe (but they don't have Wixoss), and since they are the biggest, there are a few requirements for you to join them, which, at the time, I didn't fill, so unfortuantely, I couldn't join them right there and then, but more on that in a future post! :P

After that I found a few more like Heo and Infrafin that I was able to register like I did in Gametrade and those where the 3 that I started my journey with!


So, I think for today, thats it, its already a ton of text but for people that might enjoy the more technical aspect of things I think it's a nice read!
I hope you are enjoying these things and keep on reading, the fun stuff is just starting, don't forget that!

Thank You All!
Iuri Alves (Eden)


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