Paul Muncaster says it’s time to purge a portion of the 100,000 items or so that are currently housed in The Rad Zone leading up to its eventual relocation this winter.
That’s why the popular purveyor of pop culture is hosting a massive 'closeout' sale on most of its albums, movies and books beginning Nov. 16.
“It’s just time to purge,” Muncaster told SooToday Friday. “It’s been 17 years in this mall, so that’s 17 years of building stuff up, plus what we had for the last 35 years stuck away. It’s endless.”
Muncaster hopes to have a new, decidedly more compact home for The Rad Zone by February - preferably in the east end of the city.
A new location for the business has yet to be determined.
Currently, there are about as many items in storage as there are displayed in the store itself.
“I want to resize down to about half or third of what we are,” he said.
But the tricky part will be figuring out what supply is rare, and what is common enough to sell off at a heavy discount during the closeout-slash-relocation sale.
“There’s still stuff out of print that is in no other format,” said Muncaster. “It’s just going through it all at a later date - keeping that stuff, and moving the common stuff out as quick as we can.”
Muncaster says that although he’s slowly inching toward retirement, there’s no plan to pack it in just yet.
“We got to keep it going, and my staff has been with me for a long time,” he said. “So if I cycle through myself, hopefully, my staff will be the ones who move on with it in the future.”
Most items will be 50 per cent off the original sticker price, with the exception of newer vinyl and skateboarding gear, which will go on sale for up to 40 per cent off.
“I would say there will be lots to choose from between now and the end of the year because we will be putting stuff out as we find it in the back,” Muncaster said.
This past summer, SooToday reported a number of proposed changes to Wellington Square Mall in the future, which could see a portion of the mall transformed into a strip plaza with a 24,000 square foot anchor store.