Today we’d like to introduce you to Richard Giron and Rick Polendo.
Hi Richard and Rick, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We’re a company based on friendship. Rick Polendo and I (Richard Giron) have been best friends since high school.
We attended college together and while there decided to turn our passion for nerdy pursuits into a business. We started by becoming vendors at Anime conventions.
After building a name for ourselves in the Texas convention scene, we moved on to a physical brick-and-mortar store. Our years of convention vending inspired us to make give our store the feel of a convention. We separated our location into a store, arcade, and hangout.
Our goal was always to make a fun place for people to come and enjoy being with other nerdy people; a place to have discussions about the anime/manga/video games that people are passionate about.
Happily, we have been able to keep momentum and community interest throughout the pandemic and we are forever grateful to everyone that waited for us to reopen as we moved from our first location to our new one.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Going from convention vending to brick and mortar required a very fast adaptation to better lines of communication with our suppliers. It also led to much more community interaction.
We pride ourselves that we’ve changed to meet the needs of the community we serve and have maintained ourselves as the best store of our kind.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Richard: Playing World Class Track Meet on the Nintendo with my sister.
Ricardo: Going with my parents to a comic book shop for the first time.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @rikricotakucafe
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rikric.otakucafe
- Twitter: @rikricOtakuCafe
Image Credits
Cindy Giron, Ricardo Polendo, and Tanya Arguijo
