29/09/2026
The Warp’s story – A lot of people have asked me how this all happened lately and I always reply with ‘’lucky’’ which is such a crap answer but after I was asked if I'd just invested a ton of money into this I knew it was time to formally tell people The Warp's story. Spoiler, I invested around £100! So, here’s our story (sorry this might be a boring post for some)!
It all started just as the pandemic started when I (Ryan) sold my 3 Warhammer armies (Eldar, Orks and Necrons). I put my armies on eBay and a random person (if you’re reading this, please get in contact) messaged me and asked if I could sell their Deathwatch army on behalf of them for 10% profit. I thought, why not I have nothing else to do...
I’d just left university as a mature 29 year old student and had no direction, so I took on the army, and I made £16 out of it (I always remember it was exactly £16 for some reason), the guy thanked me and we never spoke again. From then on, I started selling more of my models and saved up everything. £16 turned into £25 and I slowly built some savings.
At this time The Warp was a bookshelf in my bedroom. The Warp slowly grew and I was buying in small inventories, so I had to move all our inventory to my kitchen, yes, my kitchen!! We had 4 garage style racks right in the middle of my kitchen and I have no idea why Charlotte didn’t leave me there and then ha-ha. Having people around our house and having to explain why there was little models and loads of pots of paint next to the oven was always an interesting conversation. After this we moved house and the garage era started which some of you guys will remember!
After a while I got ‘Collectors Corner’ to the point where I could buy 2 3D printers with my step dad Steve and at the same time, I rebranded to The Warp with the logo you see today. At the same time my stepdad Steve (who still works at The Warp doing our postage) was looking to semi retire so we teamed up to launch our printer rental service. This was one of the moments that gave us our first audience. People came to us sending files of things they wanted printed almost daily, for the first time I felt I was onto something. Sadly, I was wrong the business I’d built wasn’t supposed to last in the 3D print world but thankfully I’d just made a deal in a tiny space in Bordon and managed to get a Games Workshop contract.
All this time, we were still in the pandemic and I think; the fact I was hand delivering Warhammer and other things to locals, and therefore building connections when people were at their most lonely, made The Warp what it is today. I had so many amazing conversations standing 2 metres away from someone while delivering a pot of paint. I don't think any of what you see today would have been possible if it wasn't for the really crappy situation that was the pandemic.
After lots of conversations with Steve (my stepdad) we decided to really go for it and that’s when I took on Greywell. I was completely terrified when I did this, I cannot explain that feeling of dread because I’d tied myself into a lease with The Warp and I had no idea if I could even afford it. Thankfully, this was the moment when a minority of you guys started to connect with The Warp. We were the tiny underdog that had appeared, no idea what we were even really doing, no idea what direction we were taking but we were there. The shop was a complete mess, but I like to think it gave it some charm, it wasn’t professional at all, and I think people kind of liked how unprofessional we were ha-ha. People started to use the website I’d launched; people started to come into store for a chat, and we were growing and little by little until we outgrew Greywell. I couldn’t believe it!
Then came The Meridian Centre, Havant calling with a big 800sft unit and I fearlessly (I s**t myself) took it on. A 3-year lease was proposed and met with more sleepless nights. Only this time my family now depended on this being a success. I’ll admit I had a little mental wobble when we moved to The Meridian because I regretted it at first. I thought we weren’t ready, “I’ve messed this all up and my chance was over”. Then I opened the store and saw a crowd. This crowd was about 30 strong, and it gave me belief that this move was the right move, and it absolutely was the right move. That crowd on opening day became regular customers, them regular customers started playing in store and I became friends with a bunch of them. We built a proper community.
In this store we started to get some amazing staff members, Kirsty and Ollie joined us and were people I could really rely on and later down the road Ethan joined us. All playing big parts in what you see today.
We spent 2 years in that unit growing till we were putting stock in our makeshift toilet stock room. We tapped the toilet shut so nobody could use it and put racking all over the toilet. That’s how much we desperately needed space…
Then we moved again, this time to our current store. This one was a LOT harder than the previous though and led to some real problems for me personally. The pressure of this one got the better of me, the sleepless nights and a really young family just completely stopped me in my tracks. I essentially checked out and went on a longish break. I returned really refreshed and as a team we built our new store, the store you see today!
I’ll always remember the day we opened this store. It was by far my favourite memory of The Warp. 1,200 people, a 4-hour long queue... How on earth did my pandemic pipeline dream turn into all of this. Since then, we’ve been growing some more, we have some really big things planned and we want to grow a lot more. Luke joined us and helped build a really great TCG community and now Tom joins the team to help build the next stage of The Warp!
I guess what I'm getting at with this is The Warp was built from nothing, The Warp is just a passion project that got out of hand haha.
Sorry if this was an essay but a lot keep asking me about this and I thought I should finally give an answer that isn’t a cop out ‘’lucky’’ response. We’re not some huge chain we're a local family run business, there was no investments or shareholders, we've had a lot of luck, a lot of right place right times and a lot of scary moments. Would I do this again? Don't think I could to be honest.
Because of all of you today The Warp looks how it does. If you’ve read this far you deserve a medal and I’m sorry for my ramblings.
You’re all the best, thank you we love you! Big shout out to Steve and my family also, they deserve a lot of the credit!
