We started a little shop (literally it was housed in a 6m X 3m prefab in our back yard) and an online store on 20 October 2018. Our first customer was Lance Botha who came in to see our little shop in person. Back then we only sold one brand and that was Vallejo, the store has grown steadily over the past four years to what it is today, South Africa's favourite online Art, Craft & Hobby store. This is our story.
The concept
I was always a hobbyist and dabbled in various forms of artistic expression, including painting, pottery and drawing. Scale modeling was the hobby that I came back to after many years. I was astounded at how the hobby had changed. from the old days when South Africa had two available brands, Tamiya and Airfix. I found a massive array of new manufacturers and new products. I bought some models, paints and an airbrush and got to work and thoroughly enjoyed myself. As my skills developed so did my frustration with the scant availability of some of the well known international brands, particularly Vallejo and Harder & Steenbeck.
Inexplicably the most well known acrylic paint brand favoured by the majority of the professional modelers and painters was almost non-existent in South Africa. Added to this was the fact that the hobby industry had only a very few proper online stores, and I am an online shopper.
I spotted a gap, I convinced my wife Lindy to quit her corporate job after more than 25 years at the same company to start Supernova Studio. We decided to stock the complete range of Vallejo products, no small feat as they had more than 2000 products in their Hobby collection alone. We ordered everything and started by creating our online store. We knew that we would need a place for the locals to come in and touch and feel the products so we bought the little prefab unit and got set up.
The concept was simple - Great products and great service at fair prices. This is what we would build our business on.
Our first shipment, unpacking and setting up shop:
Next time the story continues as we start to grow and add other product lines and become real importers by necessity.