Tamim

What’s up with the Twin Moons Anime Store?

I know that many of you have noticed that the Twin Moons Anime web site hasn’t been updated in some time and have been wondering whether we’re still in business. Well, the sad truth is that I’m currently in the process of slowly closing down the store due to the horrible economy.

Twin Moons Anime has always been a labor of love for me and never my full-time job due to the fact that it was barely making any money. It was just doing enough to pay for my own collecting addiction. Unfortunately when the economy fully went south last year, I really felt the hit with the store. Sales just started plummeting and I was forced to focus more on my consulting business to pay my bills. It was becoming very obvious that I simply couldn’t run the store with the level of service that I would like to provide to my customers.

We still have quite a bit of inventory that I need to liquidate. I will be putting these on ebay in weekly batches and the listings will be up on the Twin Moons Anime site. For those of you who still have outstanding pre-orders, those will unfortunately be canceled. Also, if you had prepaid for your pre-order via PayPal, I will be refunding all payments. But please note that this may be a bit of a very slow process because I have a lot of records to go through! Everyone’s patience is greatly appreciate in this process.

I want to thank each and every one you who have supported me over the years. It has been an absolute pleasure serving you guys and I’m so very glad to have met some of you in person. I really hope that we will be keeping in touch. My blog will be active here, the forums will continue to be up, and you can also find me on Facebook. And who knows, if this economy ever picks up again, I might just bring the store back.

Anime, Uncategorized | Tamim | August 19, 2009 11:21 am

13 Comments

By Long time customer, August 21, 2009 @ 8:33 pm

Dear Tamim,

Just wanted to say thanks for your hard work. I really appreciated doing business with your store. Although we never met personally, I always appreciated your hand signed thank you cards with each order. I hope that you fare well with your consulting business and hope that you can open TMP once more!

Best of luck and again thank you for your great customer service! I’ll miss TMP~
By Tamim, August 23, 2009 @ 10:59 am

Thank you so much for your kind words. It’s always been a pleasure and I really hope that I will be able to open it up again soon. Thank you for all of your support over the years.
By A customer and friend, August 25, 2009 @ 5:22 pm

Hey Tamim,

I’m sorry to hear about your closing down. I came by your place to pick up a figure in ‘08 and we had a nice talk about the sad state of the economy at that time. Sorry to hear it has taken more of a toll on your hobby/business.

We all hope this economy gets better and hope to see your hobby-business up and running again. Take care and I’ll keep in touch via email.

Thanks again for providing great stuff with great customer service.
By Tamim, August 25, 2009 @ 6:20 pm

Great to hear from you! Yes, I definitely remember our conversation. Apparently the rich keep saying that things are getting better…for them obviously because they’re getting the fat checks from our tax dollars (Goldman gave out another round of bonuses). Sadly, I’m not seeing anything improving for the rest of us.
By martin, August 26, 2009 @ 7:56 pm

I’m sorry you have to close your store.I bought some of my figurines with you and I really like you site.Good luck and God bless you.
By James, August 29, 2009 @ 9:43 am

Tamim,

I appreciate the hookup you gave for shipping anime figurines straight from Japan to the US. They just about match the retail prices that you can find figurines for in Akihabara. When I was stationed in Georgia, I used to order figurines from you all the time until I moved to Japan. (Notably the entire set of Angel Chromosome figurines.) I wish you good luck and if you ever reopen and I somehow end up being back in the states, I’ll definitely order from Twin Moons again. So thanks.

P.S. I appreciate the hand signed Twin Moons cards you send out with every order. It’s nice to know that someone appreciates their customers.

James
By Tamim, August 30, 2009 @ 10:55 am

James,

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your comments; I really appreciate it. The whole Twin Moons adventure was always very rewarding for me, and always a very personal experience through which I got to know a lot of wonderful people. Thank you for all of your support, an I really hope that I will be able to re-awaken this labor of love in the near future.
By Robert, August 31, 2009 @ 6:45 pm

I enjoyed doing business with you and ordered quite a few figures in days gone by. However you still owe me a figure (or refund), you charged my credit card fifty percent for when it was put on hold. I sent you an e-mail to your service address. I’d sure like to hear from you.
By Tamim, September 1, 2009 @ 7:18 am

Hi Robert,

We’re currently going through all pre-orders and prepaid/semi-prepaid orders and will be processing them in the order received. As you can imagine, we have a large volume to go through so it will be a bit of a slow process and I apologize for that. But please be assured that if you had previously made full or partial payments on a pre-order, they will either be shipped or your payment will be fully refunded if the items are not in stock. I appreciate your patience.
By Randy, September 16, 2009 @ 5:37 pm

My heart totally sunk when I read your announcement. I found your site completely by accident one day and since then you have become my one stop shop for all my Robotech/Macross collectibles.
I know how hard it is for small businesses to operate today as my grandfather is thinking of shuttering the doors of his 30 year old motorcycle business due to the economy. I will be keeping an eye on your auctions and hope all goes well. Will you be keeping anything in terms of continuing ebay sells after you close the store?
By Tamim, September 17, 2009 @ 7:46 am

Hi Randy,

Thank you for sharing your heart-felt sentiments; I really appreciate it. It’s been quite a painful experience for me as well, but sadly one that has been unavoidable. I still have connections with Toynami and most other U.S. distributors so if you need some Robotech stuff, I should be able to still get them. Just drop me a line at service at tmpanime dot com.

As for the ebay sales, I’m currently liquidating our remaining stock with weekly auctions of about 10-15 items per week. After that’s gone, I might consider going back to what I love most – Macross and Robotech – and see if I can just sell those. It would be small enough to be manageable. We’ll just have to see how things go.
By GMB, October 2, 2009 @ 10:02 pm

I stumbled across your store randomly as well like Randy. I just wanted to say I am sorry to hear about what is happening to TMPAnime. I hope everything works out for you. Whenever I ordered from you, the service was always great and the pvcs I got were top notch.

Thanks again and good luck in your endeavors.

By the way do you think you will restart TMPanime again when the economy decides to pick up again?
By Tamim, October 5, 2009 @ 8:20 am

Thank you for the kind words. I will definitely revisit the idea of starting the business again if and when this horrible economy picks up. It was always a labor of love and I would love to do it again sometime.