Retro Reset – the store that delivers a dose of nostalgia with a modern flair

By Matthew Young, RealWV

MT. HOPE, W.Va. – “We strive to link the collectors, not only with the items that they’re looking for, but with the nostalgia that’s attached to it. That’s what we base the whole store around.”

That’s what co-owner Shannon Ingram of Retro Reset said while speaking with RealWV on Tuesday. Located in the Crossroads Mall in Mt. Hope, Retro Reset is filled to the brim with both vintage and modern toys, video games, sports and Pokemon cards, t-shirts, and comic books. 

What began for Shannon and his partner, Clay Williamson, as two separate booths in an antique mall has grown to become one of the largest and most distinctive stores on the east coast. 

After an injury ended his military career, the humblest of seeds started to grow. Shannon began acquiring damaged Nintendo game systems to repair and resell. 

“Clay was a mutual friend, and he was doing the same type of thing, Shannon said. “We would tease each other because we realized we were competitors, and it became a lot easier to just team up.”

“Once we did, things got really good,” Shannon added.

The pair opened their first store in Oak Hill, before moving to the Crossroads Mall, where they have been for the last five years. As collectors themselves, the store also now doubles as a support-mechanism for the duo’s hobby.

“I collect video games and Hot Wheels,” Shannon said. “I probably have one of the largest Hot Wheels collections in the southern part of the state.”

“Clay tends to collect something for a while, then get tired of it and move on to something else,” Shannon added with a laugh. “I stay a little more dedicated.”

According to Shannon, the majority of Retro Reset’s stock comes from private collections, as manufacturer’s often require purchase quantities beyond the means of small businesses. 

“It’s almost impossible (to deal direct with manufacturers),” Shannon told us. “To get an account with any of these big manufacturers, the bare minimum is 100,000 (pieces) per year they want you to buy from them. One of my Hot Wheels vendors, to purchase direct from the manufacturer, they want me to buy a quarter-million (pieces) a year off of them. The little guys can’t do it.”

“Almost everything you see in here is us finding personal collections, and just doing our best to make good offers and buy,” Shannon noted. 

Once sorted – always cleaned and sometimes repaired – the collections purchased by Retro Reset become their inventory. And with everything from vintage He-Man and G.I. Joe, to Funko Pops and autographed memorabilia, it is indeed a vast and varied offering of merchandise.

The best way to find collections to add to their inventory, Shannon says, is to visit conventions. And just this past Monday, Retro Reset bolstered their inventory by purchasing a $14,000 video game collection, which, according to Shannon, included “a little bit of everything.”

“There’s Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Game Cube, Sega Genesis, some Sega Saturn – it’s all there,” Shannon said.

And while conventions are a year-round affair, bringing celebrities to the shop for autograph signings, Shannon says, have been relegated to the warmer months. 

“We’ve stopped doing them in the winter,” Shannon said. “We spend money for advertising – flyers, prints. Then the weather takes a turn and it gets cancelled. It’s just too expensive. So about April we’ll start back up.”

Though sometimes precarious, Shannon noted that autograph signings do bring people to the store. 

“It gets eyes on the store, I think that’s the biggest bonus,” Shannon said. “It’s expensive to bring the celebrities in. We usually have them for three hours. Your first two hours you’re trying to get your money back that you spent to get them here, and that last hour you make a little bit of profit.”

For most of January, the team at Retro Reset has been hard at work upgrading the store’s card shop. Now located in the front of the store, the card shop features everything from hard-to-find Pokemon cards, to sealed pack-boxes, to jerseys. But for as impressive as the enhanced and relocated card shop is, it is not the only upgrade Shannon and Clay have in store for their customers.

“We have one more future upgrade coming – we’re going to open a vintage clothing section,” Shannon said. “It’s going to be all the brands from the 80’s and 90’s that you can’t find anymore. That’s going to be tough to source too, but we think we can do it.”

In a store that provides unlimited nostalgia, while simultaneously offering shoppers the newest products for their collections, it’s nearly impossible to say what Retro Reset’s biggest draw is. However, as there is no real comparison, it just may be Retro Reset’s uniqueness that is its greatest accomplishment. 

“Sometimes I think we take it a little bit for granted,” Shannon said. “I’ve had people come in from California and Florida – bigger states all over the nation. And they’ll be like, ‘Wow, we don’t have anything like this where we’re from.’”

“I think that’s what I’m most proud of,” Shannon added. “We have built something pretty unique.”

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