Names: Glenn Purvis and Kate Diamond

Business name: Time Invaders

Opening hours: Monday to Wednesday and Friday to Sunday from 10am until 5pm. Closed on Thursdays.

Address: 23 Cross St, Oswestry, SY11 2NF

When did you open your business and why?

In Oswestry, we opened in January last year. We wanted a bigger premises than we had in Shrewsbury, and we came to Oswestry because we did a Comic Con here. We really liked the atmosphere here.

We had a small shop in Wem before that in 2015, and then we expanded into Shrewsbury in 2016, before wanting to expand again – it’s just a growing family business.

We got into comic books and gaming by accident a little bit. While I was off work for a year, Glenn filled part of the shop with comic books, and I didn’t know about it until I came back to work. By that time he had filled the whole shop with it. I liked it and it took off from there really – people were really pleased we were doing a hands-on shop.

Why in this location?

We WANTED to expand and wanted a café which we’ve now got. We wanted games rooms as well which we’ve also got now, and just wanted to expand the range of what we were doing.

A lot of our customers from Shrewsbury still come to Oswestry to our shop and they all really like it here.

Tell us about your business

We’re the only comic shop on the high street within quite a lot of miles. I think Wrexham had one and Market Drayton, but that’s about it really.

We specialise in back-issues, so it’s very hard to get them in shops now without paying ridiculous prices. We sell and trade comics right back to the 18th Century right through to modern ones.

We had an influx at the end of the last couple of lockdowns because people were clearing their houses out and coming across old ones.

We don’t just do comics and annuals, we do Games Workshop now as well. We’re official stockers of Games Workshop.

We have a games rooms here as we mentioned – we don’t just have one, we have several, and we’re going to have an arcade room as well.

We get a lot of disabled visitors here and also lots of visits from schoolchildren. We try to help out schools who want to loan comic books for a comic library there for the day or a short while.

We’ve been very lucky with our landlord during the period of Covid-19, and he appreciates that we’ve been shut and that has helped us.

We’ve set up a café which is also dog-friendly.

While we have been closed for lockdown, on some occasions we have been able to drop off boxes of comics for some of our customers who need them.

What is your proudest moment?

The day we opened was nice because we had some Comic Con people come down too. We’ve now got an official sign on the front of the shop with our name on it which is nice.

I think more than anything, having the place open and seeing people’s faces light up when they come in – they can come here and forget their worries.

We have had people in here for hours and hours at a time, and that’s what encouraged us to incorporate a café.

I think also, getting all the work done to open the shop on time was a big achievement!

Any strange requests?

Lots! People have asked us if we sell everything from milk to tea towels and rubbers to bleach.