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| "Greetings and a most sincere thank you to all of our customers for the past eleven years of business. VideoGameCentral.com is still committed to growing it's reputation with you by bringing the most innovative and hard to find gaming products first to market. We look forward to maintaining the trust and supporting the real engine behind the success of VideoGameCentral, our customers." Here is a brief history of a unique store in NYC by it's founder and owner, Dominick Scarpitta. The concept of the brick and mortar store named VideoGameCentral.com (as it reads on it's sign) was created by myself in May, 1998 after I found myself leaving my past employment at another toy/gaming business to which I had worked since 1986. I had a load of experience and contacts from my eleven years, a small amount of money saved and passion to be an entrepreneur. I knew the internet age was still only in it's infancy, getting stronger and would one day be the major location consumers purchased their gaming products. So I came up, at that time, with the first store that I know of to actually display it's full dot com name in the title sign. The store named VideoGameCentral.com, brightly lit in a blue channel lettered sign (corporate name:Video Game Central Inc) officially opened June 12th, 1998 in Howard Beach, NY. After the usual hardships of a new business getting off the ground and a rough first few months, I took a gamble by pre-booking 1000pc of Toger's Furby toy after I felt strongly about their potential at the 1998 NYC Toy Fair. I borrowed and scrimped to pay for this inventory, gambling my future on my intuition as a seasoned buyer. Well, everyone knows what happened with Furbies the holiday of 1998. VideoGameCentral.com had them and everyone in NY that wanted one knew our name. By the holidays of 1998 we quickly became considered one of the hottest store's in Queens, NY. And the customers came. A customer that I'll always remember, once said back then that she brings her child to VideoGameCentral just so he can stand there and take in the atmosphere. Whether it was our great knowledgeable staff, our huge selection, Furbys or Pokemon, people from all over NY were coming to see what the first known fusion of a video game store and toy store was all about. The next year, 1999, brought Pokemon to the headlines. I saw the kids desire to play this game and quickly fashioned colorful battle tables as so they could battle in-store. The area loved it and soon we were overwhelmed with people waiting for battle tables. Then once again we put our thinking caps on and were to my knowledge the first store to start the trading of Pokemon cards based on value. Again, we became widely known in the NY area for our assertive approach to the toy and gaming market. Later in 1999 we also became popular regionly when we ran low budget but humorous television spots in the NYC area in addition to having bi-monthly Official WWE Wrestling Superstars visit for autograph signings. "VGC" as it was affectionately named by it's patrons was the trendy place to get the hardest to find toys, cards and games. Business went on successfully for the next few years while I used my domain name, VideoGameCentral.com primarily as a bulletin board and message board to promote my local store bearing the same name. I always wanted and attempted to get our e-commerce going through our site as my original plan entailed but had little knowledge. Also due to business being good, it kept those plans on the back burner for a while. Finally, in 2003 VideoGameCentral.com went fully online with our e-commerce site. We finally completed the original business plan I set forth back in 1998. Since then we have become one of the more popular independent retailers online of gaming products due to the hard work of our team at VideoGameCentral. We still have a long way to achieve our new goals so visit us often here or come by our store in NY. I would like to say that I especially appreciate all the hard work that our team has contributed in light of recent events. We hope we can exude some of the postive energy that has ignited in us due to the army of past and present contacts and acquaintances that have helped us all while we worked through a malicious "virus" that seems to of corrupted our original database. While we hope to retrieve that data in the near future we appreciate all the effort from our friends that have volunteered and feel positive that we have grown as a company and have stronger bonds as a team. Thanks for reading,
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