We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jason Hough. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jason below.

Alright, Jason thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your business and how did you resolve those issues?

My wife Heather and I had an idea to take our collection of over 25 years (of celebrity autographs, artwork, and film/television memorabilia) and build a place where others can enjoy it as much as we do. At the time we were living in Huntsville Alabama and realized that Huntsville, a place of rocket scientists and tech companies, may not be the best place for a museum like this or the correct demographic of people that would appreciate it. So we decided to uproot and move 15 hours away to Austin Texas, but in order to make this expensive move we had to take out all of our savings and even my retirement accounts, but felt that in order to make our dream a reality some eggs had to be broken.

We found that was the least of the problems that we would have to face. It started out very difficult to find a piece of property to open the museum (even though we had some wonderful items to display and thought that Austin was the perfect place and had the people who would appreciate it) we were very surprised to hear that a place like Austin and the real estate representatives here did not understand our concept, it was both disheartening and stressful being Austin’s motto has always been “Keep Austin Weird”, and our idea was as weird as it gets, with our collection of original Muppet comic strips, artwork, and screen used costumes and props that we were planning to display.

After six months of fighting with a real-estate broker to find a location to open our museum we had to swap brokers, to someone that may be able to help us, who after a few weeks, the new broker, found us some properties to look at and eventually closed on a building. Unfortunately, the building ended up not being in the most ideal location and we now face the problem of getting people into the museum that we fought so strongly to open in the first place, as the only property that would take a chance on us is in a Technology center in North Austin that as we found out the hard way is impossible to get customers to, no matter what we do or try (including an expensive TV ad, multiple news stories and articles written, became members of the Austin Museum Partnership, and host amazing celebrity autograph singing events, bringing in top named acting talent and artists) we are still unable to get adequate customers to pay the bills. It just seems as though we have one mountain to climb to find another larger one right behind it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We are a tour led pop culture and multi-fandom museum.

We have been asked, what are some of the things you will see or experience during a visit to our museum? You will see tv and film memorabilia, original Jim Henson’s Muppets newspaper comic strips and the recently restored puppets created by the Jim Henson company for Guy Gilchrist’s Tiny Dinos children’s book characters (these are the only two puppets in existence created for a television series pitch back in 1987), and TABLE SIZE original children’s book artwork.

We have original comic book art and celebrity autographs from well known acting talent in tv shows and movies. Featured items from Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, DC, the CW, SyFy, Horror, First Edition Books, Collectible Toys, glasses, oddities, music and art, anime and sports memorabilia.

You can see screen used items from The Chronicles of Riddick (starring Vin Diesel and Karl Urban) if you are not familiar with Karl Urban he played Bones in the most recent Star Trek films and Billy Butcher in The Boys. We also have Corin Nemec’s (The Stand, Supernatural, Star Gate, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose) screen worn mask and sweater from one of his most recent films; Half Dead Fred.

Our passion is to tell the stories and history behind each item in our collection. If you are interested in art, art history, what goes into making a tv show or movie, bring your questions we are happy to answer them. The owners of the museum have experience working in the film and entertainment industries and have a lot of knowledge to share.

There is something for everyone to enjoy! We focus on the idea that every piece has a story and we are here to tell those stories! Our goal is to bring back the memories of your childhood and share those memories with the next generation!

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

In October of this year we almost lost the museum, being we have had, and still have, the problem of getting people to come into the museum on a regular basis we almost did not make rent; however, we had some people that we actually just met a few months prior that came together and helped us out to keep the museum open when the people that we thought were our friends for years did not or would not come through for us.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We have been in the comic con circuit for over 22 years, to include our entire family. Our daughters as well as ourselves have been very well known by acting talent, con promoters, and attendees being that we attend conventions at a minimum of 2 to 3 times a month. In addition to that I am also a talent manager and have met and are friends with a number of actors and artists in the industry who have been a huge help, especially being willing to help us by doing celebrity meet and greets and autograph signings at our museum. People have asked us how a new museum can get talent like we do and it’s because of my friends in the industry otherwise we wouldn’t have the events that we do.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.galaxyartentgal.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/galaxyartentgal/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/galaxyartentgal
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/galaxyartentgal

Image Credits
Heather Hough