We were lucky to catch up with Meagan Frey recently and have shared our conversation below.

Meagan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?

Quality is so important to our business. It all starts with a vision of how we want things to work and feel. That vision has to be carried out by an excellent staff. We developed our vision by visiting hundreds of shops — both inside and outside our industry — and noticing what worked and what didn’t. What experiences made us feel good? The best stores were the ones that made us feel a little special and happy to be a customer. There are hundreds of tiny details that make that happen. You can’t feel special in a place that doesn’t care about quality.

A high-quality business has to have a high-quality team. Our people must care about others, be passionate and creative with their work, and be reliable and self-motivated. These are qualities that you cannot train; the person has to care about the impact they make on others. That said, perfection isn’t real. When we fall short or make a mistake, it’s the desire to improve and not let anything fall between the cracks that keeps things running smoothly. Communication, trust, and a creative spark are big things we look for and try to cultivate in our team.

Having a high-quality business is important to us because we want to leave a positive impact on our community and our city (which was just listed at one of the 50 best cities in America by Money Magazine). One of the reasons people love Chattanooga so much is because of its unique businesses run by passionate people.

Some of the controls we’ve put in place include going the extra mile to maintain a high-quality product and experience. We spend extra on our bags, protective material for our comics books, artwork, signage, cleanliness. Literally everything. We are a unique industry in the sheer number of new products made available to our customers weekly. We juggle thousands of items and orders every single week, but our systems and high standards ensure our customers only see the polished end result. Sometimes, almost always, this means we have to spend more money than our competitors, but we think it’s worth it to give our customers an experience that will leave them feeling good. Over the years, earnings our customers’ trust has been its own reward.

Our advice to businesses trying to maintain quality while also growing is that you have to stay hands-on. If you have a strong vision, you have to communicate it to your staff and live as an example. Otherwise, your vision will quickly splinter. Start off on the right foot and stay there.

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

My partner and I are the owners of Infinity Flux, a comic book, games, and pop culture shop in Chattanooga, TN. We sell brand new items as well as rare, vintage, and hard-to-find treasures and literal pieces of history. We wanted to create a fun and memorable shop where there’s always something new to see.

Our shop is over 7,000 square feet of curated products, including collectible comics, vintage video games, action figures, card games, manga, and so much more. Much of this (and more soon) is available on our website. We also provide comic book subscriptions services, online and in-store. In store, we have an entire room dedicated to roleplaying games, designed to feel like a medieval tavern. We are currently building a space that will be a dedicated to books and items for kids. We are constantly trying to find new products that we’re excited about. We want our customers to be cured of boredom, delighted by a fun new find, and their nostalgia trigged every time they step through our doors. We are the largest store of our kind in Chattanooga, TN and we are completely locally owned and operated.

What sets us apart is our amazing staff, our dedication to providing a high-quality experience, and how much we truly love our customers. Many of our customers visit us weekly, and we’ve developed wonderful and rewarding relationships over the years. We’re real people just trying to do the best job we can every day.

Personally, I am most proud of how much we’ve been able to grow and fulfill our vision and dreams throughout the years. We started out as one shop in a plaza of 5 businesses. In ten years, we have been able to purchase that building and create one giant store.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We never forget that people are at the core of what we do, and we treat everyone with a certain degree of respect and friendliness. Reputation is all about the “boring” stuff that builds over time:

– Treating people fairly and not as a means to an end
– Consistency. People know what to expect from us and they can trust we will do what we say we will
– Communication. We have strict standards on how fast we reply to emails, messages, comments, etc.
– Transparency. We purchase collectibles from individuals, and we are always upfront about the value
– Proactivity. We try to predict what our customers need before they even have to ask.

Do that every day for years and years and you’ll probably have a good reputation, which is a huge source of pride and something that can’t be bought.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Jason and I met in college at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Jason founded the film club at UTC. He and I quickly hit it off after a showing of Pink Floyd: The Wall We’ve been watching movies together for 13 years and building this business now for 10 years. A lot of people say they couldn’t imagine working with their husband or significant other, but I don’t think either of us could stand to do it any other way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://infinityflux.net/
• Instagram: infinityflux
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InfinityFluxChattanooga
• Twitter: infinity_flux
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@InfinityFluxComics