We recently connected with Moses Gibson and have shared our conversation below.

Moses, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

The idea to own a horror shop was something we threw around since early on. In the beginning we started with our horror brand known as The Cryptic Closet in 2016. After a few years of operating we had met many other talented artists and brands within the horror community. Through the relationships with these different artists and brands we were able to pool together our network of vendors to throw together a 3 day horror pop up shop in 2019 called The Horror House (the name definitely stuck). The idea for the pop up was to showcase a curation of some of the best horror vendors that you would typically see at a horror convention or online. We also had the release of our first issue of our comic book, Tales From the Cryptic Closet that we released through Guerrilla Publishing. The pop up also included a live podcast from PWTCast, as well as a screening of the film Powerbomb, a Mortal Kombat 11 arcade tournament hosted by The Galloping Ghost Arcade, and more. The pop up served as a test market for the concept of having a large variety of unique horror merchandise here in Chicago. The pop up was successful enough for us to plan on running the pop up annually for the next few years before trying to look into getting a brick and mortar shop. Due to the pandemic, we weren’t able to host any other pop ups, but ended up taking the leap into opening the The Horror House shop in 2022 given how confident we were in our concept for the shop. Today many of the vendors that participated in the pop up now have inventory sold here at the shop now, and without building good relationships with these artists, the concept for the pop up, let alone the actual shop now would not be possible.

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

My name is Moses F. Gibson, and I am one of the Co-Owners of The Horror House Shop located at 2911 W. Belmont Ave in Chicago, IL. The Horror House is a collection of some of the best horror merchandise available, from figures and collectibles, to apparel, movies, masks, prints, paintings, and more! We work with many different small businesses and independent artists to stock our shop with unique horror merch you won’t find at other stores. We initially got into the horror industry back in 2016 when my brother Vinny Malave and I started our horror clothing brand known as The Cryptic Closet. The first convention we ever vended at was Flashback Weekend, and from there we began to travel to different conventions and trade shows to promote our online shop. Over time we grew and got to meet and develop great relationships with a lot of other brands and artists in the horror industry. Through these relationships, we were able to network with many of these companies in order to put together our own pop-up shop of the same name, The Horror House in October of 2019. The 3 day pop-up was held from the 11th- 13th in Chicago’s South Loop at one of the storefront spaces in the Roosevelt Collection. The pop up shop was the direct pre-cursor to the actual brick and mortar location we operate now, as it served as a way to test how big the local market for horror was. Since there were no other shops within the city solely focused on horror, we saw there was an opportunity to fulfill that gap in the local market. One of the best parts about our shop is the fact that we are located within the Avondale neighborhood, which is known for having a slew of other unique shops within a similar niche such as the metal Bar and Grill Kuma’s Corner, Bucket-o-Blood Booke & Records, DMen Tap, The Alley, The Brewed Coffee Shop, Meteor Gem, and more! We have even started a local initiative across some of the businesses that we call Odd in Avondale that allows us to all collaborate and cross promote each other. It’s been so great to see just how strong the local community is and we’re proud to be a part of it.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

The source of the start-up capital we needed to raise was split between what we raised from our Kickstarter and the rest was all out of pocket on our end. Between myself, Vinny, and Aaron we were able to barely put together everything we needed to get to opening day. Many of the vendors and artists we work with allowed us to sell the first batch of inventory on consignment to generate some initial income. It alleviated the pressure of having to pay for our starting inventory beforehand. We even sold a few personal items to keep the store stocked in the first couple of weeks until we had enough inventory to completely fill the store. We’re extremely grateful for the support of our friends, family, and the horror community as a whole. Without them we wouldn’t have been able to fund opening the shop.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

We typically manufacture our own T-shirts for The Cryptic Closet and Horror House exclusive as designs. As part of the start up for the shop, we financed getting a Brother DTG printer to be able to handle our own production. It makes it possible for us to be able to quickly produce shirts on demand as opposed to having to wait on another company to print the shirts. Outside of being able to print our own shirts, another item that’s become fairly popular that we produce in house is our fanny pack known as the “Fanny Devito.” My brother Vinny came up with the idea to release a Danny Devito fanny pack through The Cryptic Closet back in 2019 and it grew in popularity in 2020 after going viral for a bit online. We press the face of each of the fanny packs ourselves, and it’s still one of the top sellings items that we produce in house. We plan on releasing some new fanny pack variants this year as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thehorrorhouseshop.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/thehorrorhouseshop?igshid=NmE0MzVhZDY=
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theHorrorhouseshop?mibextid=ZbWKwL
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/horrorhousellc?t=gRotdRHiiFNn9KcbBqXVaA&s=09
• Other: www.thecrypticcloset.com

Image Credits
Images by Bury Me in Gold Media