OPINION: Grainger than fiction

When I returned to MCV in November 2008, Grainger Games was an indie upstart with a storecount just over 10. Today it has at 49 High Street outlets. Last year alone, it added 23 stores.

The team now move at such a clip that in the last two weeks they oversaw the opening of four new outlets.
These are phenomenal numbers.

At a time when Grainger’s nearest and only rival is closing stores, you have to stop and ask: how do they do it?

Cynics have previously tried to downplay the North Stars’ work as flash-in-the-pan. Or worse, a bit dodgy.

But just because it started as a little market stall in 1997 doesn’t mean you write it off. As it turns out in our chat with chairman Jonathan Fellows, the secret is simple: hard work.

Sure, by joking that the team is too easily written off as ‘daft Geordies’ Fellows may have blown their cover.

But it won’t have diminished the potency of what is fast becoming the hot new company to work for in games retail.