After 10 years of running a small town retail shop, we've learned a thing or two about compromise. "Why 'The Junkyard'?" we still get that question mostly every week from someone bold enough to ask us while we are printing their shirt (it's better than the question, "are you going to put that on straight"...that's a favorite of ours).
So anyway, why The Junkyard. Well, when we first opened we had a very large space to fill and pretty much no idea where we were going to get all the shelves and display cases that cost lots of money. So we ran through a bunch of names (none of which I recall now) and we decided to go with The Junkyard because we could decorate the HUGE space with makeshift shelving with cardboard barrels and plywood, hubcaps could adorn the walls and a makeshift DJ booth took up a good amount of space. And we were EXACTLY who we wanted to be...a cutting edge, cool t-shirt shop that all the "cool kids" would shop at. And they did.
As time went on, the local spiritwear store in town decided to close and we thought "do we want to be a spiritwear store?" After some thought, we said "Sure, why not." And at that same time we started to screenprint and also focus on customizing shirts while customers waited. We began to become something entirely different but our name was already out there and people were starting to come from other cities to have us make custom shirts. I can't say we didn't think about changing our name, because we did, but it just didn't make sense. And though sometimes our new look and what we carry doesn't really fit into the Junkyard theme, too many memories and brand recognition are wrapped up in that silly name we conjured up nearly 10 years ago this Fall.
