DLV Interviews Chris Kluwe On His New Business Venture

Earlier this week I able to talk with Vikings punter Chris Kluwe about the new gaming store he recently opened. The fact that he would take time out of his busy schedule to do this interview is incredible.

The Grand Opening of "The Mercenary Market" was just this previous weekend. If you might want to check the place out, here's their website. Mercenary-Market.com It's in his home state  of California, so if you get a chance you need to stop by there.

Enjoy Everyone!

Entrance to the Mercenary Market

Cole: Can you give us a little overview of your new store? Specialties, services, location, etcetera.

Chris Kluwe:  It’s called Mercenary Market, and it’s located in Costa Mesa, Southern California. Basically what it is, is a table top gaming, and sort of card gaming store. So, pretty much, we provide a space for people to come and play, and they can hopefully buy some stuff while they’re there.

Cole: How was the Grand Opening last weekend?

Chris Kluwe: It was good. We had a lot of people come in. The interest was very high, and I think we ended up selling about 15% of our overall stock, so we moved quite a lot of products. That was pretty cool.

Cole: Have you encountered any obstacles while opening the store? Do you expect obstacles in the future?

Chris Kluwe: There’ll always be obstacles, but I don’t think we encountered any major obstacles when opening the store. It was pretty much going through all the credits and making sure we had the right permits and everything like that. So it was relatively smooth.

Cole: Do you think it will be hard to juggle your store and your career with the Vikings?

Inside the Mercenary Market

Chris Kluwe: Well the way I have it set up now is that it’s me and a friend of mine who’s my partner. He’s running the more of the store and I’m more doing the backing. Once I’m done with football, I’ll be able to take a more hands on approach to the store. That was one of the main things; to find people I trust around the store since I’m not going to be there, and the people we have are doing a good job.

Cole: So you started this gaming store, you can even be considered a pro when it comes to video games. How did you get into gaming?

Inside the Mercenary Market

Chris Kluwe: Well, I got started when I was about five or six. My friend had gotten me a Nintendo entertainment system, so I’ve been playing video games for a very long time. I didn’t start playing tabletop games until, I think about nine years ago. My brother had been working at a store that sold some, and he brought some back. We started playing and I thought they were pretty cool, so that’s when I started collecting those. It’s always been a passion of mine playing games, and competing against other people. It’s a lot of fun.

Cole: Off the subject of your new store now. How were OTA’s? I know a lot of people want to know.

Chris Kluwe: OTA’s were good! I think everyone except for Jared showed up. I think Jared had some other stuff he had to do. It was great seeing guys out there, especially since last year we didn’t have that with the lockout. The guys were working really hard, trying to make the team. So, hopefully we’ll be able to translate all that work into wins once the season starts.

Cole: How was the release of Tripping Icarus’s new album Simulacrum?

Chris Kluwe: It was good. We haven’t released it physical yet, just digitally. But we’ve had a pretty good amount of downloads, and people have said it was good. Hopefully they’ll continue to tell their friends, and keep getting those downloads.

Cole: The NFL has released evidence that the “bounty” on Brett Favre was $35,000, not $10,000. What are your thoughts on this?

Chris Kluwe: This is the part where the NFL has to show evidence to prove there was a “bounty” program system going on. I think as they show more, and more stuff, it’ll probably make the evidence clearer, and clearer. It’s kind of sad that something like that was in place. We’ll just have to wait and see how it ticks down over the next couple weeks.