COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Our new Downtown Pittsburgh headquarters will come with a retail component, as well, and we're off to a soaring start on the recruiting front: We've already landed photographer Dave DiCello, artist Cody Sabol and, of course, our own staff cartoonist, Rob Ullman.
And we're still searching for more.
What we're hoping to offer visitors to our HQ is a world-class collection of Pittsburgh sports memorabilia and other merchandise from the region's premier talents. A one-stop shop. A little bit of everything and a ton of quality within it. And we're wide open to suggestions as to what, specifically, that might entail.
It'll be a retail collective, as the terminology goes. And for anyone unfamiliar with that, it means we function as the storefront, and a set number of independent merchants manage their own space within the place, ensuring the greatest understanding and awareness of the products that might be of peak interest. They avoid rent and overhead, and we avoid the procurement/production of goods while keeping a percentage of sales, so it's super-low on risk.
We were inspired by our now-next-door-neighbors, the new Ensemble On Fifth retail collective that's home to roughly 15 independent vendors -- from an initial list of applications topping 200! -- and that's already doing quite well in their first couple months of operation.
We'll likely wind up with a smaller number, at least at the outset, to try to keep things simple and to help ensure the success of those who launch along with us. But that said, we have zero clue how this will grow and how we'll react to that. If, for example, a vendor offers only one product -- we already have one such possibility -- they obviously wouldn't consume as much space.
If you feel you're qualified to be part of this, and you share our passion for this project, reach out to Dali directly: Dali@DKPittsburghSports.com
(Warning: She's a much tougher sell than I am! I'd say yes to everyone!)
Eager to really get this component rolling!
CONSTRUCTION UPDATE
Most of the building work's come in the form of meetings, planning and more meetings and planning over the past week:
• We believe we've settled on a sign that'll look a lot like the initial illustration we put out here utilizing our horizontal logo. It'll be front-lit with a steel exoskeleton around each letter. (Which is amazing.) And because promoting the business can occur 24/7, that sign will be visible at all hours to traffic on Fifth Avenue.
• We've agreed that we'll aim for a clean ceiling that affords the best sense of space and lighting. The square footage of the place isn't huge -- we wanted small -- but this can make a big difference in the feel.
• What's everyone think of having a 3D version of our staff map in there? You know, the thing on What's Brewing that shows where our reporters currently are on assignment? We'd just slide the toons around each day.
• Lettering I've scripted for the left window out front:
Home to our city’s
PIONEERING
sports media company!
+
GIFTS • SOUVENIRS
BOOKS • APPAREL
ART • PHOTOGRAPHY
What, if anything, am I missing here?
THE BRICK WALL
We're still not close on particulars, but we're looking hard into offering readers a chance to partake in the building of one full wall in the place. Portrayed in the form of -- what else? -- bricks, they'd be available in various sizes at various prices, and the buyer would get a replica of that brick for themselves.
Stay tuned.
UPCOMING EDITORIAL TRAVEL
We go where the stories are:
• Taylor Haase will fly out to cover the NHL All-Star Game, Feb. 5 in Las Vegas.
• Dale's flying to college football's Senior Bowl, Feb. 5 in Mobile, Ala., to get a firsthand look at a sizable portion of the next NFL Draft class.
• Alex Stumpf had expected to be back in Bradenton, Fla., this month for another rookie camp, but the Pirates pushed that back out of COVID concerns.
WEEKLY APP TIPS
Ways to make the app experience even better:
• I'm seriously considering replacing the bottom right button on the app with a direct route to our burgeoning podcasts. The button now takes readers to our live Twitter feed, which will move to the horizontal blue bar across the home page. Thoughts?
• At readers' request, thanks to Adam Bertram and our BoomPress developers, when you navigate back on the app or site, you'll be returned to the same spot on that page. Rather than have to scroll all the way down again.
• You can add bold-face and italics in your comments. Use whatever keyboard combination you normally would to generate those. On Apple, for example, it's CMD+B for bold, CMD+I for italic.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page views for the past week were 478,892. Our most-read original piece was my column from Kansas City on the Steelers' playoff loss, at 19,741. Broken down by team, articles on the Steelers brought 31.1% of our traffic, the Penguins 18.6%, the Pirates 7.4%, Pitt 1.63% and Penn State 1.62%.
• Our podcast downloads for the past week were yet another record 288,952. If it seems like every week's another record, that's because it is. Crazy.
• Our YouTube video views for the past week were 170,348.
• We're at 43,250 followers on Twitter, 37,552 on Facebook, 14,581 on Instagram, 10,556 on YouTube. These figures are just for our official company accounts on each of those platforms, not including any of our individual accounts.
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Anything you need, including lost/forgotten passwords, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
• Random trivia fun, to be read in an Alex Trebek voice: We haven't had an in-person subscriber meetup on the road in a couple years because of protocol, and that applied here in Columbus last night, as well. But going back to when we were doing them ... name the city where we had our largest gathering in a non-game setting, as well as the city where we had our largest gathering in a game setting. (They aren't the same, and neither is Columbus.)