A warm Hello to everyone and thank you for taking your time
reading our first article. This first post provides an introduction to who we
are and what we do, and I spare you the typical marketing phrases.
Lion Chess Limited is an online retailer of quality chess
products, located in the beautiful seaside town of Largs in Scotland (see image). Lion
Chess was founded in 2013 by Guenther Wurmbauer (that’s me) a chess enthusiast
for many years – albeit his chess skills should be better by now but they are
slowly improving. Although we need to make money in order to survive, we are
not selling you chess products for the sake of selling you something but we
value high quality and fine craftsmanship to satisfy your expectations of what
a good chess set should be like. Holding a finely crafted knight from a luxury
chess set in your hands is a rewarding experience and reminds you of why you
are running a chess retail business, which is not the easiest business to run.
So what makes me to start yet another chess supply business
in what seems to be a saturated market? Some years ago, I obtained permission
from my wife to buy a luxury chess board from the outlet section of a chess
shop (since it is now a competitor I’m sure you understand why I can’t tell you
its name). Then I only missed luxury pieces to fit this beautifully crafted
board, even though it had some minor defects – as you would expect from an
outlet item. Since my wife wouldn’t allow me to start collecting luxury
chessmen, one way out of my misery was to start my own chess business. And so
it was done. (And an other part of me was probably jealous of seeing the fun my
wife had running her own business while I had to leave going to work each day).
Now I have plenty of chess pieces to admire, yet no high-end ones to play with
as they are up for sale…
Are we any good you may ask? It’s a fair question to ask
about every newly established business. And it’s a question we invite you to
answer yourself. What can be said however is that we don’t claim to have
reached perfection but we work hard towards this unreachable goal. As the
saying goes: The journey is the reward. Things can go wrong and they do; not
everything is our fault but we believe it shouldn’t be you who has to deal with
any issues. Whether the courier damages your newly acquired chess set or the
postal service is losing your parcel you long for – we will deal with it since
we want you to enjoy chess and our products. After all, life is hard enough
already.
Even though it’s nice to see money trickling into your bank
account (bills need to be paid at the end of the day), it’s your positive
reviews and (constructive) feedback which keeps us going each day. It always
makes our day to hear of another happy customer and that makes us work even
harder. We are looking forward welcoming you on our site and hope you enjoy it.
Thank you for reading.
Happy Chess,
Guenther
