There’s been some changes around Microcosm HQ lately, both in the physical sense (our little Jeff is growing up so fast!) and within the organization. After a couple weeks, a thousand screws, gallons of iced tea, and (quite literally) tons of books, the store has gone through a bit of a remodel. It’s still the Microcosm you remember, but we are now stocked with so much good stuff that we had to lift our desks off the ground to make room for it all. Come check it out and browse around! And don’t worry, that’s not the voice of God when you walk in, it’s just us from our new lofts.
Our Big News is that as of August 1, Microcosm split into two distinct operations in two different states. Microcosm Publishing still maintains the store you know (and hopefully love) at 636 SE 11th Ave in Portland and will continue to publish books and bookettes for years to come, but our distribution brethren are now their own separate organization, distributing the same thousands of zines, books, stickers, patches, and more that you know (and hopefully also love). We’ve changed our management structure to the same traditional model we used from 1996-2005 that allows staff to focus on their individual job duties rather than everyone having to learn to manage an organization and needing decisions to be processed through eleven co-workers.
We think this new transition will help each group to work closer on what we’re each good at (publishing or distributing) without having to constantly focus on the big picture and organize hours long meetings with each other inter-state (Have you ever had a seven person, four hour meeting on Skype? We don’t recommend it.). After seventeen years, we still do this because we love it, so look for dozens of new titles coming out in the coming months and years—including the long awaited Make It Last! Check out the photos of our recently re-engineered store/office/warehouse.
