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My name is Matthew Amadeus Devereux. I have a degree in Modern History from St.Anne's college, Oxford University, in 1999. I am based in Woking in Surrey, UK. You can contact me at devereux5000@gmail.com or at 07974971737 (UK) or +44 7974971737 (international). Or come and connect at the PAWN Facebook profile. Please see my blog "Chess Fantasia: 1,001 love letters to the game" which is the foundation for my forthcoming book about chess and, specifically, its importance in education.
I have several plans for shops that I want to create in the long-term. My first shop is provisionally called "Pawn" and is dedicated to chess (to feature a "Chess Nuts" section, which is named after Chestnuts, the house in Guildford in Surrey where Lewis Carroll, the writer of "Alice in Wonderland", lived, and the town in which I went to secondary school before going to Oxford) as well as to all sorts of games including boardgames in a second section of the shop. I remember the 1980s when I was a small boy which were a golden age of imaginative and innovative boardgames. I would like to get this up and running as soon as possible and would like to do it in a shop that is currently empty and get people employed as quickly as possible. Surrey is not too bad for this but we have seen a recent plague of empty shops in town centres and they need filling with bright, vibrant, imaginative and independent shops that can provide us with great products and first-class employment. The picture above right is a picture of an empty shop (a former Chinese restaurant) in Chertsey Road, Woking, Surrey, which I took recently and quickly amended in mspaint with an image by John Tenniel, who illustrated Carroll's "Alice" books, at the bottom right.
"DON'T YAWN. VISIT PAWN."
"SKIP MOWING THE LAWN. COME AND HAVE A COFFEE AT PAWN."
"EVENING OR MORN, PLAY CHESS WITH US AT PAWN."
Beyond that, one of my basic funding proposals for my first shop is the offer of stock certificates for sale. These start at £1.
My plan is that one year after the purchase of the stock they can be sold back by the person who buys the stock for a minimum of the price that was the original purchase price. The minimum figure will include the annual percentage inflation rate. So, for example, if inflation is 5% in the year, then an initial £10 stock certificate can be sold back for £10.50 at the end of that year as an absolute minimum so that the person who has bought stock has not lost anything. I am open to sales of stock worldwide so would try to match the stock at the annual resale to the inflation rate of the country of the person buying it. So for example if you are in a country whose inflation rate is 30% that year then I would try to get you the initial investment back with 30% added on as a basic minimum after one year.
I obviously aim for the shop to be a commercial success and so I am hoping to be able to provide a proper dividend over the course of the first year to people investing in stock certificates. I am aiming at a 50% increase after one year so that if somebody buys an initial £10 stock certificate they can then sell it back for £15 after one year. That may prove to be far too optimistic but that is the aim and I want people who take the trouble to invest to be rewarded for their contributions.
Also, I want people who buy stock certficates to have democratic rights over aspects of how the shop is run. So, for example, every time we make decisions over changes of layout, design or the stock we have in the shop, or make decisions over whether to expand and where to expand to, I would like the people who have bought stock initially to be able to vote on what they think should happen and for their views to be incorporated into the decision-making process.
I have designed the first stock certificate tonight with pen and ink and did it quickly in thirty minutes. It is below. Thank you for reading and please get in touch if you would like to invest. It will be great to hear from you. No matter how big or small the initial investment, I look forward to receiving it and I look forward to seeing you in the shop. When you buy stock, whether for £1 or £100,000, you will be sent a copy of the certificate below with the amount you have invested written on. I would have liked to make it more beautiful but it was hand-drawn quickly as I am keen to get the show on the road as soon as possible. Later versions of the stock will hopefully be produced by specially commissioned artists who are paid properly for their work and their talent. Hopefully if PAWN proves a success I can then set up other shops dedicated to other fields such as jazz, poetry and art. But at this stage progress needs to be made one step at a time. Obviously if Goldie Hawn is reading this and she wants to star in the low-budget adverts for the shop in local cinemas, she is extremely welcome as the tagline "Shop in Pawn...says Goldie Hawn" is a winner.
7th October 2010
Many thanks to ROYE BURGESS in Australia for sending me the following picture of chess on the streets of Woking that he created. It's fabulous!
Roye is the chess convenor and coach at Hume City Council Libraries. He was nominated for the Pride of Australia Medal 2010 Community Spirit for his work in bringing chess into his community. He can be located at Facebook here.
