About us
Meet the Chop Shop Family!
April
Roles: New item Listings, Photography, Loose item identification and replenishment
Hi! I'm April and my husband Travis and I are the proprietors of the Chibi Chop Shop. Like you, I'm an otaku, and extremely passionate about manga, anime, and moe.
After years of drooling over anime figures, particularly nendoroids, I began collecting them in 2017. I've been interested in toy photography from a young age but always found myself frustrated by the perpetually happy face on many of the dolls I photographed. I was attracted to nendoroids for their versatility and the fact that like me their face could display a variety of feelings including sad, scared, annoyed, tired, smug, or surprised.
I expected that nendoroid photography would become one of my main hobbies, but shortly after starting my collection I discovered I had yet another passion, figure customization.
My first custom was of Soul from Soul Eater. I was determined that if the nendoroids I wanted didn't exist I would make them myself and I began to customize nendoroids.
The more custom nendoroids I created and the more I talked to other nendoroid collectors the more I became aware of a big problem for the Western anime figure collector and customizer. Finding the parts you need for customs was a pain in the ass. Very few stores sold split pieces and when they did the selection was horrible. A few could be found on online auction sites, but were often being sold at ridiculously inflated prices and if they were coming directly from Japan meant you had to use a proxy to complete the purchase adding expense to the purchase. Plus if you were like me and didn't speak or read Japanese you had the added challenge of translating websites from Japanese to English and some sellers didn't want to work with proxy buyers.
Because of this most nendoroid collectors who wanted to split pieces were forced to 'host splits' meaning they had to sell off the pieces they didn't want by tracking down folks who wanted those pieces while retaining the pieces they themselves wanted. This process was time consuming and could be exhausting and risky because you could end up with pieces that other people didn't want. And all these logistics took time away from the creative process of taking awesome nendoroid photos or working on actual custom nendoroids.
Some people turned to bootlegs to get the parts they needed, but bootlegs are of inferior quality and are stolen intellectual property that doesn't support the anime/manga industry that we all love.
I got to dreaming. What if there was a business that not only sold split parts but had a decent inventory all the time? What if you could go online and search for shoulder length blonde hair or school uniforms or musical instruments for your figures with the click of a few buttons? What if you could more easily obtain the pieces you needed?
So I started researching and dreaming some more. My joking discussions with my husband about it turned into genuine planning sessions. Could we make this dream a reality for nendoroid collectors? We think so and we hope that you will choose to support us in our endeavor.
We'll be working to expand our inventory, provide exceptional customer service, and support the customization and anime figure community. Follow our blog for more details!
And please remember that when you shop with us you are not only supporting the anime/manga industry of Japan and Asia but also small business!
Travis
Roles: Order Shipping, Customer Service, Business Manager, Purchasing, IT Manager, Social Media, Customization Artist, ALL THE THINGS!
Hey folks, I’m Trav, the jack-of-all-trades around here and wearer of many hats. Years ago when April started getting into Nendoroids and dabbling in customizations, I started plying my long-time miniature painting and customizing skills developed over years of doing Warhammer 40K and occasional commission painting and online selling, into helping her to make some cool custom Nendoroids for characters she liked. After learning from her about the parts brokering community on figure collecting forums and how people gathered parts for their customs, I mused to her in jest “we could maybe set up a site and provide split parts for people”, partly serious, but mostly a joke. The idea quickly turned into a question of “could we really make this work?”. Well, here we are several years later and past the point where most start-ups fail to find their footing and we’re still hanging on.
I come from a background in retail work in positions from base level associate to manager to business owner and everything in between providing a lot of experience in low level retail business management. I have strong interests in home brew gaming and some education in graphic design, printing, and internet technology; all skills that intersect well for our business. I’ve done some indie self-publishing of table-top role-playing games, board games, and card games and currently do some development of game concepts with a local design group as a hobby. I also have been an “S Tier” Skyrim mod author for over 13 years.
Of course I can’t forget my minor in Anime fandom. I’m not nearly as versed and in the know as April, but I do enjoy a good slice-of-life rom-com and a few choice dramas and action genre series from time to time and will often find myself getting sucked in to whatever April is watching if I happen to sit down when she’s watching and course help out a bit with April’s convention cosplays when my jack-of-all-trades skills are needed, and have been known on occasion to join in as well.
Most recently I’ve been dusting off my customization skills and working hard to try and drive more content on Chibi Chop Shop around customization of Nendoroids by creating my own customs for sale, making guides for them, creating various resources and working to find other folks who do the same who would like to contribute to growing this very important aspect of the collecting community.
Kaden (photo pending)
Roles: Order pulling (parts goblin), product restocking
Kaden is our eldest son and is a big music enthusiast, working many hours each day to develop his own musical style and foster a community of like-minded music creators through his discord server and YouTube.
When working for the Chop Shop as our “parts goblin”, you’ll find him restocking splits, pulling orders for Trav to ship and drawing little doodles in acknowledgement of people’s order notes on the packing slips.
Elliott (photo pending)
Roles: Product splitting and replenishment, Empty box management
Our daughter Elliott is the younger of our two kids (HS senior) who is a major tabletop RPG nerd and participates with Kaden in their home brew music community. She is an aspiring cartoonist and graphic designer who hopes to pursue animation and illustration in college.
When working for the Chop Shop, you’ll find her parked for a few hours after school at the splitting station, breaking down boxed figures and replenishing stock while checking for empty box requests.
Scrappy and Loki
Roles: Box Inspectors
Scrappy and Loki are always hard at work with quality assurance inspections to ensure that all boxes, bins, drawers and other containers are up to snuff and fit for sitting