It’s been 25 years since Kit & Kaboodle owner Karl Johnson opened his first business in Williams Lake.
“We’ve had massive growth, massive success, and we’ve worked with the First Nations or those 25 years,” he said during an open house celebrating the store’s anniversary.
Kit and Kaboodle is one of the main distributors of the Orange Shirt Day Society’s shirts in Canada and has donated about $500,000 toward the society over the last three years, he said.
For every hat or shirt sold, they donate $10.
Recently the store added two escape rooms that were launched in January.
Johnson said they are really excited about them.
“It’s a night time activity, it’s fun, it will hopefully become a landmark in Williams Lake,” he said, adding he first tried an escape room in Vancouver and thought Williams Lake needed one.
Hope Tallen, who has worked with Johnson for about four years, said they had a few delays getting them going, but were finally able to make them work.
Shandro McCassey who manages the rooms described the experience as a 60-minute immersive adventure experience open to everybody.
“We just want to help you escape. We want to help you get out of the every day mundane and forget about the world for an hour and try and solve some of our puzzles.”
The escape rooms can host up to four people per session.
Teams battle with their best puzzling skills to escape in the first room and in the second room participants are lured in by candy and eventually find themselves lost in a fairy tale and looking for something.
“I want to say thank you to Karl for willing to do a bit of everything or we wouldn’t have this right now,” he said.
During the open house Johnson and the staff led guests through an escape room type exercise.
Each team had its own puzzle to solve but then had to work all together to solve a bigger puzzle.
Guests did not get to see inside the actual escape rooms, but were encouraged to try them out in the future with friends or coworkers.
Another activity at the store are Magic the Gathering trading card game nights at the store, which started the summer of 2023.
A large area of the store is dedicated to carrying Magic the Gathering merchandise.
“Magic is actually a huge activity in our community with children all the way up to our oldest player is 60 years old,” Hope said. “It’s a great way to get people out.”
They also carry an expanded collection of candy.
There may be other things added in the future, they have not stopped thinking of new ideas yet.