Opening of a shop exclusively selling Harry Potter products – L’Express

By Cassandre Baillargeon

BUSINESS. A shop exclusively selling Harry Potter products is coming to Promenades Drummondville. Witch and Magic will officially open its doors on September 10.

Maggie Leroux has been a fan of Harry Potter since the franchise’s first film in 2001. She is also passionate about magic and sorcery. “I fell in love with the little wizard 20 years ago. I must have seen the films millions of times and I am on my fourth rereading of the books,” she says with a smile.

Captivated by fantastic universes, Ms. Leroux began to dream of a specialized store in the spring of 2020 when her research began in earnest in 2021. She discovered that there were no shops here. “I looked for why we didn’t have any. I found that there is a legal portion that could cost me really dearly and I wondered who could help me in that,” she explains.

Maggie Leroux thus turned to the European continent to obtain answers. “I discovered that in Europe there are really a lot of stores, they call them fan stores. I contacted someone there and finally the president of a chain that has 16 stores agreed to talk to me,” she says.

This famous online meeting made Ms. Leroux’s project tumble in April 2021. The president of the Sweets Boutiques chain and she became friends. He shared with him some tips for successfully creating a shop selling exclusively Harry Potter products. He also helped him look for Canadian suppliers since those of his stores in Europe would not have been profitable here due to transportation costs.

With a list of possible suppliers, the project of this Drummondvilloise was becoming more and more concrete. The legal aspect still continued to bother her. “I wanted to be 300% sure that I could make a store with Harry Potter products because Warner Bros is a very big company and I do this to bring magic to people and not to disturb”, confides the secretary bilingual training who wrote to them for six months without getting a response.

Ms. Leroux finally chose to write directly to the author of the saga, JK Rowling. A month later, the lawyers of Warner Bros called him on the phone since they had received the said letter and had been touched by his approach.

“It didn’t happen with a wave of a magic wand”

After two years of work, Maggie Leroux finally started setting up her shop in early July. Located right next to Amnesia on Promenades Drummondville, the first location of Sorcière et Magie is gradually taking shape to offer an optimal experience to its visitors.

“Buying online is good, but you don’t live the experience and I want to sell people the experience. I want them to cross into a magical world. That’s the essence of Sorcière et Magie,” says Ms. Leroux.

She went to soak up the Harry Potter theme park at the Universal Orlando Resort in addition to taking back these memories from the Salem shops to create her company’s identity. “My intentions are 100% magical and it has to reflect that to a million percent”, underlines the one who relies, among other things, on the sound atmosphere and the visual of her business to make her reputation.

For this enthusiast of the Harry Potter universe, it is also important that her shop offers a wide variety of products for all budgets. It is for this reason in particular that the Drummondvilloise does business with a majority of Canadian suppliers, but that it still has two suppliers from the United States, particularly for collectible drumsticks.

Even today, Ms. Leroux is looking for certain types of objects. “Each supplier just has a portion of something. They have mugs, but no stuffed animals or clothes, the other is going to have stationery, and so on. To look for new suppliers, it is difficult because they do not appear much, ”says the owner of Witch and magic.

Team work

Over the past few months, Ms. Leroux’s entourage has helped her implement her project. Her lover supported her for the logistical side thanks to his skills as a general manager of a company while their children lent a hand in placing the products.

A few weeks before D-Day, Maggie Leroux is proud of the work accomplished. “I’m nervous for the opening, but I put all my passion, my love and my energy into it”, she sums up confident for the future of Witch and magic that she wishes to extend to greatness. of Quebec, in particular with an online store, to begin with.