Ah, moving. It’s nobody’s idea of a good time. All the stress and anxiety of lining up friends or professionals to move your stuff, hoping the weather will be cooperative, that nothing gets lost or damaged, and having to update all your address information. Bleh! And I’m speaking from experience. There was a period of my life, starting in 2009, where I moved at least once a year, every year, for 12 straight years. As you may imagine, the good will of my friends was worn very thin by the end of that era. But hey, not everything about moving is bad. Sometimes, a move can be very exciting indeed. And that brings us to the subject of today’s blog post: we have moved TCG Machines into our very own building! To appreciate how big a deal this is, allow me to walk you through the history of all seven locations – yes, that’s right, seven – of TCG Machines’ corporate headquarters.
First, let’s travel back in time to 2016. My girlfriend (Jen) and I were living in Okotoks, a relatively small town to the south of Calgary, where we had moved for me to be closer to work. I had just left my real-person job to pursue the dream of TCG Machines full-time, and the “company office” consisted of a desk and a table with the earliest prototype PhyzBatch-9000. Look how cute it is! Still recognizable, even in its nascent form.
I also purchased a combination drill press/lathe/mill from Dan (my recent ex-boss and eventual business partner)’s cousin and had temporarily housed it in my girlfriend’s father’s garage. Look how cute I am! So full of ambition. A word to the wise: do not try and mill or lathe PVC pipe. Several near misses.
So, at this point, TCG Machines exists in a makeshift home office and a garage. Onto 2017 and the first of many moves!
From Okotoks, Jen and I moved back to Calgary. Along with Jen’s brother, his girlfriend, and another friend, we rented an enormous house with a big basement which served as TCG Machines’ new headquarters and shop. The steel-bodied Alpha prototype PhyzBatch-9000 was developed here. Also, Jen and I got married that year :D
From there, Jen – now my wife – and I moved out on our own to a townhouse just a few kilometers away. Now in 2018, TCG Machines found itself in its third location and second basement. 2018 was a big year for the company. I developed the “Pilot Model” machine at the new location, which would be used to conduct product demonstrations and eventually start the very first, unpaid customer trial of the PhyzBatch-9000. Ah, and my son, Jen and I’s first child, was born in that house.
Onto 2019, and yet another move! This time, Jen and I moved way down to the south end of Calgary to be closer to Jen’s work. TCG Machines found itself in its fourth location: another basement. Things were starting to ramp up at this point. The Pilot Model PhyzBatch was finding its legs with the customer trial, and based on those promising results, I was able to apply for a grant to build eight “Beta Trial” machines.
In preparation for assembling multiple machines, I built some wooden shelving in the spare room of the new basement location. No sooner had I done so, and after meticulously labelling and stocking the shelves with hundreds of Beta Trial machine parts, our landlord informed us that they were selling the house and needed us to leave... ( ╥﹏╥)
June of 2020. That was a real pain in the ass. I had to move the whole operation, including eight machines’ worth of loose and partially assembled components to a new location – the fifth location for the company, in case anyone is keeping count. So, I loaded the Pilot Model machine and all the Beta Trial machine parts into my mother-in-law’s Ford Escape, and off we went!
But there was a silver lining to this move, as Jen and I lucked into a great house centrally located in Calgary with a massive backyard. Remember, this was happening during the COVID-19 pandemic, so having a nice outdoor space all to ourselves – and our now toddler son – was huge! Here, TCG Machines was set up in a basement (the fourth – and happily final – time in a basement) and production of the Beta Trial machines began in earnest.
For the next few months, my two brothers-in-law pitched in to help me assemble those early PhyzBatch units, and together we turned that basement into a machine-assembling factory! Soon I was delivering Beta Trial PhyBatch-9000s all across Alberta.
The Beta Trials were a success, and I converted the basement into a film studio to shoot a YouTube commercial video for the upcoming launch of the PhyzBatch-9000.
Now it's May 2021 and the commercial launch of the PhyzBatch-9000 has gone exceedingly well. It went so well, in fact, that just a couple of months later TCG Machines was moving again! This was the fifth time moving the company, but this move was a little different. This time, TCG Machines was relocating to a commercial address. No more residential basements for us, oh no! We had graduated into a 24x24 ft cube erected in the middle of an enormous, windowless warehouse. This was Shedpoint, the new home which TCG Machines would occupy for the next five years.
It was pretty wild when we first toured Shedpoint. The founder of the operation led Dan and I around a big empty warehouse and basically just asked us to imagine his vision, which sounded perfect for us (the flexibility to grow and scale within a single address, without locking us into an expensive, multi-year lease). We were the very first cube that they set up, so we got to bear witness to the radical transformation of a derelict 1950s warehouse into the bustling centre of economic activity which it has become today. If you’re ever in SE Calgary, definitely check it out!
I should point out, we didn’t stay in that 576 square-foot cube for the whole five years. We expanded steadily, occupying more space within Shedpoint as it came available. It was the perfect place for us to grow, and I am forever grateful for the opportunities Shedpoint afforded us. Sometime in there my wife and I had our second child, and the company built and delivered hundreds of machines to more than 20 countries all around the globe.
Alas, all good things must come to an end, and eventually there was no more room for us to expand. And so, in April 2026, we moved again. This time, it was a very big move indeed.
From the ~3,500 square feet we occupied in Shedpoint, we moved into a dedicated 15,000 square foot building, complete with an elevator, electric car charging station, 40 parking stalls, 50 windows, and enough space for us to really do our thing.
It’s worth noting, this latest and greatest move took place right smack-dab in the middle of the largest production push in our company’s history. Due to a supplier delay, we had a backlog of more than 40 machines to build and deliver in the second half of April, right during our move. We were also exhibiting at the Calgary Expo that same weekend. I guess we don’t like to be bored? Well, happily here we are on the other side of The Big Move, and we are lovin’ our new space. Will we move again in the future? It’s possible, but we should be comfortable here for years to come. Please enjoy a bunch of pictures of our team in and around the new building, and a group shot with most of the company from our latest fun day (a BBQ in Bowness Park).
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