SEATTLE, WA Friday, April 06, 2007– PeoplePawn, a pre-revenue financial services and specialty retail startup, announced today the success of their application to the City Of Seattle’s Business Licensing Department, by which they have been granted their second pawnbroker endorsement. This will allow PeoplePawn to own and operate an additional store within Seattle’s city limits.
City ordinances limit the number of licenses issued to pawnbrokers to an annual basis. License distribution is further restricted by the size of the city’s population. A few cities actually have a moratorium on licensing, preventing new pawnshops from opening unless a previous pawnshop is sold and the license is transferred or through an application process when such a business closes or relocates outside the city. In Seattle, a pawn business can only be granted two endorsements in any one year, and none are given if there exists more than one pawnshop for every fifteen-thousand people living in the city.
Today, the City Of Seattle confirmed that, as a result of an open application process and a strict review procedure, PeoplePawn was selected for an available Pawnbroker Endorsement. Combined with their previous receipt of such a license, this gives PeoplePawn the opportunity to open and operate two retail stores within the city limits through May 2008.
The founder and CEO of PeoplePawn, Patrick Lawrence Kane, stated that “PeoplePawn treats the City of Seattle as a strategic market opportunity for launching the PeoplePawn brand. This important license endorsement allows PeoplePawn to open and operate a second store within the city limits within the next twelve months. This is terrific news for our customers, as we will have an additional opportunity to service the greater Seattle metro area sooner than strategically planned. This is additional ‘proof of concept’ for PeoplePawn, one that we will leverage as much as possible in order to fulfill our corporate goal of building a ten-store chain within the next 62 months.”
PeoplePawn is a Seattle-based pre-revenue financial services and specialty retail start-up. On receipt of initial funding, PeoplePawn will open and operate a chain of stores in the Pacific Northwest beginning in Seattle. PeoplePawn will be launching its first store and e-tail campaign in what is currently a $9.2B national market experiencing only 12% consolidation. PeoplePawn plans to open a minimum of 10 store locations in the next 5 years, each with big, bright, beautiful storefronts and the systems and processes to hire, train and retain friendly and knowledgeable long-term personnel.
