Westmoreland Mall's Cash-In Culture closing, moving online
Tim Hartman gets a bit wistful when he talks about the ’80s.
“It was a new dawn of pop culture,” said Hartman, co-owner of Cash-In Culture, a store that celebrates his passion for the past.
With his love of the era comes a love of malls. A self-described “retail hound,” Hartman collects merchandise from long-gone shopping centers such as Greengate Mall.
“Being obsessed with the past is kind of what fueled our business,” Hartman said. “I’ve been enamored with malls and retail all my life.”
That’s what made the decision to close the Cash-In Culture’s last physical location all the more difficult, he said.
The store in the Westmoreland Crossing plaza at Westmoreland Mall will close sometime next month.
Hartman and his business partner Greg Caldwell will continue to buy and sell video games, movies, albums and memorabilia online at cashinculture.com.
The store has had five retail locations in Westmoreland and Allegheny counties in the last 14 years, which have shuttered one by one.
The Irwin location, which opened in 2012, was meant to be temporary, said Hartman, who was a Tribune-Review sports writer about 20 years ago. It closed in 2015, around the same time a store in the Monroeville Mall opened.
The store in Century III Mall, which opened in 2005, closed in 2017 when its roof began to cave in, causing water to seep into the store.
“The mall was in ruin, and we knew it was time to get out,” Hartman said.
The Belle Vernon store, which opened in 2009, and the Monroeville Mall store, which opened in 2015, both closed this year.
There were several reasons for the closures but Hartman said the coronavirus pandemic was the final straw.
“The pandemic is the death knell in the decision making, because it shows the volatility of retail,” Hartman said.
The Westmoreland Mall store was the first, and it will be the last.
Hartman and Caldwell began buying and selling retro video games in the early 2000s as a way to make money while touring with local rock bands.
The first retail location in 2004 was in a renovated closet inside the mall. It moved to larger locations several times over the years.
Hartman and Caldwell said they’d hoped to keep their first store open, but when it came time to renew the lease they made a last-minute decision to close.
All the store’s merchandise is on sale, with deeper discounts to come as the closure gets closer, Hartman said.
Most of the store’s employees will be laid off, with some staying on to help with the company’s online endeavors.
Hartman said he hopes Cash-In Culture’s regular customers will patronize the online store.
He and Caldwell also plan to increase focus on their other project, Retrotainment Games, where they create new video games in a retro style. These games are available on modern consoles, or on cartridges made to play on 1985’s Nintendo Entertainment System.
The company also publishes games made by other developers and recreates classic Nintendo Entertainment System titles.
Hartman said he realizes the internet is the future of retail — at least for now. He still hopes for a return to the glory days of the ’80s, when the mall was the coolest spot in the world.
“Malls were just the place to be, and I hope somehow the world gets fixed, or mall culture gets fixed, and we can have them again,” he said.
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