ADDRESS, DATE & TIME OF RIBON CUTTING:
- 5 State Street, Chicago
- Wednesday, October 28, 2026 | 10:30AM
RAYGUN PRESS CONTACT:
Mike Draper | RAYGUN founder and owner
mike@raygunsite.com | 515-288-1323
WEBSITE | raygunsite.com
CHICAGO- RAYGUN’s newest location is open at the corner of Madison and State in Chicago’s Loop. The Des Moines-based retailer opened its first Chicago store in Andersonville (at the corner of Clark and Foster) back in the summer of 2019.
“We had hoped to open another Chicago location sooner,” says RAYGUN founder and owner Mike Draper, “but less than a year after opening in Andersonville, there was a global pandemic – you may remember that – which kind of threw a wrench into our general brick-and-mortar expansion plan!”
RAYGUN’s in-person sales dip after the pandemic, then expansion into the Loop parallels State Street’s course as well – a major disruption from the pandemic has given way to a reemergence of retail life on State Street.
“Deena Zimmerman and Wayne Caplan were the real estate agents who found us our Andersonville space,” continues Draper, “and when they were helping Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory move into State Street. They reached out to us and said this would be a great time to get into the heart of the city. We checked it out, loved it, and signed the lease in early 2025.”
“By the way,” Draper adds, “we meant to be open way before now, sorry about that! It’s kind of a long story.”
RAYGUN joins several new small retailers, in addition to major projects like Barnes and Noble’s State Street location, and ahead of Block 37’s announced revamp and Google’s Thompson Center campus.
About RAYGUN:
Started in Des Moines in 2005, RAYGUN has grown into a nationally recognized brand while remaining fully independent – no corporate board, no private equity investment. It is also fully unionized – it’s retail staff and print shop are both unionized.
RAYGUN designs and prints much of what it sells in stores and online. Its main topics for content, Draper says, are “funny, Midwestern, progressive.” And since it controls its own production, RAYGUN can release products extremely quickly.
Control over production means that RAYGUN can also work with outside organizations and companies. Currently, RAYGUN partners with Chicago heavyweights like The Onion, WBEZ, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, the Chicago Teachers Union, as well as national brands like PBS, Propublica, Mother Jones, and more.
RAYGUN’s independence means it can often push the envelope in terms of events at its spaces. This fall, their Andersonville location hosted The “Trump-Epstein Memorial Reading Room Bookmobile.”
“We can be responsive to the community,” says Draper. “We can work with the artists we want, we can host the events we want. Our independence has limited our scale, but has really unlocked our creative potential.”
The RAYGUN locations sell products from other local makers and brands. They host pop-up shops, art shows, and a variety of events.
“We don’t want our spaces to just be boxes that sell stuff, we want them to living stores,” Draper says. “We want them to connect with the community, to entertain visitors. We want them to be a real experience for folks.”
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