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Technology And Small Business: Video Fan
Posted by: Necci – Aug 24, 2011
Within every social interaction that I have had this past year, someone always brings up a movie that they have recently viewed. And when they talk about that movie, there is always a person who says, “Cool, I’m totally going to add that to my queue.”
And, of course we all know that means: the Netflix queue. Streaming media technology has dug its heels into the mainstream so deeply that its jargon has created its own rhetoric. Now we can add movies to our queue from our smart phones and download them immediately--instantly gratified. The power of the on-demand queue is obvious, as we see almost every brick and mortar video rental store in Richmond close its doors. What were once vibrant storefronts of home entertainment selections are now just gutted skeletons filled with abandoned gondola shelving units. The hazy, weatherworn outline of the store’s exterior signage, its remnants long since been taken to the landfill, is the only indicator that a business was once there.
As I firmly believe that we cast our vote every day through where we choose to spend our money, I prefer to keep my dollars feeding into the local versus the global economy. With that in mind, I figured I would pay a visit to the Video Fan. Never having met the owner prior to the interview, I spent the week beforehand attempting to guess which one of the iconic store folks it might be. I was surprised to find that all of my guesses were absolutely rubbish when I walked into the 25-year old Richmond business, bustling with patrons asking obscure movie questions, to find Doug McDonald, the owner of the Video Fan, standing behind the counter. He chuckled with his staff members as they locked their eyes on a 70’s action flick, which was playing on the television mounted high above the new releases.
As I shook his hand, preparing for the interview, he asked, “You wouldn’t mind if we just take a few minutes to watch this, would you? The best part is coming up.” His eyes drifted back to the screen in hungry anticipation. “No problem,” I said, hanging back to watch as an actor, primly dressed in his white polyester leisure suit, slowly scaled down a building, preparing to engage in action-based hijinks.
A few minutes later, we found ourselves sitting at a small metal table outside of 8 1/2, with my audio recorder between us. As he began to shed some truth on the evolution of his business and how it has been affected by growing technological advances, the smells of homemade eggplant parmesan and the tweeting of summer birds surrounded us.
Jaime Turko: How long have you had the business?
Doug McDonald: I’ve had the business for over 10 years, but it’s been about 14 years since I first worked here. While I was an employee, the owner, who was a photographer, decided she wanted to give more time to her art, so I took over from there. It was a surprise. It wasn’t anything that I planned to do, but we’re still making it, we’re still chugging along.
JT: At that time, did the store just carry VHS?
DM: Absolutely. At that time, we were doing great. There were times during the winter that we would have lines out the door. At that time, it was the only way to bring videos into your home. Then DVDs came around, and we held off for a while, because we saw laserdiscs come and go, and it was a strange transition moving into the realm of DVD.
We still rent VHS, and I’m surprised at the resurgence in it, sort of like what’s going on with vinyl. I don’t know if it’s the look, or the feel, or just the ability to still get different titles. At one time, VHS was almost not worth our time, but within the last few years, it’s really picked up again, which I never would have guessed. Because now, you have Bluray and several other formats that have tried to come out in the past few years. Blurays, for whatever reason, have literally never rented here. Maybe it’s due to our market. We then tried to sell them off, and never got much money for the ones we could even sell.
JT: Do you feel that moving forward you will adapt to all DVD, or will you still continue to keep your VHS line?
DM: We’re keeping what we can in VHS, especially the titles that are unavailable on DVD. We keep a lot of titles on VHS that we don’t have on DVD. Also sometimes it’s really expensive to get a title on DVD that we have on VHS that is older and may not rent very often. We buy more and more DVD’s every week, as that’s the only format of the two that is still available from our distributors. We try to keep as much as we can. We have over 13,000 titles where most stores that were open at one time only had a few thousand titles. They focused mainly on new arrivals, and never carried catalog titles like we do--like the older, more obscure stuff, as well as our foreign and cult titles, that are really hard to find at other places.
JT: How have you seen your business change since the creation of videos on demand?
DM: Netflix was the beginning of the end of a lot of places, and it has definitely hurt us. All of the streaming media has closed every other brick and mortar store in Richmond but us. There are no other video rental stores that I know of. It’s hurt us very badly to the point where we have been close to closing a few times, but we have sort of eked it out here and there. Honestly, now that almost all brick and mortar video stores in town have closed, we have been doing a little bit better, because there’s nowhere else to go and browse, and talk to people about movies and get suggestions.
JT: It’s awesome to come in and get suggestions on what to watch from such a knowledgeable staff, and learn about something that you haven’t experienced.
DM: They still surprise me.Different staff members have different genres, and they send you in different directions, and it’s great. We were just talking about a movie that I had never seen, and it was a movie that I would have never thought about watching and it’s awesome. In Bruges, with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two Irish hit men who are sent to Belgium to sort of lay low. It’s funny, it has action, a love story, a dwarf, everything that you could ever want in a movie. It’s excellent.
That’s the good thing about us—[we’re] the only place you can go to rent a movie and learn about other titles that you might like, or tell us about titles that we may need to carry for other folks to watch. It’s still a social function, not just going online to click and download something. The business is really lucky. We have people who have been coming in for the past 25 years, and they still come. In just the time that I’ve been here, I’ve seen Fan families who brought their little kids in to rent movies years ago--now those kids are adults, and have their own kids and still come in to rent movies. I still see people that I don’t recognize at first because they’ve grown up so much. It’s cool.
JT: Did you really see much of a change on your business when Netflix first came out, or was it only when they offered [streaming] videos on demand?
DM: It took a little while to catch on, then it built momentum and then became a huge impact on us. And then Blockbuster and Amazon started the same thing, and as internet reliability built up, the huge momentum toward that offering has really stomped us in the past 2 to 3 years.
But there was a point where the momentum crested, and people started to realize that you could do both. One of the largest detractors to that system is that you can’t watch specifically what you want when you want it, due to the queue system. Availability is solely up to the public at large because if something is really popular, it becomes low on your queue. We don’t always have a lot of copies of the latest titles, but you can always come in anytime and find something that you want to watch. That’s why I think that it’s never shut us down--the customer doesn’t always have a choice all of the time. They have more titles than we do, but there’s still a lot of titles that aren’t available on DVD, and those we have on VHS.
We’re lucky in that we have a very diverse creative community here. We’re lucky to be where we are. If we were in the West End, we’d be gone, I’m sure. We do have customers that travel from those places to here. We are surrounded by a neighborhood, and we have a lot of foot traffic, local families, and other cool businesses around us that definitely help.
[A patron walks past waving at Doug, with a movie in his hand. Doug greets the man, and they chat about his family for a few minutes. Then the man walks away, entering into Video Fan to rent a new movie for the night.]
JT: Did this effect on your business cause you to make the decision to move everything to just the bottom floor?
DM: Our business is down, and that’s why we decided to bring everything downstairs, and then rent the upstairs to a business that is complimentary to the strip. That will be a huge help. We kept everything, and just arranged it spine out instead of face out so that you can read titles. It’s really seemed to help. We actually have a lot of customers who don’t like walking upstairs. There were customers who, when we told them the movie was upstairs, they would just decide to forget about it and pick something downstairs. The new layout now looks fuller, and we can help them more easily with everyone on the first floor.
JT: It’s great that you were willing to find a way to adapt instead of close altogether. I have noticed as a patron that, even though there’s always been great customer service, now it feels like even a higher level of it because the staff now comes out and shows you where a title is now.
DM: There’s more face-to-face interaction now that everyone is in the same room. Now there’s no wondering around upstairs, and it’s reorganized and easier. I’ve noticed that now it’s easier for me to find new titles with the store is arranged spine out. Maybe it’s because looking at covers can become so overwhelming if you’re in a certain genre because many look the same. Now, even when I’m getting movies for my kids I’m discovering more titles and checking things out more closely.
[Another neighbor to the Video Fan walks by and greets Doug. Doug shakes his hand and catches up with him, asking him how things are going. They part smiling.]
JT: Have you seen a change in the business since using Facebook?
DM: I wouldn’t say a change in the business. We utilize Facebook to send out funny stuff that’s happening in the store, like trivia. We just started buying used DVD’s on Mondays from noon-5pm, and reselling them or renting them, depending on what they are. I used Facebook to send the message out, and it’s been great for the past two weeks since we started, because people are coming in after seeing it on our [Facebook] wall to sell them for cash or store credit. People are happy that they are getting rid of stuff, and we’re happy that we’re getting new titles to sell.
Facebook is a great way to let people know what you’re doing. Other print media like Style Weekly is incredibly expensive and doesn’t reach out to our clientele. Facebook is instant and is so easy, and customers can react and reply immediately.
JT: What do you think of RedBox or Blockbuster’s blue box, which really isn’t instant gratification but where people have to go somewhere like a convenience store, to rent a movie?
DM: It’s probably hurt us a little bit, but those boxes usually carry big Hollywood titles, which we do carry, but it’s not our bread and butter. We carry a lot of foreign titles that weren’t even in the Blockbusters or other brick and mortars. It’s really not the same sort of clientele that we have. We’d rather get something that’s offbeat and independent, and we’re lucky because we’re really a niche that way.
[A family with two girls eating ice cream bars stop by to stay hello. The girls, faces sticky with ice cream bars, run over to greet Doug as he sits back in his chair, and he catches up with their parents, laughing with them about the kids and his kids, before they continue their walk to enter the store.]
JT: How do you see yourself adapting in the future?
DM: It would be nice to stay in the same place that we are. We have looked at a few newer pieces of technology, like the machines that burn a DVD while you wait and have the legitimate licensing, but decided not to go that way. We intentionally stick with the lo-fi sort of thing instead of that hi-tech thing. We’re people talking to people. I’m still trying to figure out ways that technology will help us.
JT: Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes choosing not to adapt is the adaptation in itself.
DM: It seems like it’s hurt us more than it could possibly help us right now. There’s such a lack of social interaction with the online gratification. When I first started working here, the video store was sort of notorious. People would come in to look at movies, but it was a social place to meet new people in the neighborhood and I know people who are now married [that] met in the store. There were always missed connections posted in the paper. You can’t get that social aspect with renting movies online. You lose that social aspect of everything, and you don’t get to go out and experience meeting other people. We see people run into people who they haven’t seen in a long time. There’s definitely a resurgence in people wanting to have an experience face to face.
JT: You’re absolutely right. Technology really has really ungrounded our society a little bit. I’ve been noticing a counterculture to that, where people are now acting with the intention to go out and have an experience.
DM: It’s convenience, it’s taken away the personal aspect. I see a different in generations where people want Netflix and then there’s definitely a large group of people who don’t want giant corporations involved in everything that they do. People are still really interested in the social aspect of day-to-day life. I don’t put that much face time in the daytime anymore, but as I sit here, I’m seeing so many people I know from having the store.
[As if on a cosmic cue, a woman comes by with her father to say hello. Doug tells me that she is one of the original patrons of the store from 25 years ago. Her three sons, who now have kids of their own, also come to the Video Fan with their families.]
JT: What are you going to do with the popcorn?
DM: (laughs) I don’t know. That was one of our first changes when we took such a bit hit because of technology, because it really hit us big and quick. We are going to bring it back soon. When we first started adapting to this onslaught of the on-demand market, we started changing hours, moving the store around, and scaling back.
One of the parts that I bitch and moan about a lot is how we have had to cut back from supporting the community. We used to give a lot to the community, such as the James River film festivals and other events, and now we just don’t have the resources to do it anymore. If our sales went up, we could give back to Art 180, Firehouse Theatre, and the James River film efforts like we had. That’s how we got our name out, and it was good for everybody, but now it’s harder and harder to do for all the businesses.
JT: What’s your most watched movie?
DM: That’s a good question. One of my favorites of all time is Jacob’s Ladder. My recent favorite is definitely In Bruges. The store’s all-time top renter is Blue Velvet, with thousands of rentals on VHS and DVD. It’s far and away the top renter. I don’t know if that says something about our clientele, [but] if so, that’s kind of cool.
--
Let’s get that free popcorn back, and work to keep one of Richmond’s most beloved, iconic stores open. Get off your ass and go rent some movies.
facebook.com/thevideofan
(403 Strawberry St. 804-353-7891)
By Jaime Turko
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