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punk rebel ecks posted:It really was a sellers market at the time. Stores couldn't keep up with the demand since the idea of watching media whenever you want was such a novelty. I once had a day in I want to say 1987 where every single unit in the ENTIRE store was rented except for one (3500 pieces at the time) The one title we didnt rent? Ilsa She Wolf of the SS Don't ask me why I remember this, it is one of those pieces of garbage in my memory I just can't forget.
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Aug 31, 2021 21:20
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Typically, retail space like that would be leased. It also doesn't help that the video stores started to die out during a real challenging time for retail in general. You also run into other issues - for example, if it was part of a shopping center there might be limits on what can go there to minimize competition.
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Aug 31, 2021 21:22
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stab posted:I once had a day in I want to say 1987 where every single unit in the ENTIRE store was rented except for one (3500 pieces at the time) Holy cow that is insane, no wonder those rental stores were everywhere. It would be fascinating to review the books for a busy mom & pop video store in that era. Like tape cost, revenue, which movies went missing the most. I'd also like that info for an arcade in 1991.
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Sep 17, 2021 22:39
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Earwicker posted:i had a friend who worked at blockbuster in the mid 90's, he had a beard but on the first day of his job and they made him go home and shave it off but allowed him to keep the mustache. im not sure what that has to do with video rentals but that was their policy. I was at Blockbuster 99-2000, and they tried pulling that poo poo with me when I had a ponytail/goatee. I told them 'yeah sure I'll do that' then never did. This was apparently because the Mystery Shopper results came back in, and noted '1 CSR had a straggly beard and ponytail, and was wearing trainers. The 2 CSR's were also laughing and talking to each other when not serving customers' as apparently company policy is be perfectly quiet and still when not interacting with customers. And gently caress standing up for 10+ hrs in shoes. I helped open one of the Megastores after about 6 months in another district, as my Gran lived there and it was a 10 min walk away. After a week of shelf stocking/scanning things into the database, they open. I turn up and get told I'm being shunted to the dead store up the road to help inventory stock, as the suit in charge dictated to the manager he didn't want someone looking like me at the front on opening day. Despite the fact half the staff had long hair. I was annoyed at this until that job boiled down to just me in an empty shop with a load of videos to scan, a working TV/DVD/Video player, and a pub next door I spent my 2 hour dinner break at. Staff always boiled down to two types of people: Those like me who worked because I needed a part time job through college, and the full on cultists. The Assistant manager at the Megastore acted like it was his dream to be in that position at 18, bootlicked anyone higher and Hitlered anyone who was just staff. Sure that worked out well for him. Manager at the next store I shifted to acted like everything would fall apart if he was away from the shop for too long too, he'd come in for a couple of hours on his day off, pop back in 2 hours after leaving etc. Like enjoy your life when not working, it's a loving video shop not a Nuclear Reactor. I think they also failed due to utterly out of touch management and implementing that US style hard sell bullshit on the UK. Nobody gives a gently caress what you look like as long you have that BB polo on and can answer if they have whatever was new that week in stock, and if they want popcorn/drinks they'll get them. They don't need me having to repeat the loving offer on every interaction like a robot when it's plastered over every surface that's not a video shelf.
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Sep 23, 2021 16:05
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Do you remember any surprise hits? Austin Powers famously broke out on home media, anything like that or more obscure? Like suddenly everybody wants to see Death Valley Ninja?
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Jul 18, 2022 09:23
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In the 80s and 90s video and pizza combos were common too. Especially in small towns. Those people made bank
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Jul 21, 2022 23:30
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Two Boots in NYC still does pizza and video
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Jul 21, 2022 23:33
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Earwicker posted:Two Boots in NYC still does pizza and video It's a great idea. The one where my grandma lived had a date nite package. Large pizza , 2 liter , bread sticks and a movie for like $20.
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Jul 22, 2022 04:46
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shame on an IGA posted:https://web.archive.org/web/20010331112934/http://videostoremag.com:80/ Ah, right there's trade publications* . Checked if archive.org had any scans up and ... nah. Same old thing of "what's old and irrelevant twenty years ago is historically interesting today" got a cover here, though https://www.pinterest.com/pin/514254851174663636/ * FWIW 70's and 80's arcade operators also had trade publications, lots of people leasing cabinets which led to a boom and then a bust in 1983 (independent from the Atari console bust around that time). Operators kept an eye on every last coin that went though them. https://archive.org/details/playmetermagazine here's a "Video Magazine" for video enthusiasts! https://archive.org/details/video-magazine-9.88-age-of-video-d.-d.-teoli-jr.-a.-c.-20 Coffee Jones fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Jul 24, 2022 |
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Jul 24, 2022 21:47
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Fish of hemp posted:Do you remember any surprise hits? Austin Powers famously broke out on home media, anything like that or more obscure? Like suddenly everybody wants to see Death Valley Ninja? Long forgotten film East is East did big numbers at Blockbuster as it coincided with them buying an absolute ton of copies with TV ads promising free rental if we didn't have any copies in shop. People went absolutely insane over that poo poo, like threatening staff and screeching over not paying £3.50. Problem was in the first 2 weeks copies were coming in as fast as they were going out, and the dropbox by the door was constantly being emptied as we got told "keep those free rentals to an absolute minimum." So folk would come in, see none on the shelf, come up to the counter and be all smug 'free next time', just as your co-worker would be scanning a bunch in from returns. "Here's a copy!" "You didn't have it when I got here, FREE" Course the system wouldn't allow you to apply the discount if any copies were registered as in-store. Cue arguments. gently caress that film anyway, it's mediocre at best, no-one I've ever told that tale to even remembers it, but that was the one to save you money. That promo ran all Summer but nobody gave a poo poo after that first 2-3 weeks, probably because the TV/Radio ads stopped running. About 3 months later we had entire bins full of that loving film onsale as ex-rental for £1.99.
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Jul 30, 2022 19:03
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Goldskull posted:Long forgotten film East is East did big numbers at Blockbuster as it coincided with them buying an absolute ton of copies with TV ads promising free rental if we didn't have any copies in shop. People went absolutely insane over that poo poo, like threatening staff and screeching over not paying £3.50. Problem was in the first 2 weeks copies were coming in as fast as they were going out, and the dropbox by the door was constantly being emptied as we got told "keep those free rentals to an absolute minimum." So folk would come in, see none on the shelf, come up to the counter and be all smug 'free next time', just as your co-worker would be scanning a bunch in from returns. lol someone must have been getting a huge kickback from the studio to run a promo like that on the uk's 95'th best selling home video feature of the year https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/end-of-year-video-chart/20000109/30012/
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Jul 30, 2022 19:22
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Hahaha yeah. Looking at that chart I can't even think of any of those in the top 10 they did that for advertising-wise. Film 4 are sound for indie stuff. it made zero sense to me at the time. And gently caress the people threatening me over videos. I had one girl screeching "my boyfriends's outside he's gonna come in and beat you to death!' over this. He came in, was a guy I was friends with at school, and he just went 'ehhh, we'll get this film when we get it and rented something else'. I shifted back to bar work a few weeks after. I'd rather deal with drunk angry people than sober angry people being aresholes over something I can't control.
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Jul 31, 2022 00:49
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What the hell, I quite liked east is east. The blockbuster I used to go to with my then girlfriend at the edge of the student area of Manchester was decent. Mad it stayed open until about 2009/10. I once bought a dvd of Romper Stomper in there and had the cashier go all High Fidelity on me telling me it was a terrible film.
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Aug 2, 2022 21:50
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Christ, stab, your folks owned 30 stores? I can't imagine, that would be so stressful, but sounds like it made good money?
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Aug 15, 2022 06:10
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Roumba posted:Did video stores like Blockbuster own their own buildings/land? Does the physical design of a video rental store somehow make it unsuitable for any other buisness? Around where I lived, one almost immediately became a huge AT&T store, another sat for a few years before it turned into an urgent care facility, and a third sat vacant for well over a decade before it was demolished and a bank was built on the outparcel. Oh, and the one Hollywood Video I recall being nearby was turned into a mattress store pretty quickly.
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Aug 18, 2022 21:38
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DicktheCat posted:Christ, stab, your folks owned 30 stores? No! They owned maybe 6 or 7 but never all at once, the most we had at a time was 3. The rest were all stores I worked at or managed. I was like a traveling hobo video store guy, you sent me to stores to fix them up, open them, or close them. Money was good at the start but by the late 90's it became a real tough sell. Gee i wonder why!
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Aug 19, 2022 04:19
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AngryRobotsInc posted:Nah, you didn't need a special chip to play burned PSX games. I used to disc swap burned discs on my PSX all the time back in the day. It just wouldn't work for multidisc games that didn't give you the option to make a save and then load it from the next disc. I can tell you this isn't accurate, at least for one game. When I was playing through the Japanese release Parasite Eve fresh from the import rental store years and years ago, I hit the "PLEASE INSERT DISC 2" (yes it was in English) prompt in a dark room with a giant game logo with a CD image behind it around midnight with no prior warning. Was kind of sudden and creepy. Since I was well seasoned in the swap trick, it took a couple tries but I put in a legit demo disc, triggered the lid sensor, listened for the sine wave tone from the laser mechanism as the disc read, then as it spun up swapped the disc with the correct timing and was able to proceed with my playthrough. loving loved that game to death. Played all the way through to the end of the Chrysler Building on the first NG+ loop despite the absolutely impenetrable (to me at the time) amounts of kanji in the dialog.
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Aug 19, 2022 12:54
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Coffee Jones posted:Ah, right there's trade publications* . Checked if archive.org had any scans up and ... nah. Same old thing of "what's old and irrelevant twenty years ago is historically interesting today" Whoa those are fascinating. I was flipping through an arcade issue where they had a recap of a cocktail party hosted by Capcom to promote this new cabinet "Street Fighter II." An ad gave you the chance to make sure your arcade had enough Desert Storm novelty wallets & squeeze bottles to celebrate America's victory.
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Aug 22, 2022 22:07
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