Articles tagged “community”
Video stores competing with Netflix and Redbox
Saturday, 30 July, 2011 — business community
The New York Times’ Nicole LaPorte has a neat pieces about independent video stores retooling their business in the sunset of Blockbuster and the ascent of Netflix, Redbox and other online options for movie watching.
They’ve done what a lot of declining industries like newspapers or record stores failed to do for a long time — recognize that just being what they were was not going to keep them in business. Being a commodity means when someone improves the commodity business, if you can’t match, you’re screwed.
I think this is a great deal to do with why Blockbuster, Borders, many of the chain record stores and so on are gone or fading quickly. They simply aren’t equipped to reflect their communities and be something other than a brick-and-mortar when Amazon Prime couldn’t get it to you fast enough.
The bookstores that are going to thrive in the time of Amazon, the record and video stores that are going thrive in the time of iTunes are going to do things like this, regularly and with excellence:
A campy sing-along night is just one component of their plan. Since Vidiots, a beloved institution among the area’s movie cognoscenti and stars, opened a sleek space called the Annex a year ago, it has offered a “Film Studies” program. It has had classes on anime mythology; lectures by filmmakers like Larry Clark (“Kids”); and spoken-word events, known as Tail Spin, where participants deliver improvised monologues on a theme (for example, “the stranger”) for five minutes before the thread is picked up by someone else.
Physically, too, the Annex symbolizes a new era. Its clean, modern design bears no resemblance to the graffiti-covered walls of the video store, which feels more like a basement clubhouse.
The special events have been integral to Vidiots’ transformation from a strictly retail business to a cultural hub and community center. They are intended as a riposte to what the store’s fans regard as the nameless, faceless quality of services like Netflix.