Some hicks nix online flix - for now
While online movie rentals is a steadily growing business, many customers obviously prefer the old brick-and-mortar way of renting. As part of Blockbuster’s cutbacks, the rental giant’s store in Battle Creek, Michigan, has been closed. But, according to Battle Creek Enquirer, many Heartland customers aren’t quite ready to switch to online movie renting:
Denna Root, manager of Family Video in Battle Creek, said online movie rentals might be affecting the video store industry, but has not affected her bottom line.
“This store is running a 44 percent (sales) increase over last year,” she said, explaining that Springfield, Ill.-based Family Video is a regional chain with about 450 stores in the Midwest. “The company is expanding.”
California-based Netflix, the country’s leading online movie rental service, reported in January that subscribers increased 60 percent in 2005 to 4.2 million.
“(Last year) was another year of solid achievement and continued momentum,” Reed Hastings, Netflix co-founder and chief executive officer, said in a Jan. 24 press release. “We enter 2006 confident we can reach our goal of 20 million subscribers within the 2010 to 2012 time frame.”
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Root, with Family Video, said although online movie rentals are growing in popularity, there will always be a market for video stores.
“It’s a completely different type of customer we get here,” she said. “The ones that rent online are more computer savvy  they’re the ones that don’t want to leave the house for their movies.
“Our customers are people who like to come in and pick up the videos, flip them over and read the back covers,” she said. “They want to browse. They also want instant gratification. They don’t want to plan ahead to get their movies. If it comes out on Tuesday, they want it Tuesday.”
Another draw, Root said, are the free kids’ videos offered by many video stores.
“We have a lot of customers who come in specifically because they can get their kids’ movies free when they’re renting something for themselves,” she said.
Pam Gibson of Battle Creek has been a mail carrier for 14 years and said it was just in the past couple of years that DVD envelopes began turning up in her mailbag. Most of them, she said, are the red Netflix envelopes.
“It’s really increased in the past six months though,” she said. “Still, there’s only about half a dozen houses on my route that get them three or four times a week.”
There’s no doubt that traditional video stores will have to work harder and harder to bring customers to their stores. Perhaps they’ll have to borrow a page from bookstores like Barnes & Noble and allow customers the opportunity to sit down and watch movies in a comfortable environment while enjoying a high-priced premium beverage?