Help me increase business at my video store!!

In My Humble Opinion
21

Well you have to look at this simply as money spent on advertising since you didn’t mention that there was anysort of reciprocal agreement with them (like bring in a recipt for 3 rentals recieve a free dessert) and just regard it like you would spending $100 for an ad in the paper.

I’m stunned at the overwhelming negative response calling the customer by name is getting – what are you people renting. I’ll stand firm though on my opinion. You (the clerk) are looking at a screen that displays their name every time you do a transaction for them, so it is easly to learn. And you’ll constantly be looking people up in the system by their name since only about 3% of them will ever bring the membership card you made for them back in. It is only natural that you’ll learn their names. What’s the alternative, learning their customer number? Seems very impersonal to me, especially since your gravy customers will be in 3-4 times a week. Of course I’m in the south so there may be some regional ‘friendliness’ factors that influence this. We still like being called honey by waitresses and being waved at in traffic with more than one finger.

Definitely track your inventory. Everybody hates late fees, but video stores are such a slim profit margin business anyway, you have to use them. Nobody knows (or cares) that new release tapes cost you $50-70 a copy, and only have legs for about a month. You’ve got to have those things turn in order to break even, which is really all you can expect from your new release section anyway. Your catalog titles are your gravy, and you can be a lot more lax with those. What worked well for me was when I went to a long rental period for catalog titles - 5 days. This encouraged the real movie buffs who wanted to watch every movie of a series to be able to do so with running afoul of late fees. Also reduced late fees for those catalog titles is a good idea, since they don’t have to turn in such a short time. This works and doesn’t cost anything. Gamers also enjoy having long rentals on video games.

I wouldn’t advertise the adult section (outside the store, or in print). My experience was that the people who want it will ask. A subtle (very subtle) way to make it obvious to people who are in the store should be enough. X titles are good money because you can charge premium for them, but kids titles are good money too, they share some of the same rental characteristics; they are cheap to buy up front, and will rent and re-rent for a very long time, and they always sell quickly as used copies. So you don’t want to slit your throat on one for the other. People renting adult titles aren’t going to be offended that you also carry Disney, but the converse may not be true.

Another thing you can do is play mind games with your customers to get things to rent. A drop box is a great idea and a great convience which also helps people avoid late fees, but a drive thru pick-up window eliminates any impulse buys. Put the new releases at the back of the store where customers have to walk through the catalog titles to get to them. If they see a favorite oldie on the shelf, they may pick it up to rent. Shelf poistion makes a huge difference. The top shelf items (literally those sitting on the top/eye level shelf) rent 3 or 4 times as much as ones displayed lower down. Unless your system locks things into a location, rotate catalog titles that have been living on the lower shelves up to the top shelf and watch them rent. People also like to rent what other people have rented. Have staff return items to the shelf while there are customers in the store, they’ll boomerang back to the register.

Lastly, get some subscriptions to the trade magazines where there are ideas like this in every issue. Lots of them are free, and contain a wealth of info.

-rainy

22

Oh yeah, and abandon the idea of delivering movies to that hospital or anywhere else. Devote that energy to something else and save youself a lot of headaches.

23

Former Blockbuster manager here.

Blockbuster tries every promotion under the sun, as you know. The effectiveness of each one varies a lot by location. If you are in a family friendly area, I highly recommend a “free library kids rental with each new release” or something like that. Moms eat that shit up! I practically had rioting when they stopped that promotion.

Free is the word. Make it something you can afford, and get creative, but get that word out and make it big. Free gumball with any rental. Free coloring book-style sheet (copies are cheap) that the kiddies can color at home, bring back and you’ll hang on your wall. Free gift wrap at the holidays.

I was the one who started the “gift bucket” thing at Blockbuster. I loved to play with the shrink wrap, and there were these buckets of microwave popcorn sitting there on the candy shelf not moving…Stuff a bucket with two boxes of overpriced candy and a gift certificate. Voila. Giftbucket. We still charged regular price for everything, but the presentation made it an impulse gift buy. I started doing that at one store during the summer, and by Christmas, all the stores in our district were doing it. We’d even let the customer pick out the candies and giftcard - some would add pop, or stuffed animals or movies that they picked out. Took me less than 3 minutes to arrange and shrink wrap the stuff, and our store had the best two quarters ever.

As for the names: if your employees remember them and use them naturally, it’s fine. But don’t, for the love of Og, don’t make them parrot back every name at checkout or read it off a membership card. Oogy. Way oogy. I got written up at every store visit for not making my employees follow the name rule. I didn’t care.

Get your employees talking, even about movies they haven’t seen. Get **them **to ask the **customers **about movies. Every return, if you can get an employee to take it by hand, make eye contact and say, “how’d you like it?”, you’ll increase the perception of customer service. People love to talk about themselves. Get them talking, and they wont’ realize that you haven’t watched a damn movie in three months because you’re always at work. When shelving tapes, ask the customer standing nearby, “Have you seen {insert title]? No? Me neither. I was thinking of getting it this weekend. We can’t keep it on the shelf!” 9 times out of 10, the customer will immediately rent this “hot title”, even if they’ve never heard of it. “Mighty Ducks Three, huh? Think my kid will like it?” is just as useful a conversation starter whether it comes out of the employee’s mouth or the customers. You want knowledgable employees, but first and foremost, you want friendly employees. Randall knew his shit about Star Wars, but he was still a lousy employee. (Clerks, of course).

24
  1. Hire all young wome, exclusively.

2)Have them wear bikinis at work.

If there is a college nearby, you win, guaranteed.

25

Love that movie!

“This job would be great if it wasn’t for the fucking customers!”

/ end Randall Graves channeling /

26

As a marketer I utterly agree that your goal here should be to get new customers in the door. You’re trying to get the introduced to your shop and potential form a buying-habit.

Here’s two things I thought of:

  1. Schools. The local public schools around here will partner with anyone to sell anything. Talk to the principal at some elementary schools about doing a ‘movie night’ thing. Your promotion is that any rentals on day X identified from that school (receipts in a bucket or whatever) generate 10% to the school. Works here for local restaurants and such. Maybe the local PTO could assist. They pass out fliers you return some dough.

  2. The local Comic/Video shop here in town offers a ‘quick return’ discount. They rent movies by whatver length of time. If you return it within two days you get 25% your next rental.

Obviously that second is designed to promote customer loyalty following the initial visit but don’t knock it. Get them to buy three times and they’ll be around for a while.

27

Hire movie experts. Encourage them to talk to the customers about films.

Do advertise the adult section, but subtley.

However, in big bold letters make sure everyone knows you have 'THE ORIGINAL UNCUT VERSIONS- NOT CENSORED BY A MAJOR VIDEO RENTAL CHAIN". One of the things that pisses dudes off about BlockBusters is that they censor their videos.

Make sure you stock all the NC17 Titles they don’t, and advertise same.

BB also has anotehr annoying habit- if you fail to return a DVD they just charge it to you at a rather decent price. Well, that’s not so bad for the store and no so bad for the dude “buying” the video, but it’s unfair for the guy who wants to rent it afterwards, as BB rarely restocks. So, go in there, and get all the titles they are out of. Cool “culty” thinsg like “Dead Like me”, “Scrubs”, etc.

28

I think this is a really good idea. People will do anything to get money to schools. My mom had about a hundred campbel’s soup wrappers in a drawer at one point because she was asked to save them for one of my cousins’ schools. I, personally, couldn’t give a shit, but lots of people do. Also counters the sleazy porn shop image.

29

We have two local independent video stores nearby – one (Store A) about half-mile closer than the other (Store B). I travel the extra distance to go to Store B for a couple of key reasons:

1: Widescreen, widescreen, widescreen. Store A listens to the people who “hate having their movies chopped up”, and so they deal mostly with Pan & Scan versions. Store B informs customers that widescreen is the version that isn’t chopped up. You can still get a P&S version there, but they mostly deal in widescreen. (FTR, I don’t ever rent P&S)

  1. They offer a “same-day return” discount. Bring a movie back the same day you rented it, get your second movie 1/2 off. I don’t take advantage of it often, but when I do, it’s a nice deal.

  2. Here’s the biggie – video stores get their movies in 1-3 weeks before they’re slated to be available for sale/rent. I’ve always been under the assumption that store are forbidden from selling/renting a particular movie until the official release date, but Store B doesn’t seem to care. If they have it in the building, you can buy/rent it. Their purchase price is higher than it would be at the local big box, but if it’s something the customer really wants two weeks early, they’ll definitely pay for it (I’m living proof of that). This option obviously has its risks, but Store B has been doing it for at least five years now, and I’m not aware of any repercussions.

30

The repercussions come if someone turns them in. Street date violations are taken pretty damn seriously by distributors, and you can find yourself on a “no-preorder” list for repeated violations. That means they won’t let you place any orders (and of course, get the merchandise) until after street date.

They’re lucky they haven’t been reported by the other local stores. It would even out the playing field really quickly.

31

Those have got to be bootlegs then. Absolutely don’t go down that road. One of my competitors used to rent their legit copies early. They strong-armed their supplier into shipping them a day or so early so the store would “have time to enter them into inventory and prepare for rental.” It was bullshit, they just wanted the jump on everybody else who played by the rules. The general public thinks it is a dumb rule, I know. But you do sign an agreement with a distributor saying you won’t do that. If you’re not a man of your word then, away with you.

32

I’ve got the add myself to the free kids movies idea.
My favorite all time movie rental store did that. It wasn’t the new movies or the Disney.
It was the cheapy cartoons from TV kind of stuff. They had to have been very inexpensive to buy. (How much does Rocky and Bullwinkle cost?) But my SO and I went exclusively to that store, in large part because of those, and we don’t have kids. We would rent 2 or 3 “real” movies for the weekend, and get a free Rocky and Bullwinkle. Made for a great evening or 2 or movie watching.

How about an employee recommendation shelf? Have each one pick out a movie that like, that isn’t currently a best seller. Something people haven’t heard of. Maybe write a couple of sentences about why they like it.

33

I love employee recommendations, as long as they’re the actual recommendations of employees and not “recommend this, it isn’t renting”.

I absolutely hate the idea of name recoginiton. HATE. Especially paired with an adult section. I wouldn’t come back… and I’d probably warn friends away because it’s just too creepy.

The number one thing that brings me into a movie rental store is selection. I won’t shop at the local Blockbuster because they don’t have a good selection of older films.

Hire smart employees that know and love movies and pay them a good wage. I’m available. :smiley:

34

One video store I used to frequent did something I loved as a kid/teenager.

If you rented 3 movies at a time, you would get a free promo item. Stores get tons of free posters, cardboard standups, mobiles, and other items from distributors, and end up throwing most of them away when the movie is no longer a new release.

This store had a cool “free promo item” corner. I would often go rent a bunch of crappy movies I didn’t intend to watch just so I could lay my hands on the obscure “Howling 3: The Marsupials” poster that was destined to be a valuable collector’s item someday (in my teenage eyes at least :slight_smile: )

35

As far as late fees, I hate when you get the movie back the right day, after the deadline. You know, the movie’s due back by 5:00, and you remember you’ve got the movie at 6:30? I usually just write off the days charge, and wait until the next day to take the movie back, since it’s the same difference to me.

However, if I knew that I could get a discounted late fee, I’d return the movie that night. What I’m proposing is a time-structured late fee. The structure could be simple, and still work. E.G.:

Current practice: If you’re late, you pay for another whole day. Manager can waive the fee.

Structured late fee: If you get the movie back within an hour of due time, no charge. If you get the movie back the right day, but late, 1/2 late charge. Otherwise, full day rental fee.

36

Whew, I just got home from a long day at the store – over 11 hours on my feet. Business was slow for most of the day, but towards the end it started hopping – that felt very good.

I’m beat and starving so I’m going to go get something to eat and relax, but I wanted to thank you all for the excellent, excellent advice. Some of it won’t work for our store and/or customers (for example, the great majority of our customers prefer full frame to widescreen movies), but there are a lot of things there that I could try out. I expected a couple good responses from the Dope, but I didn’t expect this much – and from so many former video store managers to boot! Thanks again; I’ll let you know how things go. And if more people have advice or ideas, by all means chime in – like I said before, I’m open to everything.

37

Use a theme of the month, probably closely related to an event happening that month. With Netflix, horror movies are more difficult to find during October. Christmas movies are more difficult during December. Pick a theme for each month and use it to increase rentals of movies that people really want to see that night and that Netflix might be on long wait.

38

Would it be possible for customers to check their accounts over the web, or phone? The Toronto Public Library does this, and it’s very handy. I can request items, see what I have out, check to see when things were borrowed and when they’re due back, renew things, etc.

That way the harried parent could find out what movies the kids have out and may have lost behind the couch/lent to friends/gotten mixed in with the family’s own videos/gotten eaten by the dog and not told anyone/lost down the heating ducts/etc.

Obviously this would be another big-bucks connection to your stock-keeping system.

Perhaps a simpler version would be an optional reminder service: two days before something is due, the customer gets a reminder email/text message/voice message sent to their chosen phone number or email address. I wish the Toronto library would do this instead of sending the message a week after the item is overdue.

39

I worked at a store that had a summer movie rental special for kids- basically for a flat fee kids could rent any kids movie. It brought a lot of people in.

If you have multiple employees, it might pay to have one wander the floor at peak times making recommendations and just talking about movies to the customer. It will make the employees happy and cultivate a neighborhood feel. Written recommendations are also a good idea.

The only reason anyone is going to go to a video store nowday is to get personal service and the stores that do well around here are the ones that really take on an friendly air of conneseurship- of really caring about these movies, working to offer rare ones, and having a bit of a “hang out” aspect to them. These stores that I’ve seen do well are anchors in the local film scene, and attract a lot of students, artists, etc. That doesn’t mean you have to carry a lot of obscure movies (though that does help) but it does mean you want to have staff that really knows movies and get them talking with the customers.

Why not put up a suggestion builitain board. just leave a lot of index cards and pushpins, and make sure to write replies to each one and post them. It will give you good ideas and cultivate a neighborhood feel. A lot of neighborhood stores do this around here.

40

Uh, everything. Video stores generally have a full record of all of your transactions. It’s essential to being able to work out late fees, etc.