The Hollywood Video I used to work at closed today, sadly, thanks to the extreme incompetence and perhaps even deliberately bad decisions of the corporate offices. So, as was our tradition when anyone left, a sign was altered in a nerdy movie joke fashion. This time? Logan’s Run was the source.
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Perhaps you’re referring to their not changing their business model to delivery via streaming video or discs-by-mail. If that’s not what you meant, here’s my response: I don’t think any corporate office competence in the world could have saved a you-gotta-walk-in-and-get-it-from-us video rental chain in today’s market. Even Blockbuster, who’s combined both approaches, is struggling. So I think it’s unlikely Hollywood could have been saved even if they’d made the same change as Blockbuster, given the economies of scale necessary to make that model profitable. Of course, Hollywood isn’t dead as a chain–yet. Just closing selected locations, including the one nearest us, which I believe we used once or twice in the last nine years of living here.
Oh, they’re dead. They’re in Chapter 11.
They’ve been dead for a few years, really. Mostly because they priced themselves out of competition. Over $5 for any rental in the store, archaic late fee systems, and constantly changing the rental plans. When they used the unlimited monthly plan at $29.99, they could still compete with Netflix. The big problems were anyone who walked in paid way too much, and they tossed it.
They went to a pre-paid points based system where getting those unlimited rentals was $50 a month. Then they tossed that entirely and it was nothing but off the shelf $6+ rentals. Hollywood Video’s stance became totally anti-consumer as the next step of the CEO profit cycle.
That would be where a new CEO comes in and buys up all the stock when it’s in the shitter, bumps the profit like crazy with a short-term gain, sells it, and the long-term loss hits. Stock drops to shit, next CEO comes in, repeats.
They call it a “restructuring”, but I guarantee you won’t see a single open Hollywood Video a year from now. They’re TRYING to close every store. They’ve got a district manager running Phoenix from California, they’ve fired the few DMs who used to work in a store and know how it runs, etc.
And those are the things nobody can see. There’s the pre-order fiascos certainly, the money sunk into games that they sold for two months then cut support on, etc. etc.
Hollywood Video was run into the ground from the top.
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