While the giants of video movie and game rentals are permanently shutting down stores across the country, Sahel Nazari is bucking the trend and expanding his business.
In October, the owner of Hollywood Video opened a Prince George store at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Street, the ninth store in a chain he now operates in B.C. So far, business has been steady.
"There is a void in the market, an opportunity for at least one video store in every town at least, and we are filling that void," said Nazari. "All big corporations in this business are not making the money they once were, so they are closing down, one by one. We are a mom-and-pop operation, we are not a big corporation and we don't have huge bank loans on the back of our stores.
"Because the [Rogers] stores in the Hart and College Heights are closed, we are hoping to get at least half of that business away from them. Renting is still much more affordable than buying movies."
Rogers and Blockbuster, whose mass-marketing budgets over the years brought about the demise of many small-time video stores, are rapidly getting out of the video rental business. Blockbuster Canada went into bankruptcy and in September closed all 253 of its remaining stores in Canada. By the end of January, Rogers will have finalized the closure of 63 video stores across Canada, including two in Prince George, leaving just 93 stores still in operation. The one remaining Rogers store in the city, at 102 - 892 Central St., is two blocks away from Hollywood Video.
While video stores have direct competition from Internet movie services such as Netflix and pay-per-view TV service from Shaw, Telus and Bell, Nazari points out not everybody has high-speed Internet, especially in smaller centres, which is necessary to access those services.
Nazari used to own 61 Crazy Mike's Video stores in B.C. Alberta and Washington State, three of which were purchased by Rogers in 1991. He eventually sold the rest of his stores to Blockbuster or the American-based Wilderness Video, which operated in Prince George under the banners, Video Update and Movie Gallery, which are no longer in business.
He now has Hollywood Video stores in Prince George, Fort. St. John, Prince Rupert, Terrace, Kitimat, Smithers, Ladysmith, Sooke and Victoria. He plans to move to Prince George once he finds somebody to manage his store in Fort St. John.
"Our stores are doing quite well, especially in smaller cities where we are the only video stores, but nevertheless, this is a dying business and we are not hoping to stay in the [DVD] market longterm," said Nazari. "Pretty soon the format will change, like it did from Blu-ray to 3D. There will be another format for people to buy machines or it might be on the Internet.
"We are a small operation and hopefully we will give the service and attention that the big corporations had a hard time delivering because they were remotely managed.
