Surviving the red scare: the Redbox revolution

And then there were three — Top Ten Video, Plan Nine Film Emporium and Family Video.

For a decade, signs of a third red scare have quietly crept into grocery stores, McDonald’s drive-throughs and gas stations across the nation. But it’s not a fear of communist infiltration that has video store owners biting their nails. For them, the Redbox revolution means an influx of 12-square-feet kiosks.

And in Bloomington, doors have closed because of it.

During the last five years, three Bloomington Blockbuster locations and two Movie Gallery stores disappeared, as did the Classic Pyx and The Cinemat before them. Two locally-owned video stores, Top Ten Video and Plan Nine Film Emporium, survived.

Two years ago, Family Video, a company with more than 735 stores in 19 states, moved into the building where Movie Gallery had been previously located.

The three businesses attract different demographics and offer various products at varying prices. However, their owners share a common value for friendly service and customer interaction — something they said a box or a website cannot offer.

“That Redbox isn’t going to tell you, ‘I’m not going to charge you, even though your rental is two days late, because you come in here often,’” said Dick Wilson, who has owned Top Ten Video since 1987.

He said his friendly relationships with his customers and that his business is independently owned allows him to write his own rules, instead of sticking to stringent, impersonal policies.  

Wilson and his store manager, David Deboer, know many of their customers by face, if not by name.

Eddie Rainey, who has had a customer membership account with Top Ten since the 1980s, is on a first name basis with the employees.

“It’s personable, and I just like coming here,” Rainey said. “I do not like Redbox at all. You can never find what you want. Here, you have a wide selection of movies, and you can come in and get the exact movie you want, and they almost always have it.”

Although selection size is also a contributing factor to why Una Winterman rents her movies from Top Ten, she said that, more importantly, she wants to support local business. Winterman is cofounder of the Bloomington nonprofit Local First Indiana, an organization committed to supporting locally-owned, independent businesses in the community.

“It affects all the shopping I do,” she said. “Generally, if you shop locally, it impacts the economy, really, in a key way.”

A study published in 2008 by Civic Economics and Local First West Michigan determined that for every $100 spent at an independent, locally-owned business, $68 of it stays in the local economy — but the same amount of money spent at a non-locally owned business only injects $43 back into the community.

Erin Tobey, the store manager at Plan Nine Film Emporium, said her employees have a soft spot for preserving and supporting local business, too.

“I work here out of dedication to the media,” she said. “I think there’s definitely something to be said for just being able to occupy the physical space and pick up the physical boxes to look at and read the covers. People are comforted by being able to physically move from space to space. It’s so overwhelming to have such an abstract, unlimited selection like the Netflix library.”

Tobey said because Plan Nine’s library is less mainstream and more alternative cult, horror and foreign films, they compete with the Netflix model rather than Redbox. In the last year, the business has implemented a program they modeled after Netflix.

Their customers can pay a set fee each month — $15 per month for two rentals at a time or $20 per month for three rentals at a time — for unlimited access and no late fees. Tobey said 60 to 75 percent of their customers participate in this club.

“We definitely had to evolve to compete,” she said. “I feel like our biggest competitor is Netflix and online streaming. Most of our success, I would say, is solely due to the loyalty of our customers and the soul of Bloomington to see our local businesses succeed.”

Top Ten has also had to adapt to the changing movie market.

“We’ve had to try to diversify,” Wilson said.

For 10 years, Top Ten has sold an eclectic sampling of products to boost profits. Wilson sells cigarettes, soda, popcorn, candy, ice cream, phone cards and pre-paid cellphones. He said he sells 500 to 600 phones a year.

Wilson said he hopes his cheaper prices and extended rental windows will give renters an incentive to drive to his store on South Walnut Street, rather than swing by one of the 15 Redbox kiosks in Bloomington.

He said he read in an article that the average rental time for a Redbox DVD is 2.7 days. At $1.20 per day for Redbox DVDs, it is cheaper to rent from Top Ten, where their new releases are $3.74 for five days.

All three businesses said being in a college town helps business. Both Family Video and Plan Nine are open until midnight, and Top Ten sticks around until two in the morning.

“The late hours make the difference,” Wilson said. “We get the bar crowd.”

But Redbox and Netflix are available 24/7, and that is appealing to a large demographic of Americans.

According to an article in Home Media Magazine, Redbox rented 684 million DVDs and installed 5,200 new kiosks in 2011.

It now accounts for 37 percent of the U.S. physical disk rental market.

“Redbox is the fast, easy and convenient way to rent new release movies and video games,” Redbox Senior Public Relations Manager Kate Brennan said in an email. “Each kiosk holds more than 600 discs, representing up to 200 titles, including standard definition DVDs, Blu-ray Discs and video games, making Redbox a fully automated video rental store contained in 12-square feet of retail space.”

Family Video store manager Heidi Zumkeller said movie companies are starting to implement policies that favor video stores because Redbox and Netflix have hurt their sales.

Rental stores have a one-month head start. Companies such as Redbox and Netflix now have to wait 56 days after movies hit stores such as Walmart to rent them out. Video stores only have to wait 28 days.

For students in a unfamiliar town, the most consistent rental place that exists across the country is Redbox.

“If I ever rent, I go to Redbox because they usually have the new releases I want,” senior Alexa Zeller said. “It is just so convenient when you’re at the store to grab a movie on your way out.”