Weekly Briefing: Video Store Stays Away From Blockbuster Titles

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Weekly Briefing: Video Store Stays Away From Blockbuster Titles

Patty Polinger and Cathy Tauber, who have been friends since pre-school, decided to go into business together in 1985. For years, Polinger sold films to overseas distributors for MGM/UA Entertainment while Tauber was a business/office manager for music industry types, including Frank Zappa. Using their savings and loans from family and friends, the two opened up Vidiots, a Santa Monica video store that specializes in titles not found at the chain operations.

“We were looking to start our own business but we really didn’t know what we wanted to do. The idea just came to us because we were new VCR owners and were frustrated with the lack of choice in terms of foreign, documentary, independent, and offbeat titles. We always intended to have that niche.

“The building we were in had been abandoned for three years so we needed to invest in improvements. We needed signage and we couldn’t get any insurance without (installing) security gates. We opened with 800 titles that we got from mainstream distributors and then we went around to used tape vendors to look for out-of-print tapes.

“We were highly under-capitalized when we started out. We joke that we had more space 1,000 square feet than we did tapes. Today we have over 32,000 titles, and 4,000 of those are DVDs. I would say over 50 percent are not the titles that you find in a video superstore.

“When we’re ordering, trying to figure out how many copies of a title we should order on VHS and DVD is a challenge. We’re trying to gauge what the demand is. It can vary from title to title. We’re totally overcrowded and have no room, but we don’t want to get rid of anything so we’ll have a lot of variety and depth.

“We have 15 employees part time and full time and over 50,000 people on our membership list and maybe 10 percent of those (memberships) have expired.

“Last year was the best year we’ve ever had revenue-wise. A lot of stores closed so there was less competition. The weekly (revenues) range was $13,000 to $21,000. We hope to increase by 10 percent this year.”

David Greenberg

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