‘It’s bittersweet’: Video rental store to shut its doors after 40 years in business

Glen Fuhl is fast to say he’s not keen about motion pictures.

But, when an acquaintance approached him with a chance to turn into the proprietor of Video King, a flourishing impartial rental retailer in a then-rising trade, Fuhl took an opportunity.

His father had owned his personal business and Fuhl knew he would observe in his footsteps.

Decades later, Fuhl is aware of the business by coronary heart and by the numbers.

He can let you know when the primary Blockbuster video rental retailer opened in Winnipeg, what number of copies of “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” he bought when the beloved movie was launched and the variety of new theatrical releases final yr.

But early subsequent month Fuhl is urgent cease for good on Video King.

“It’s our 40th anniversary, so it’s bittersweet,” Fuhl stated in an interview. “We’ve had record days. It’s just sad to say that it’s the end to get these record days.”

Video King opened its doorways within the metropolis’s Transcona neighbourhood within the mid-’80s because the video rental trade was beginning to increase throughout Canada.

For years, the small mom-and-pop store offered a spot for households and film buffs to peruse the aisles trying to find the proper Friday evening flick.

Even as chain rental shops equivalent to Blockbuster and Rogers Video shut their doorways within the mid-2000s, changing into victims of streaming providers and the digital film revolution, Video King was capable of preserve folks coming again with its worker experience and picks.

The retailer wasn’t with out its personal setbacks when film streaming got here in, however after a tumultuous few years through the COVID-19 pandemic and a months-long Hollywood strike between actors and writers’ unions and studios, Fuhl noticed the writing on the wall.

“Hollywood went on strike and that was the nail in the coffin. We went so many months without movies,” he stated.

“Now, the strike is settled, but it’s too late. People aren’t coming back. The masses aren’t going to come back to support the business.”

Fuhl used to herald a median of 36 new film titles in a month. He stated for all of final yr, he had 14.

“That’s how bad it was with the strikes,” he stated.

The businessman and councillor within the rural municipality of Springfield purchased into the business in 1988. It additionally contains distribution of flicks to different distributors, equivalent to comfort shops throughout the province.

At one level, Fuhl stated he was supplying to greater than 400 sellers by way of rural components of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and northwestern Ontario, the place entry to high-speed web isn’t dependable.

Leila Dance, with the world’s business district, recollects hitting up a few of these spots throughout her childhood as a solution to go the time on a wet evening on the lake.

“It wasn’t until I started working for Transcona Biz four years ago that I realized that we were renting videos from Video King. I didn’t realize that the movies that we were getting out at this corner store out at the lake were from him,” stated Dance, the manager director of Transcona Biz.

“It was kind of a cool little aha moment.”

Customer Bud Smith estimates greater than half of the hundreds of flicks he owns come from Video King.

“(Fuhl’s) always had B-movies, the classics, your A-list movies. I’ve always been able to get a variety, but he always seems to have the odd one that’s kind of unique or a little bit hard to find,” Smith stated in an interview.

Smith spent hours within the retailer through the years chatting with workers about new releases and proposals. It’s these moments that he stated he’ll miss essentially the most.

“They’ve been good to me over the years,” he stated.

Inside Video King, yellow paper indicators are taped on the cabinets with crimson letters emblazoned throughout them promoting $5 motion pictures and different reductions.

In the again, film posters are stacked by the lots of on pallets. Fuhl has catalogued the 7,500 titles from youngsters’s motion pictures to blockbusters with the hopes of promoting off the inventory.

When requested if he has stored any for himself, he stated the poster from the unique “Ghostbusters” hangs in his dwelling.

Fuhl plans to proceed the distribution aspect of the business for now, realizing that it additionally has a “timeline.”

Video King is about to shut its doorways on April 6.