How to kill two companies: S. Warehouse and B. buster Video
Jul 24, 2023 12:18:30 GMT -5
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Post by Fatal Rewind on Jul 24, 2023 12:18:30 GMT -5
I thought this would be better off as a separate post, as I go over two companies here, rather than one in the lone Blockbuster thread. Plus this also has a bit of a rant slant to it. And finally, I meant for this to be my first post on this BOTM, but obviously failed there 
Competition can be good, but in this case it helped kill two companies.
When Blockbuster was new and ruling, for those of us that had Sound Warehouse music stores in town, a lot of people didn't think of them in regards to renting movies. Because I remember when Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger came out and I went to my local B. buster for it. In three entire shelves worth--dozens of copies of the movie--there wasn't a single one left. And I'm not whining because I went out from 5-8 p. m. on that Saturday for it, I'm talking a little after 11 a. m. and there were no copies left.
So I went over to S. Warehouse and they still had like half a dozen copies left, so I snagged one.
And S. Warehouse had the right idea with older stuff. Because when I was still new to B. buster, I was wondering if everything was the same price. I checked out a Rich Hall release and was appalled it cost $4, same as the current releases, yet it was over 10 years old (plus it was only an hour long). With S. Warehouse, anything a year or a little more older, those rentals were only $.52. B. buster WOULD eventually drop the price on their older rentals down to $2, but that would be years down the road.
I only saw one tv ad from S. Warehouse stating that, for the price of one B. buster rental, you could rent half a dozen movies from S. Warehouse (again, as long as those rentals were a year or older).
Obviously B. buster saw that, didn't like it, took note and bought out S. Warehouse. They then shuttered their rental section. This made sense from the corporate viewpoint in case consumers were confused, as they could've possibly wondered if you could use a B. buster card at S. Warehouse, if BB was going to drop the price of their older rentals to $.52, etc. From the consumer viewpoint though it sucked, since we'd be going with the more expensive BB rentals and we weren't happy with them (which I sure wasn't).
BB also changed the name to the SW stores. At first I didn't notice the misspelling; I thought it was "Warehouse", NOT "Wherehouse" Music. That ended up being funny, such as "where is the vast music selection? Where are the great deals?", etc. Changing the name to a corporation costs money as well, one of many severely costly mistakes B. buster made.
I used to judge my local SW on their new age selection.
Then that started disappearing. So I started judging them on their heavy metal selection, even though I still had to order that stuff through the mail (which I'm sure surprises no one here whatsoever). They practically boasted that if you couldn't find something in their stores you could order it. I got one cd through them that way but it cost me $18, which was a lot back then and is still fairly high in price today. Mail order cds, even when paying for postage, was cheaper, so I stuck with that. Plus there were even artists where not even Wherehouse could find when I checked (again, this should surprise no one...), so again I stuck with my mail order.
Then I couldn't even judge them for their metal selection because that started shrinking too.
Then on the B. buster front things weren't going well either. Dvds were taking the lead over vhs. BB went the all-dvd route, which cost them in many ways. First, the dvd market penetration wasn't as big as they thought it was. They lost money over a drop in rentals since there were still those renting vhs tapes, as BB got rid of them. There were also other places other than BB, what with the West Coast, Gulf Coast, Hollywood Videos and the like (the latter of which I started renting from, even though they were a little further away from my BB and on the wrong side of the road, but then I wasn't very happy with either one). They also lost even MORE money due to having to buy back many movie titles on vhs once more to lure back customers they lost due to the dvd only selection.
Then with Wherehouse Music, they started selling used cds. Again, it made sense on the corporate, but not necessarily the consumer side because it seemed to me that people were just getting rid of crappy cds they didn't want. The used bins at my local store were crammed full of cds that just sat there. I was surprised that they actually had an underground cd at one point from My Dying Bride, but then I realized that was probably when they sold out and pissed off the fans. Wherehouse Music went out of business not long afterwards. They didn't know what the hell they were doing, along with the market changing to streaming and digital and they didn't know how to deal with that either (but then, most of the physical music stores didn't anyway).
Meanwhile things continued to go badly on the B. buster front, which again was partly due to the streaming and digital side of things. People have been paying more for these last few years nowadays with Christmas shopping due to paying for shipping (I've heard studies saying that we spend 24% more for Christmas when you order stuff via mail vs. when you get stuff at a physical store) when they get stuff through Amazon and all rather than going to physical brick and mortar stores but it's more convenient. And why bother going to two stores when you can just go to one and kill two birds with one stone? These "redbox" things had started popping up at local grocery stores all over the country; you can just surf for a movie at home, pick one out, it'll be ready for you in a day or two and you can grab it on the way out from the grocery store. BB tried doing this as a service in several test malls but it ended up costing them even more money when it failed. People, like me, were pissed off at BB and they only had an identity as a dying dinosaur. As most other video rental chains were out of business by then they could have capitalized on that, but again, no identity + people being pissed at them + they didn't know what to do with this streaming and digital emerging business equals...well, we all know what happened to Blockbuster. There's just reportedly one left in my entire country now.
And by the way, BB, I'm STILL not happy what you did with Sound Warehouse
Even though they weren't the best, those big stores were my favorite and the closest I could get to getting some underground stuff. They probably wouldn't have made it through all the changes in the music industry anyway but you sure as hell didn't help one single bit with the nonsense you pulled.
Competition can be good, but in this case it helped kill two companies.
When Blockbuster was new and ruling, for those of us that had Sound Warehouse music stores in town, a lot of people didn't think of them in regards to renting movies. Because I remember when Kindergarten Cop with Arnold Schwarzenegger came out and I went to my local B. buster for it. In three entire shelves worth--dozens of copies of the movie--there wasn't a single one left. And I'm not whining because I went out from 5-8 p. m. on that Saturday for it, I'm talking a little after 11 a. m. and there were no copies left.
So I went over to S. Warehouse and they still had like half a dozen copies left, so I snagged one.
And S. Warehouse had the right idea with older stuff. Because when I was still new to B. buster, I was wondering if everything was the same price. I checked out a Rich Hall release and was appalled it cost $4, same as the current releases, yet it was over 10 years old (plus it was only an hour long). With S. Warehouse, anything a year or a little more older, those rentals were only $.52. B. buster WOULD eventually drop the price on their older rentals down to $2, but that would be years down the road.
I only saw one tv ad from S. Warehouse stating that, for the price of one B. buster rental, you could rent half a dozen movies from S. Warehouse (again, as long as those rentals were a year or older).
Obviously B. buster saw that, didn't like it, took note and bought out S. Warehouse. They then shuttered their rental section. This made sense from the corporate viewpoint in case consumers were confused, as they could've possibly wondered if you could use a B. buster card at S. Warehouse, if BB was going to drop the price of their older rentals to $.52, etc. From the consumer viewpoint though it sucked, since we'd be going with the more expensive BB rentals and we weren't happy with them (which I sure wasn't).
BB also changed the name to the SW stores. At first I didn't notice the misspelling; I thought it was "Warehouse", NOT "Wherehouse" Music. That ended up being funny, such as "where is the vast music selection? Where are the great deals?", etc. Changing the name to a corporation costs money as well, one of many severely costly mistakes B. buster made.
I used to judge my local SW on their new age selection.
Then that started disappearing. So I started judging them on their heavy metal selection, even though I still had to order that stuff through the mail (which I'm sure surprises no one here whatsoever). They practically boasted that if you couldn't find something in their stores you could order it. I got one cd through them that way but it cost me $18, which was a lot back then and is still fairly high in price today. Mail order cds, even when paying for postage, was cheaper, so I stuck with that. Plus there were even artists where not even Wherehouse could find when I checked (again, this should surprise no one...), so again I stuck with my mail order.
Then I couldn't even judge them for their metal selection because that started shrinking too.
Then on the B. buster front things weren't going well either. Dvds were taking the lead over vhs. BB went the all-dvd route, which cost them in many ways. First, the dvd market penetration wasn't as big as they thought it was. They lost money over a drop in rentals since there were still those renting vhs tapes, as BB got rid of them. There were also other places other than BB, what with the West Coast, Gulf Coast, Hollywood Videos and the like (the latter of which I started renting from, even though they were a little further away from my BB and on the wrong side of the road, but then I wasn't very happy with either one). They also lost even MORE money due to having to buy back many movie titles on vhs once more to lure back customers they lost due to the dvd only selection.
Then with Wherehouse Music, they started selling used cds. Again, it made sense on the corporate, but not necessarily the consumer side because it seemed to me that people were just getting rid of crappy cds they didn't want. The used bins at my local store were crammed full of cds that just sat there. I was surprised that they actually had an underground cd at one point from My Dying Bride, but then I realized that was probably when they sold out and pissed off the fans. Wherehouse Music went out of business not long afterwards. They didn't know what the hell they were doing, along with the market changing to streaming and digital and they didn't know how to deal with that either (but then, most of the physical music stores didn't anyway).
Meanwhile things continued to go badly on the B. buster front, which again was partly due to the streaming and digital side of things. People have been paying more for these last few years nowadays with Christmas shopping due to paying for shipping (I've heard studies saying that we spend 24% more for Christmas when you order stuff via mail vs. when you get stuff at a physical store) when they get stuff through Amazon and all rather than going to physical brick and mortar stores but it's more convenient. And why bother going to two stores when you can just go to one and kill two birds with one stone? These "redbox" things had started popping up at local grocery stores all over the country; you can just surf for a movie at home, pick one out, it'll be ready for you in a day or two and you can grab it on the way out from the grocery store. BB tried doing this as a service in several test malls but it ended up costing them even more money when it failed. People, like me, were pissed off at BB and they only had an identity as a dying dinosaur. As most other video rental chains were out of business by then they could have capitalized on that, but again, no identity + people being pissed at them + they didn't know what to do with this streaming and digital emerging business equals...well, we all know what happened to Blockbuster. There's just reportedly one left in my entire country now.
And by the way, BB, I'm STILL not happy what you did with Sound Warehouse
Even though they weren't the best, those big stores were my favorite and the closest I could get to getting some underground stuff. They probably wouldn't have made it through all the changes in the music industry anyway but you sure as hell didn't help one single bit with the nonsense you pulled.
