Browse archives: 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995

Published on 11/03/1999 All articles from this issue

High rent and chain-store competition close Video Man

printer friendly version

By Clyde Noel

Special to the Town Crier

During the early 1990s, people voted Video Man as the top video store in several Town Crier surveys. Last week Video Man closed its doors.

"The huge rents landlords want in Los Altos are driving small retailers out of business," said Hank Loumena, the former owner of Video Man. Loumena purchased Video Man in 1990, then sold the business to Brian Henderson in 1997. When Henderson recently vacated Video Man, moving to Olympia, Wash., Loumena, who lives in Carmel, returned to Los Altos to liquidate the inventory.

"The rent was too high when he (Henderson) was in the 3,600-square-foot building on State Street," Loumena said. "He moved to an 800-square-foot building he subleased in the Central Plaza from Los Altos Card & Party and he couldn't cut it because of changing retail patterns."

As soon as Henderson moved to the Central Plaza, his business dropped 50 percent. "When the store moved to the Central Plaza, it lost a lot of foot traffic," Loumena said. "In summertime, people would go to Baskin & Robbins to get ice cream and then come across the street and get a movie."

Henderson also found he couldn't compete with the national chains of Blockbuser Video and Hollywood Video.

"National chains can purchase new releases cheaper than independent stores, and offer multiple night rental on new releases. Video Man couldn't compete," Loumena said. "Then cable cut into the business with HBO and Showtime and it became harder for a video store to survive."

VHS sales also affected Video Man. Two years ago, Video Man's Christmas sales of VHS titles were over $8,000. Last year, the sales were under $1,000 because people went to the Costco/Price Club and bought them much cheaper.

Loumena is selling all Video Man's titles to a concern in the East, which will cull the inventory and sell the important titles to other dealers.

"VHS will go the way of Beta, and DVD will take over," Loumena said. "That little DVD disk doesn't take up much space and you don't need a lot of room to sell the new system."