CIRCUS BUFFET 2
*note: new items posted at the Bison Bulk site https://bisonbulk.blogspot.com/
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note: free book. Looks like a turd, but I'm going to try it just because the buxomly cover: https://amzn.to/2rnzCoc . More low expectations with this free zombie novel: https://amzn.to/2FKItF5
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I trust you all understand
that I’m not necessarily trying to convince anyone that they could run a
successful video store business today.
It would be a bit tricky.
Traditionally, you draw everyone in with new releases. If that weeks selection is all rented, or not
interesting to you, you went to the older movies to find one. You invested in the trip, so you didn’t want
to leave with nothing. Without those new
releases, what would be your draw to snag customers?
*
Blockbuster tried to be
all about new releases, pricing their old movies too high to be much of an
incentive. They weren’t even paying for
new releases but sharing rental revenue so as to have enough new releases so no
one was left without their first choice.
But that meant prices were too high.
Sure, prices were high in 1985. I’d
say probably close to $8 inflation adjusted.
But twenty years prior, it was cheap to rent compared to buying ( 1/20th
). Blockbuster kept the rental price the
same as prices to buy plummeted-to about a 1:4 ration. Redbox was successful by bringing the rent to
own ratio back to traditional numbers.
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People have few problems
going out to rent a movie. If the rental
fee is low enough. The convenience of
streaming is a fiction. There are plenty
of people who can only afford streaming, but the people who want to travel to
rent and can afford the fee no longer have the option because all the video
store closed. So, like I said, the
dynamics are different and it would take a new business model to draw in
customers, but RedBox and Netflix DVD prove there is business for physical disc
rentals. Why aren’t there businesses
opening to fill this need?
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I submit to you the most
likely culprit is rent. I believe too
high rent killed the video stores ( not Blockbuster, the mom and pops who
couldn’t stay in business after Blockbuster closed, or couldn’t start a video
business after ). Big corporate stores
can stay in business with higher rent.
They just buy and build and with low interest rates pay less than
rentals. But small businesses don’t
really have that option and so pay higher rents without high volume to offset
that.
*
Rents are insane now,
whether renting from a landlord or renting from the bank and local
government. After the real estate
bubble, all these cheese dingus humpers the government bailed out kept
foreclosed homes off the market to jack up prices everywhere. The marginal businesses, those completely
dependent on luxury spending ( like all those women’s clothes outlets. Those were happy consumer discretionary
spending, they weren’t clothing as shelter must have items. A drop in the budget and these stores were
the first to see sales declines ) were facing a retail rental sector the same
as home renters-artificial price hikes from bankers.
*
High rent was what killed
our towns book store. It wasn’t lack of
demand because of e-books. Traditional
book publishers selling all that crap like romance and James Peterson, they
rarely sell an e-book below paper price.
You want the convenience of not driving to the book store or not waiting
for the mail, you pay full price. And
traditional publishers figured out long ago the kind of mind opium recreational
readers will buy.
*
( a serious reader reads
for recreation but has reading as a primary hobby. A non serious reader, a fair weather reader,
a recreational reader, doesn’t really enjoy reading and only does so as a
marginal occasional entertainment. Ex-wife #2 was a perfect example. She wouldn’t pick up and read ANYTHING, even
if her life depended on it. Until that
once a year or whenever that Daniel Steel came out with a new book. Then she bought it full price hardback. These are the kind of chumps that have been
keeping the New York book sellers alive for some time now ).
*
E-books are not a danger
to companies or authors selling books.
Kindle Unlimited is not a danger.
Serious readers pay serious money to read. They will buy e-books, when the budget is
tight, and might dabble in buffet books ( although my contention is that Kindle
Unlimited [KU] is mostly catering to recreational readers ). But they will still buy paper books and they
will still go to book stores. Serious
readers spend money everywhere, from retail to mail to streaming. The book store wasn’t killed by Amazon, but
by high rents. Sure, perhaps new release
books might not draw in customers like they used to. Amazon might have cannibalized those
sales.
*
Our book store drew in
customers with used books ( cheaper than Amazon ) and a huge selection of
magazines. The place was always busy
open to close. And this is a small town. They stayed in business for decades PAST
Amazon. About five years PAST Kindle books. The only variable left to explain their
demise is rent. They used e-books as an
excuse. But they had other areas they
could cut back. They closed the coffee
shop portion and shrunk the magazine display portion to halve their rent. They could have seriously cut back more on
labor as the owner could have worked the counter more.
*
The store stayed open for
years past the benchmark when Amazon sold more e-books than paper books. Ever since then, e-books have been losing
ground back to paper books as the honeymoon is ending and serious readers
realize that e is not a substitute but merely a supplement. So the store had a positive trend going for
it. Except for that one pesky rising price
of wildly inflated real estate prices.
The banks jacked up rental prices through lowering interest rates ( high
demand than supply ) but once that backfired they switched to immigration and
artificial scarcity. Gott Damn banker
whore sonsa bitches.
END ( today's related link https://amzn.to/2ren8yr )
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there
Speaking of recreational reading. I'm just starting book ten of that Comet Clemet series. Goes to twelve for final.
ReplyDeleteOn kindel unlimited cost about five bucks for around 3,500 pages. Not bad
I admit I got a bit bored and moved on to other, closer to the mark PA, beginning about book three. But I've also been reading less as the weather improves and the winter long added winter long Honey Do list is unfurled. Just got done with the second day of weedwacking at the BPOD. Caught it a lot earlier this year, but still enough to kick this aging fools ass.
DeleteSorry, mush-mouth. I added an extra "winter long".
DeleteWell, let's see. The past two weeks I've read three thousand pages. Painted an entire house and made six hundred bucks extra. Mowed the lawn twice. Did around twenty miles on the treadmill. Did some organization in my shop. Around ten hours weeding. Cleaned the chicken coop. Repaired the kitchen sink drain.
DeleteNever boring around Casa de Spud lol...
I just learned how to replace parts in a toilet. Furthest thing from exciting. But I'll die with way more skills than I thought :)
DeleteWhen retail rents are high you HAVE to maximize the efficiency of the space in all ways and most of what I've seen is anything plus. You know what takes up the most space in EVERY retail establishment I have ever seen? Traffic patterns - the corridors the customers traverse. Take a look at the average Barnes and Noble and the traffic pattern takes up more space than the product. WTF? That's upside down and anti-successful.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with traffic patterns, once again, is that the overbearing hand of gov't is at the root. Corridors, or aisles, MUST be a certain width to comply with all of the gov't mandates such as ADA (americans with disabilities act) and fire egress. Nevermind that the entire building including the hidden attic area is already required to have sprinklers and smoke barriers, and that less than 1 person in 100 requires more than 2' of corridor width. And on and on and on.
Because of my business I am uniquely aware of many things the average person is not in this regard and I'll tell you right now that the BIGGEST roadblock in this country is the overwhelming burden of taxation at all levels and horrendous multiple layers of overlapping regulations.
Reduce those 2 things to less than 90% of their current rate and I have no doubt at all that the economy in this country would take off like a bottle rocket over night.
Unemployment would plummet, wages would soar, and company profits would be stratospheric and even at less than 10% taxes would overflow coffers to where the corp of engineers would need to be called in to handle the deluge.
This rotten assed gov't truly is the most evil thing that has ever existed on this planet and there is not a single person in this country and most of the world that has not been tragically effected by it.
THAT was my pop-off valve of the day.
Now, even though it's only 10:30am I'm gonna go grab an adult beverage and sit my old ass on the porch and watch some wild animals. Summer's brief here in the hinters.
Are you sure the Soviet Union wasn't a tiny bit more sucky? I'm not arguing with you, other than the final points we could finely argue. Such as, it is NOT the government but the central bank that is far more evil. The gov are merely their brown shirts. "Efficiency" is the enemy of profits from the bankers standpoint. Borrow LESS money? You, my good sir, are smoking a crack like substance. Peace :)
Delete"...but the central bank that is far more evil..."
DeleteWhat affects you and me directly, the central bank or the body that creates the laws and regulations that we must deal with everyday?
I'm not condoning the bank at all, I just think it's another facet of the demon that needs to be killed.
The bank is far more insidious. The gov, you can overthrow or vote out ( in theory ). A central bank doesn't let go until imperial collapse. So, short term the gov causes all the issues ( besides inflation ). Long term the central bank causes far more damage.
DeleteI’m struggling to think if I’ve even been to a video store since the 80’s? I’ll download the movie or tv series from youtube or similar, if at all possible. Sometimes I’m forced to buy, and it might be through Amazon Streaming or the like. These days I just store them on my computer hard drive; storage being as cheap as it is now, since you can get up to around a 4 Terabyte hard drive (That’s more capacity than Richard Simmons anus, or 10² cubic ft :D) for around $100.
ReplyDeleteDriving down to a video store is so “I like to go places and see other people”. And since I hate other people, this excludes thyself :D
WD Blue 4TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013HNYV8I/ref=twister_B01MU9EG5O?th=1
I was regularly going to video stores through 2007. I'm not real fond of people myself, but that was probably the ONLY thing getting me out of the house weekly besides work. Grocery shopping was monthly, mostly. Once off grid I had to do the laundrymat weekly and that is a special kind of hell. Since 2009 I was going to RedBox but that was hit and miss as quality really went to crap. Now I'm back to only leaving the house to walk the dog or bike to my place. Shopping is again monthly. RedBox is the only reason to get out more often, if that ever happens. I think I average renting a DVD once a month. Thanks for the visual on Richard Simmons ass :)
DeleteLast time I rented a movie it was on VHS. LOL
DeleteFWIW, Western Digital hard drives have more erros than all the others combined. So when I got my 2TB USB portable drive over 2 years ago I went the other way, with Seagate that has the least amount of errors. Smal, shirt pocket size, black one for about $60 on amazon.
Yeah, that Richard Simmons visual was a little more than I required. heh
I don't care for the increase in storage size. Too many eggs in one basket. I miss the concept of floppy's, even if I don't miss the expense. But you sure didn't waste storage space, either.
DeleteToo much storage in itself isn't a bad thing but I do agree about the eggs thing.
DeleteI have a handful of USB drives, from 40gb to 128gb with various important things that I CANNOT lose no matter what. The backup files for my business are on 4 different drives and each is updated regularly.
40gb Kingston USB drives are very affordable on amazon, maybe less than $20, so multiples are easily done and I can vouch for their reliability. In 10 years of heavy use I have never had one fail. The 40gb one is purple.
My main issue is since I'm mostly text storage, you get thousands of book on a disc and have no idea what you have. Kind of like my paper books :)
DeleteResidential rents have risen due to hatred. I have been a landlord for 17 years. The prevailing mood among tenants is that I AM FUCKING THEM. I now use a rental service that fields complaints and handles the eviction. I now charge $200 extra per month because I am tired of insults. Residential rentals are too toxic to deal with now.
ReplyDeleteThe NOL is lowering rents as the local economy contracts. We stay lowest price for best space, free winter heat. Two out of three tenants are decent. Run more like a mom&pop than a corporate, plus we live on site. Far from perfect, of course.
DeleteSounds like you have a good business model Lord Bison. I always kept rents low and had a washer and dryer in the rental. A washer and dryer rent for 100 bucks a month from Renta Center so a " free " set draws tenants. I stopped offering these when the tenants broke them repeatedly. In this area, a feces flinging baboon would be cleaner and less destructive than low income tenants. All praise your hair, may it shimmer eternally.
DeleteThe NOL has a coin-op washer and dryer. Less abuse that way. Love your "baboon more clean"! LOL. Just like in public restrooms-how we aren't all dead from plague...
DeleteMinions can consider variables to these ideas. Run the shop like an immigrant family, no wages, just room and board out back. Like "Hop-sing's merchantile", carry more diverse product lines. Video/audio entertainment rental, (burn bootleg copies/extra products) books-sale, rental-loan exchange on fee basis. Coffee and premade snack/sandwich canteen schtick. Alcohol served on the down-low red cup style. Pornography dvd/mags behind the curtain in the corner. Make it a social club enterprise, known members, not subjected to gov't snooping-taxes-regulations, like ethnic bars and clubs in old city. Make it mobile like a roach coach, out of a truck or trailer at swap meets or roadside peddling like in every other shithole spot in america. Use barter tactics to move items in the back door and out the front door in step with current trends of what is at the time: valued. Utilize your network of scavengers. The local perp may come around with boxes of dvds and books from an unattended location to barter for some food and hot coffee (stockpile foam cups and those to-go food boxes), thinking he got the better deal! Think outside the box, literally.
ReplyDeleteHow sad is it that it has come to the above?
DeleteDeclining EROI, declining available energy per person, and soon declining gross energy overall, until the small zero-point-energy system gets installed in my backyard. And, the poverty-lowIQ-addiction problem.
DeleteThe solution is, as usual, a 95%+ die-off. Genetic research of human DNA indicates bottlenecks of only a few thousand individuals not that long ago (10000 years?). It's coming again with the next major suck-era.
Sounds like what we were taught Russia was like when we were in school 50 years ago.
DeleteA friend whose family escaped from Czechoslovakia back in the 60's told me "When the rules get tougher the people get sneakier."
5:31-I used to have that bottleneck year memorized. Can't recall now. 60k ago? The volcano. Anyway, I don't believe it was 10k ago as that was the start of the Agriculture revolution which was probably both climate change and overpopulation ( for hunting/gathering ).
Delete*
GS-I think the difference was the officials in the Soviet Union were poor and just needed a bribe to conduct black market activity. Here, officials are promoted and get richer by busting you for infractions. Less ability to thrive unofficially.
Hi Jim,
DeleteWhat if the extinction event (flood/volcano/earthquake/dimness) was from a near-Earth encounter with a large object that slingshotted around the earth (between the earth and Moon)?
Stopping this kind of thing is what a space-based civilization could guard against (nukes/lasers/engines on the target) with a little push a few years out to make a damaging trajectory into a tourist sighting. We have to protect the moon as well.
pdxr13
The problem with thinking we can be in space and doing something is that during an economic collapse, you cannot by definition advance but may only try to manage a devolution. It is entropy. Which almost makes me believe the tinfoil hats about the moon landing being a hoax.
DeleteThe last moon landing was the PEAK. literally and figuratively. Then the bribery for the minorities couldn't be a higher standard of living from an improving economy any longer, it had to be about integration and welfare. The hippies were hip to the fact something was rotten, but they usually just thought the direction of progress was wrong, not that progress was becoming impossible in a 'growth' sense.
DeleteIt had to suck back then. Collapse is old hat to us, to them it must have just been confusing.
DeletePlenty of bubbles to get rich on between then and now, if one could get out in time to hold onto something, and the old mechanism of getting ahead still existed to some extent. Now, the bubbles leak nearly as fast (or faster then) as they inflate... The economic treadmill is getting faster than we can run for long, abject poverty isn't an immediate killer YET in the USA, but it is slowly getting that way.
DeleteNot an immediate killer. Mostly you are sucking up poisons that kill much later. But already lack of medical are accelerating that. Hard to say the tipping point. We have been bloating on fake food for so long, when does the number of calories available go critical ( outside a event like EMP, supervolcano, etc )?
DeleteRent is insane levels all round. It's cannibalising the economy.
ReplyDeleteMy barber tells me that his landlord calculates how much he's earning & they increase the rent accordingly. He tells me soon he'll just close the doors.
My co-worker had a coffee shop. Same story. Once he was locked in they slowly at first then at a faster rate increased the rent until he couldn't maintain the business.
Right. Why keep the golden goose alive when you can catch another? :)
DeleteKurt Saxon video (The site has all his other books as well)
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.org/details/KurtSaxonVideotapeSpecialVol.I
Bless both your hearts. Appreciate the heads up.
Delete