After more than two decades helping people in Woonona find the right movie to hire for a Friday night, the local Video Ezy store is shutting up shop.
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Franchisee Colin James said he’d been renting out VHS videos and later DVDs for 25 years.
“People’s love for movies hasn’t disappeared, they just get them from different places,” Mr James said.
“There’s a whole host of businesses that will eventually be victim to technology and I guess we’re one of them. I guess it’s the sign of the times.”
In the good times, the Woonona store employed 30 people – more recently there were only three working there.
Mr James said the main factors in his decision to close the business was the arrival of the NBN in Woonona around 12 months ago – which allowed people to easily stream movies – and issues with the franchisor.
Mr James said the company was “abandoning” the stores, supplying much less in the way of marketing and training, and that there was a dispute lodged with the ACCC.
“Gradually over time it’s become financially unviable and as a result you would have seen a number of stores disappear,” Mr James said.
“It’s becoming a situation of the last man standing.”
While technology has made it unnecessary to get in the car and drive to a video shop, Mr James said there were still those who preferred the personal touch to online offerings like Netflix.
“Some people don’t like subscription services, they don’t want to pay $20, $30 a month,” he said.
“They just want to hire a movie when they feel like it.”
Many of Mr James’ customers are “disappointed” the store is closing.
For them, he said, the local video shop was more than just a place to get a new release.
“We still would get a lot of families who used it as a bit of an outing to come into the store,” he said.
“And I would always get people saying, ‘I love coming into the store. I go down there and see someone I haven’t seen in a while and have a chat’.”
Mr James has a degree in economics and said he will look for a job in accounting and auditing – but that might not be as good as the times he stood behind the counter at Video Ezy.
“I love the interaction with the people – I think it’s really such a good job,” he said.
“You meet so many really nice people and there’s a good local community here. In Woonona it’s like everybody knows everybody.
“You walk down the street and it you can end up saying hello to 15 people.
“I’m going to miss it for sure.”