‘I run Britain’s oldest DVD store and there is one motive folks nonetheless wish to hire’ | UK | News | EUROtoday

The proud proprietor of Britain’s longest surviving DVD rental store remains to be going sturdy after almost 40 years regardless of the explosion of streaming websites like Netflix and satellite tv for pc TV.

Colin Richards, 70, opened TVL Allstar Video in Haverhill, Suffolk, in 1984 leasing video tapes to different outlets in a yr when Footloose and Ghostbusters first appeared in cinemas.

His retailer now has round 8,500 DVDs that prospects can hire for simply £2 every week, together with Robert Zemeckis’ 1994 movie Forrest Gump – which has been rented not less than 2,000 occasions.

Mr Richards believes the explanation the shop remains to be going is as a result of the youthful era goes to the store to get a retro expertise.

He stated: “A lot of our older customers are bringing in their children and grandchildren into the store to give them the experience the used to have on a Friday night.

“It’s very infectious as a result of the kids will not even have the ability to stroll previous the store with out wanting to return in. Normally, they attempt to hire the identical movie, that is their favorite, each time.

“Obviously people have streaming services at home, but the difference is when you come into the store and pick the movie, you make an effort to sit down and watch it.

“With streaming, you’ll be able to simply be distracted and are available away from it and do one thing else. But once you’ve received an precise disc, you have a tendency to sit down down and watch it – and that is the distinction.”

The video store is believed to be the last video store in the UK but Colin believes they have stayed open because they have ‘diversified into other things.’

Alongside renting DVDs, the dad-of-two also sells stationary, repairs scratched DVDs discs and runs a successful photocopying and printing service.

The store has also turned into a hub for the local community and Colin says they have customers who come in for a chat ‘on a daily basis.’

He said: “We have lots of people who come into the shop each day, as a result of we have been right here for such a very long time. The older era generally need assistance with filling out types or getting stuff out of their types, so they arrive in usually simply so have a chat.

“We might be the only person that they talk to that day. We’ve been here such a long time that people know we are here and know if they need help with anything, then they can come in and see us.”

When the shop opened, it value £1.75 an evening to hire out a movie however now prospects must pay £3.25 for a newly launched movie or £2 every week for some other movie.

However Colin says that in the event that they modified their costs with inflation, that one movie would value round £5 – £6 per evening.

The grandad-of-four added that Covid was ‘an absolute nightmare’ for his enterprise and it has been ‘very troublesome’ to get a few of his prospects again.

Colin stated: “In the 40 years that we’ve been trading, we’ve had lots of different competition such as Sky TV, which has affected our business.

“But Covid was an absolute nightmare for us, we had been pressured to shut and the closure meant all our common prospects needed to go and discover a totally different supply.

“It’s very, very difficult to get them customers back. It’s only in the first part of this year, we’ve seen the business slowly get back to some normality.”