My dad ran several video stores from about 1988 to about 1994. He even bought out the earliest video store in our town - Hollywood Video - and switched the name of all stores to Hollywood Video. He got out of the business when the national chain wanted to come to town and offered him a ridiculously low price for all the stores. Sadly he took their first offer. They didn't care about the stores, they just realized they couldn't win any trademark infringement lawsuit against the owner of a store that at one time rented beta tapes and laserdiscs only after you paid a steep membership fee.
In the first years, the blockbuster movies would cost him about $65 each to buy and they did creep up over the years. While in theory you could rent them several times per week for about $3, in reality the newest releases (maybe less than a month old) only completely rented out on the weekends. It was hard to get most people to walk into the store to get a deeply discounted new release most weekdays. Once the movie had been released for a month or so, most almost-new-releases would have some copies that sat on the shelf on the weekends too.
The "sell through" movies - those that sold retail at $15 - $30 - were better. He would buy a large number of them and they would rent well for a few weeks. After the initial flurry of heavy rentals for a few weeks, he would start to sell them off. I think there was a small profit - better than the expensive movies which were almost always money losers.
Then there was this small little box in the corner (or under the counter in one location) where some other movies were kept. The movie cases for maybe 50 movies were all collapsed. Each of these movies rented for nearly the same cost as a new release, with little discounting for old titles. $30 was a very expensive one, most were about $15. They would rent well throughout the week, mostly to very loyal customers. There was only ever one copy of each title per store and the stock rotated between stores with occasional swaps with stores owned by others in neighboring towns until the movies wore out. Certain portions of scenes would wear out before others, presumably due to replaying action shots. Had it not been for this little box of porn occupying maybe 10 square feet of a 600(?) sq ft store, he would have been out of business long before Hollywood Video threw him a lifeline.
One of the stores he would do swaps with had a somewhat private area like that. I think my dad did not build such a thing because of fear that people would, umm, linger. I don't know if that was a real problem at the other store or not. Also, if the area offers some privacy from the staff it is harder to take a quick glance to make a guess as to whether anyone was shopping this area and whether they looked old enough.
I think that there would often be standees advertising movies that shielded the area from visibility from the street and casual non-staff observers. You had to be "this tall" to see into the box, the front was covered with 18+ signs, and it was either next to the counter or placed on the counter at the store where it was stored behind/under the counter. There really wasn't a problem with youngsters taking peeks.
I worked briefly at a video store part time around 2000. There wasn't that brisk of a business from the little private room, at least not during the times when I worked (which included week days). But by this time home internet was broadly available, perhaps only dial up for many people in my area but it was still available. I wonder if the new competition for this subsidy business wasn't a bigger part of the fall of video stores than it seemed to be.
Although, most of the other staff were quite "judgey" so its possible that I just worked at a store that wasn't popular with those customers.
In the first years, the blockbuster movies would cost him about $65 each to buy and they did creep up over the years. While in theory you could rent them several times per week for about $3, in reality the newest releases (maybe less than a month old) only completely rented out on the weekends. It was hard to get most people to walk into the store to get a deeply discounted new release most weekdays. Once the movie had been released for a month or so, most almost-new-releases would have some copies that sat on the shelf on the weekends too.
The "sell through" movies - those that sold retail at $15 - $30 - were better. He would buy a large number of them and they would rent well for a few weeks. After the initial flurry of heavy rentals for a few weeks, he would start to sell them off. I think there was a small profit - better than the expensive movies which were almost always money losers.
Then there was this small little box in the corner (or under the counter in one location) where some other movies were kept. The movie cases for maybe 50 movies were all collapsed. Each of these movies rented for nearly the same cost as a new release, with little discounting for old titles. $30 was a very expensive one, most were about $15. They would rent well throughout the week, mostly to very loyal customers. There was only ever one copy of each title per store and the stock rotated between stores with occasional swaps with stores owned by others in neighboring towns until the movies wore out. Certain portions of scenes would wear out before others, presumably due to replaying action shots. Had it not been for this little box of porn occupying maybe 10 square feet of a 600(?) sq ft store, he would have been out of business long before Hollywood Video threw him a lifeline.