jezzza

Hey guys,

I am starting up a DVD shop with my brother next week, we have rented the shop and it is completely empty.

The first thing we are a little concerned about ...is where do we buy all the dvd boxsets and all the DVDs at whole sale prices??????? I live in Australia, but does anyone know which company or where I am supposed to buy all the dvds in bulk from much cheaper?? Am happy to import from anywhere in the world - as long as it is cheaper.

I want to buy in bulk, i.e. a bulk of tv episodes etc.

Cheeers,


-Jeremy

Brent L

Well it certainly sounds like you thought this out.

andicus

My thoughts exactly...

Regardless, I would think that you'd need to look into distributors in Australia, or you'll have all kinds of additional headaches with importing/customs, etc.

Best of luck!

MovieExchange

Posting this to multiple forums is not going to get you much good will around here....

island007

You should have a solid business plan before you decide to start a new business.

raytrade

I already posted a response in the other duplicate thread you entered in the Bargains forum but you also do realize that Australia is a different region code than the USA and that US distributors will not carry other-region titles, right? If you are looking to import in US Region 1 releases for those customers of yours with multi-region plauers, you will end up quite surprised that the price from wholesalers/distributors for the type of quantities you are likely to want is HIGHER than the sale price during the week of release at the major retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, etc. (IE: a $24.98 SRP DVD can cost $17.59 wholesale, but Best Buy will have it for $14.99). As movieexchange mentions in the other thread, you will not be able to compete against the big-box retailers on pricing at all.

emhello

oh boy... I hope you're independently wealthy and just doing this as a hobby. Running a retail business is tough enough even with a great business model.

jezzza

ye, i know this is all my fault.

do you guys know of any in the USA or does china make any? not so worried about regions any more.

jezzza

thanks a heap btw for all your replies.


VERY much appreciated for your time.

Kocheese99

one distributer that i've worked with is VPD, they handle alot of the smaller chains and are pretty good price wise.

Tarantino

Yeah...that's something you'd want to figure out first...

= J

MovieExchange

VPD blows. There's no way you can buy from them and compete with the bigger chains. In the states, you can walk into Best Buy on Tuesday morning and buy the new releases on sale and get them cheaper than you can from VPD.

Fincher Fan

So you either want to sell bootlegs, which is illegal, or you want to resell imported DVDs commerically, which is also illegal.

orangecrush

Probably a good thing he doesn't have to compete with them.

FatTony

From what I've gathered, that's true of just about any distributor. That's why the owner at my video store has taken to doing just that: going to Best Buy to buy the big new releases and just using VPD for the niche/harder to find stuff.

MovieExchange

I spot checked about 50-75 titles (obscure titles, TV shows on DVD, anything but new releases) from VPD when they sent me their dealer packet, and without fail every title was cheaper at Deep Discount.

milo bloom

I thought some other countries didn't have such draconian laws about DVDs as the US does? Aren't there some countries that sell region free players right off the shelf?

Atreus

Canada sells region free players right off the shelf. I bought mine at FutureShop. It isn't the highest quality DVD player but it was region free out of the box and it only set me back $50.

bballing

You will fail.

stonecountry

OK. As long as you have a decent location for your store that's easily visible and accessible to the public and some way of advertising for your store.............................(i.e. even if it's just making flyers and putting them up everywhere or getting some radio/cable TV ADs or convincing the local News or local radio station to do a live remote at your store and have a big grand opening event and invite local food venders to come for free to attract more people....you might could even convince a band or something to play or talk with whoever books people for your local Fairs, etc. to get someone with some portable kiddie rides to come or maybe someone with a karaoke set-up....anything that will attract more people)....................................The best way for someone who wants to have a "DVD Shop" independently-run and actually turn a regular profit is to make it a RENTAL STORE and NOT A RETAIL OUTLET. The reasons are obvious, as others have pointed out, unless you're a huge multi-million/billion dollar conglomorate corporation who can agree to buy ridiculous amounts of a single item from an equally big distribution company or whole-saler, it's just too hard to try to make your money back selling the DVDs when you're competing against those big companies who CAN afford to buy so many copies of a title in bulk that they can price them lower than everybody else and still turn a profit. With rentals you can make your money back in 3 or 4 rentals even if you buy them at retail when they're first released.

If you're going to do rentals, the best thing to do is to focus on mainly getting the newest and latest titles and getting in at least several copies of them, and 10 or 20 or more wouldn't hurt with the biggest new titles. Some rental stores only rent the newest releases, and since that's where probably 90% of the business is in, it's probably good to focus on thos anyway.

Aside from obviously trying to get the new releases in, you're going to have to do just a little bit of research on your area where your store is located. You need to know your demographic and who what kind of people will most likely be coming to your store and what kinds of things do they rent. You can find that out in one afternoon by just visiting all the other local video stores and seeing who's there and what titles are being rented the most. Also, notice what kind of prices and deals the other stores have. If you're going to make any profit in your rental business, you'll have to know your competition so you can stay competitive and stay ahead of them. Whatever they sell titles for, sell them for definitively less, and whatever deals they have, make yours a little better. Offer some sort of incentives to repeat customers...maybe issue cards where every 10th rental is free, etc. It's the repeat regular customers in a business like this that will provide a large part of your business.

Also, just like most rental places do now, after a title becomes less popular as a rental you can start to sell off the multiples...or if it isn't rented at all just get rid of it all together. You should be aware of the decreasing DVD prices though, in particular in the used DVD market. If you ever want to see how things are going with that just visit the DVDTALK EXCHANGE FORUM and browse a bit. I'd sell all rentals at $10 or less, and if they don't sell, just reduce the price. People can't turn down cheap DVDs, and you'd rather sell them and get rid of them rather than having DVDs you can't rent or sell at your current prices just stacking up and crowding up space you could use to move other more popular titles.

Of course you will have to get certain licenses and such to be able to have a rental store, but you would have to get similar licenses and such with a Retail store as you were planning to anyway. You'll have to do the research on that one.

As far as getting the DVDs to rent, if you can hook up with someone who sells them wholesale and could start a regular deal with them that would be good but not necessary for you to just have one successful store. You could just do what some people have suggested and buy them up the week of their release from a Retail store with a good price. The only potential problem with that would be that most places that run a sale on a DVD the first week of its release usually limit the number of a single title you can have at sale price. Thus, if you need a lot more, you would need several people to purchase them....or you would have to make several trips, possibly to several stores. Other than that, since rentals don't have to be in pristine condition just for people to view them, you could just buy up the used DVDs from your competing rental stores and then rent them for a little cheaper at your store. I would probably get someone else to do this for you though since it would be a slap in the face of sorts to the competition. However, if you're competing with a big rental chain like a Blockbuster Video or something like that, then they can't stop you from buying their merchandise.

Just a few more bits of info.........

If and when you do sell the titles, make sure that you sell them in their original cases. DVD collectors hate obvious rental cases like the ones at a Blockbuster Video with their logo on it and a place for a security strip so you can't open it. So don't Re-Case the DVDs, and if you must replace a case, replace it with one that looks like a regular case that you'd buy at a store. You can buy regular-looking keep cases and double-disc keep cases in lots for cheap on e-bay. I bought a bunch of them once just so I could allow myself to buy from places like Blockbuster and re-case the discs myself.

To avoid having the DVDs stolen, keep the discs locked up behind a counter or something and not in the cases out in the store. You can store thousands of discs when you keep them in little sleeves like you put PC discs in, and that's what most rental places do now.

Also, keep in mind TV Shows and Season sets are a big part of the rental industry now as well as Movies.

Well, that's the best I can tell you.........hope you can glean something from that and use it.

The most important thing is to actively be thinking of ways to promote your own business and to keep the edge on the competition in terms of pricing. Also, advertising at least at first will help determine how much business you get in the long-run because all you really need is enough attention to get people to recognize you from the start. Then, once you're established you don't need so much advertising. It would be worth putting an allowance in your budget for advertising first-off though because if you have a good store with all the latest titles and cheaper prices than the other stores, once you get that known to your public right off the bat, the rest takes care of itself. Just make sure you have friendly people minding the store, because after that point, customer service is all you have to worry about. If you're going to run the store yourself just make sure you know or whoever is working for you knows what you have and where everything is. Most people who work at rental stores know nothing about movies or what the store has.

caiman

Step 1 - Spend life savings on store. Step 2 - consult internet forum for step 2.

PopcornTreeCt

Pray for Deep Discount's 20% off sale and then go nuts.

raytrade

I'm concerned that the OP asked about DVDs from China. Seems to me the only people who would be interested in DVDs from China are trying to find sources for bootlegs. As others have said, for major US releases, it is almost universally cheaper to just order them from DeepDiscountDVD or the major chains than to try to buy them wholesale from a distributor, if you are an independent retailer.

marty888

Am I the only one here who thinks (and hopes, for the sake of the OP) that this thread is one big put-on?

C'mon, when someone says:
"Hey guys,
I am starting up a DVD shop with my brother next week, we have rented the shop and it is completely empty." .... well, you have to wonder if the person has ANY conception of what is required to run a retail operation ... storage racks, for starters, maybe a cash register, a little electricity would help ....etc.

And:
"The first thing we are a little concerned about ...is where do we buy all the dvd boxsets and all the DVDs at whole sale prices???????"

A little concerned ???

As I said, I hope this is a joke, because it is impossible to take someone so unschooled in business basics very seriously.

Brent L

I just assumed it was a joke. If it's not, then it's a classic unintentional one.