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Robyn Edie/Stuff
South Invercargill United Video store owner Daryle Blackler’s last day in the business will be August 12, calling time on about 40-years in the movie hire trade.
Teresa Hammond is gutted.
Invercargill’s United Video store, understood to be the last United Video shop in the South Island, is closing in August.
For 25 years the south Invercargill store has been located in a large building that was once a supermarket, renting out thousands of movies.
Hammond has been a regular customer for about 20 of those years, ignoring streaming services such as Netflix and continuing to go in-store for her movie fix.
News of its impending closure didn’t sit well.
“I am gutted, to be honest … it’s my favourite place to go. It saves going to the movies, I can get lollies and popcorn and sit at home [and watch a DVD].”
Robyn Edie/Stuff
Teresa Hammond, a customer at United Video in south Invercargill for about 20 years, says she is gutted it’s closing, but has been buying multiple DVDs ahead of the closure date.
Owner Daryle Blackler said the store’s large size was a key reason it had stayed open when others hadn’t.
He said it was the South Island’s last remaining United Video store, with several closing in recent years.
Blackler, whose wife Kim runs the 800sqm south Invercargill store, said it had more than 95,000 DVDs to rent at its peak.
”This was the biggest video rental store in New Zealand,” he said.
The couple were previous owners of United Video stores in Dunedin, Queenstown and north Invercargill, all of which had since closed.
“This store was our flagship,” he said.
“We had the product and people came to us. When they wanted new releases we had 40 to 60 copies of the one movie … sometimes 120. We were big and that’s what allowed us to keep on going.”
In latter years, as business buttoned off they diversified, supplementing DVD rentals and sales with the sales of collectable magazines, candy, incense, vinyl records, collectable cards and pop culture books.
Robyn Edie/Stuff
South Invercargill United Video store owner Daryle Blackler and shop assistant Yvonne Knipe, outside the store which will close on August 12. Some DVDs will remain for sale in the building after the closure.
DVD rentals made up just 15% of total turnover and DVD sales made up another 15% when the decision was made to sell.
The advent of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon had dwindled the customer base over the years, but Covid-19 effectively killed it, Blackler indicated.
“During Covid we lost 50% of our customers because they found Netflix and other streaming services during lockdown.”
However, he said there were still people who rented DVDs rather than watch them online. They liked to browse the aisles and look at the DVDs before purchasing.
Many of those loyal customers had “thanked us for staying open so long”.
About 60,000 DVDs in the store were now for sale, with war, western and Disney movies proving popular early sellers as had many box sets. Manga DVDs [animated Japanese movies] had been slow to move.
As for long-time customer Hammond, she was in the store on Tuesday, buying a bundle of DVDs, seemingly fending off movie streaming services for some time yet.
“I have got enough DVDs to sink a battle ship,” she said.
When the United Video store closes, the Unichem South City Pharmacy, which already has product in the video store, would expand further into it, Blackler said.
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