Last summer, it looked like Best Video Film and Cultural Center might be headed for its last reel.
To fend off the streaming revolution, one of the area’s last video rental stores had already transformed itself into a nonprofit and diversified into a coffee bar, offering musical events and movie showings. But it wasn’t enough. By July, Best, as it is affectionately known among its devoted customers, faced $12,000 in unpaid bills, Program Director Hank Hoffman said.
Its back to the wall, the store put out an urgent SOS, asking its intensely loyal clientele to donate money and sign up for its new monthly payment plans, Hoffman said.
The resulting outpouring of assistance from the community moved and surprised the store’s managers. Subscriptions to the monthly service jumped 33 percent to more than 500 and contributions poured in. Flush with $35,000 in new revenue, the store is back in the black, Executive Director Richard Brown said.
“We got more out of it than we hoped we would, quite frankly,” Brown said. “The response was overwhelming.”
Brown and Hoffman were struck by the passion of their customers, who told them how much the store meant to them and the community. Best Video Film and Cultural Center provides something increasingly missing from our ever-more digitized world – a local venue where people can come together to enjoy music and film, said Hoffman, who has worked at the store since 1994.
“We really feel that in the atmosphere in which so much of life has been moved into the virtual realm, movies and the like, that it’s absolutely essential to retain spaces for real world interaction between people,” Hoffman said.
Founder Hank Paper, a film buff and screenwriter, had a different vision when he started Best Video in 1985. Beginning with a modest 500 video cassettes, he set out to create a store that reflected its name – the best video rental store in the state.
Many say Paper succeeded, building Best Video, which has occupied several locations in Hamden’s Spring Glen section, into a beloved local institution brimming with a massive collection of 35,000 DVDs. In addition to the latest blockbusters, Best Video offered an eclectic trove of foreign films, classics, forgotten masterpieces, indie productions and obscure cult films unavailable at the local Blockbuster. Riding the video and DVD rental booms, the store prospered, Hoffman said.
“It was an amazingly profitable business,” he recalled.
All that began to change in the 2000s with the advent of Netflix, first as a mail order, then as a video streaming service, Hoffman said. The new technology undermined the video store business model, and Best found itself having to scramble. In 2011, the store branched out into musical performances and film showings, Hoffman said.
Three years later, Paper decided it was time to move on. Wanting to preserve the store’s irreplaceable DVD collection and keep it in business, a group of employees and supporters created a nonprofit and bought Paper out, Hoffman said. Reflecting its broader mission, the store rechristened itself Best Video Film and Cultural Center. It was a leap of faith that worked out thanks to the store’s loyal customer base, Hoffman said.
“If we went to a new nonprofit model, would they support us, would they put their money where their hearts were?” Hoffman said. “That happened.”
In search of a more predictable revenue stream, the store created a new rental option that Hoffman likens to a lending library: patrons pay $10 a month to take out unlimited movies, one at time. For $20, they can have two out at a time and for $30, up to four, Hoffman said. The store also retains its traditional $4.50-per-movie rental fee.
Best still buys the latest titles and replaces most DVDs that wear out; replacements generally remain available, in spite of the industry’s headlong gallop into streaming, Hoffman said.
But videos aren’t all there is to Best. The store features a café, lectures by a film expert and movie showings. It recently screened the 1962 cult movie “Carnival of Souls,” Hoffman said. Perhaps most popular of all is Best’s lively music scene, with performances three days a week, Hoffman said.
As hard as the managers might try, the operation will never generate enough revenue to be self-sustaining, said Brown, who ran the store for 15 years before it went nonprofit. Rentals and membership generate about 45 percent of its income, with events, food and beverage providing another 40 percent, he said. Donations will remain a must to cover the gap, he said, likening the operation to National Public Radio.
Brown and Hoffman are optimistic about the future. Next year, the store will make its final payment to Paper, putting it on firmer financial ground, they said.
“I think we’re in a pretty good position now,” Brown said.
