Paul Uniacke at Video Ezy (controlled through the Franchise Entertainment Group) has expanded his empire another step. He’s just bought the embattled EzyDVD, to add to his 2008 purchase of the master franchise rights to Blockbuster. Video Ezy/Blockbuster/EzyDVD .. it’s one mega brand now that covers over 50% of the Australian rental market, and is the leader in online sales.

There’s lots they could do .. the growth potential in the DVD business is establishing good sales through bricks and mortar stores. Even with ezyDVD’s leadership in online sales, it still did 85% of it’s business through their physical outlets. Yep, Gerry Harvey is bang on the money when he says physical shop fronts is where the retail action happens today.

JB seems to have the winning model for bricks and mortar. The key ingredient is .. lots of stock. And that means .. plenty of shelving space. And that’s what Video Ezy .. doesn’t have! It’s the dilemma of the traditional Video store. They can smell the retail opportunity, but their shops are small and they need all the space for rental. Beyond a few tables of movies for opportunistic buying, proper retail is out of their reach.

I’d like Video Ezy to try something new (gasp). Create a bigger store that does JB style retail and Video Ezy style rental. The day trade will be more retail, the night trade more rental. Stock is moved from retail to rental on-demand. The opportunity is to grab back the retail trade from JB and other mass merchants, but .. franchised to the wazoo with regional rights locked off, this is not as easy as you’d think.

Video Ezy is also buying $18 million worth of ezyDVD debt .. would love to know what they paid for that!

Update
$10 million is the magic figure.

Omg, we’re on Facebook. Lol. Check us out and let’s be friends! Or members. I don’t exactly know, but you should check it out, and we’ll be posting regular little messages and anecdotes etc. about the happenings of our lovely store and stock. There’s a couple already there waiting for you to see. And plenty of networking fun to be had!

The freezer started tripping the power out. Mr Fix it couldn’t fix it so we wait for our new freezer which is due on Friday. The ice cream is safely ensconced in various freezers amongst the community! Of course it HAD to happen over the new year and just when the weather is getting hot!! Fear not you will have ice cream again soon…. I need to get it out of my freezer it’s far too tempting!!

Update on the ice cream… After much drama we finally have a new freezer, the ice cream will be back tomorrow and we will have a sale to welcome it back! So come on down over the weekend and sample our delicious ice cream at a bargain price!