Business and Finance

I did a double take when I recently saw a pile of blank VHS tapes for sale at a local Blockbuster store that was closing.

Granted those videotapes were only a tiny sliver of the store’s inventory being liquidated. But it seemed to me an irresistible metaphor for the anachronism that bricks-and-mortar video rental stores have become in the age of Redbox and Netflix.

Now movie rental chain stores are becoming an even rarer breed in St. Louis.

I made a round of calls to local Blockbuster stores this week and found that 10 out of 26 locations — including stores in Collinsville, St. Ann, and O’Fallon, Mo. — are in the process of closing.

Dish Network, which bought Blockbuster at a bankruptcy auction last year, has been fairly quiet about this current wave of store closings. When it first took over, Dish said it would keep open about 1,500 stores — or about 90 percent of the outlets.

But last month, the company told Reuters that it would shutter more stores than originally planned with some of those locations becoming customer-service points for Dish’s satellite TV services.

The company would not provide a list or a number of the stores that are closing.

“We remain committed to maintaining only those stores that we believe we will be able to operate profitably,” Danielle Johnson, a Dish spokeswoman, wrote in an email. She added that the company continues to focus on its mail rental service and a streaming service package available to satellite customers.

Of course, it should come as no surprise that physical movie rentals are on the decline as video on demand and streaming subscription services such as Netflix continue to gain traction.

According to the Digital Entertainment Group, movie rental sales in bricks and mortar stores plummeted 29 percent last year.

“My guess is at some point you’ll just have a kiosk model and the digital model and they will have a peaceful coexistence,” said Russ Crupnick, an analyst with the research firm The NPD Group.

But in the meantime, he expects there to continue to be a market — albeit a shrinking one — for DVD rentals. Redbox will pick up a lot of that demand. But Blockbuster can still be a player with its more extensive in-store selection compared to Redbox’s limited titles, he said.

“I think we’ve all stared at a kiosk and said, ‘Gee, there’s nothing here I want to watch,’” he said. “But at Blockbuster, you can always go in and say, ‘OK, I’ll watch ‘The Bodyguard’ again.’”

Among those perusing the store closing sale at the Blockbuster location on Lindell Boulevard earlier this week were St. Louis University seniors Tim Hoffman and Arthur Hermann.

Hermann used to regularly rent movies at Blockbuster until he and his friends started using Netflix’s streaming service about a year ago.

“That’s the only way I watch movies now,” he said.

Hoffman said he would miss Blockbuster’s movie sales, but he didn’t seem too heartbroken about the store’s demise. After all, he added, there are two Redbox locations just around the corner.

END IS NEAR FOR CRESTWOOD SEARS

The red and yellow “inventory blowout” signs are up around the Sears store in Crestwood Court.

This store is one of 80 nationwide that Sears said in December that it would shutter amid struggling sales. Still to come is the announcement of another 20 to 40 stores that the company will close.

Sears recently filed a notice with the state that the Crestwood store’s 102 employees could be laid off as soon as April 15. But Kim Freely, a Sears spokeswoman, said that a store closing date has not yet been set and that it could be later than that.

“When the store closes will be based on the needs of the liquidator and the needs of the store,” she said.

Earlier this week, sale prices around the store ranged from 15 percent off most appliances to 30 percent off clothing. But you can bet the discounts will get sweeter as the closing date nears.

Meanwhile, the fate of the rest of Crestwood Court remains unknown. The mall, of course, is mostly vacant. Many of the artists who have filled some of the empty storefronts in the last couple of years have to leave by the end of the month.

And now the mall’s website notes that it will be limiting hours and access to several areas starting March 1 because of the “pending redevelopment.”

But it’s unclear where those redevelopment efforts stand. The mall’s owner — Centrum Properties — had indicated it would present redevelopment plans to the city at the end of 2011 or early 2012, said Petree Eastman, Crestwood’s city administrator. But she said this week that she hasn’t heard a peep of late about when those plans might be presented to the city.

“I believe the Sears’ closure has changed the game a little bit and has probably affected how their numbers are working out,” she said.

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