Outlasting the giants
Trevor Nichols - Apr 24, 2018 - Biz Releases

Image: Trevor Nichols

For a decade and a half, Leo’s Video in Kelowna has been catering to a slice of the city’s movie lovers, renting out DVDs and Blu-Rays as illegal downloading forced rental giants to close and viewers ditched discs for streaming services.

The independent video store celebrated its 14-year anniversary today with a barbecue and special sale at its Pandosy Street location.

At around 1 p.m. owner Leo Bartels stood outside the shop serving up celebratory hot dogs, chatting with customers trickling in and out of the shop.

Inside, a handful of people milled around the cramped but tidy shop, where tens of thousands of DVDs and Blu-Rays were crowded onto wooden shelves.

Manager Grace “Maynard” McKinnon manned the counter, ringing in customers.

‘This is my entertainment’

One of those customers, Tim O’Hare, had just slipped in to return a few rentals. O’Hare has been a customer since Leo’s first opened, in 2004, and has been coming religiously since.

Over the years, he’s rented 4,980 movies from the shop.

“It just became a habit, but a good habit,” he said. “Leo and his staff, they’re so fantastic in there. They know their movies, they know everything, and if they don’t know if they can look it up. They’re just so happy to help you.”

O’Hare doesn’t have the internet or advanced cable. He said he takes home just about every kind of movie from Leo’s, and quite a few TV series as well, especially anything British.

“This is my entertainment, and it’s great entertainment,” he said.

‘It’s still why we’re here’

Image: Trevor Nichols

McKinnon said many of the shop’s customers are regulars like O’Hare, but that she sees “a mixed bag” of people come through—everyone from elderly folks to people who have just moved, students, and others.

Leo’s stocks a sizable collection of documentaries, lots of classics, a selection from the Criterion Collection, several genre sections, and a solid smattering of foreign films

McKinnon (who said she ditched her Netflix subscription four years ago) said students often come through looking for obscure films for assignments, while others are seeking out hard-to-find documentaries not available on the internet.

However, it’s the new release DVDs and Blu-Rays that make up the majority of their profits.

“It’s mostly just the big movies that makes it for us. It’s still why we’re here,” she said.

Outlasting the chains

Leo Bartels didn’t have a TV until he was 13. However, He became a movie fan in his teens and worked at a video store as a young adult.

Image: Trevor Nichols
Leo’s Video owner Leo Bartels

His biggest joy, he said, comes from interacting with his customers. The most fun he ever has in his store, he said, is when a movie like The Matrix, Memento, or Inception come out.

“It’s so fun when those kinds of movies come out and you get to get all super geeky talking about them,” he said. “The interactions are really fun, it’s a very social business.”

Bartels opened Leo’s when he was 24, thinking of it as an investment in his future. In the beginning, he typically worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week with only occasional breaks.

“It was a lot of work, and really fun. It was a really exciting time for me,” he said.

That was around the time Blu-Ray was big—before illegal downloading gutted the home rental industry. When major movie rental chains began dying around 2010 it was really rough going, but when they all shut down in 2012, Leo’s began to thrive.

“The chain stores closed around 2012, and that was really wonderful for us,” Bartels said. “Once they closed our business tripled immediately.”

He said Leo’s was able to survive because it had a huge selection, and was able to adapt where larger chains could not. Even with streaming monsters like Netflix gaining popularity and illegal downloading remaining prevalent, Bartels believes there is still a sport for independent video shops.

“I think we’ll do quite well for a long time. We make changes to help us survive,” he said.


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