Roll credits: Video One is at tail end of the tape
Video One, one of Colorado’s oldest video stores and Denver’s last general-audience video rental store, will close in the coming weeks. “Landlords like rent, and we just can’t pay them on time,” owner Jeff Hahn said Wednesday.
In a Facebook post, Hahn wrote that the 34-year-old store will sell its thousands of DVDs and Blu-rays for $5 per disc or less. The catalog includes rare and out-of-print films not available on popular streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.
“I just don’t know when our landlords are going to be pushing us out of here,” Hahn said. “It could be the end of May or the end of June.”
Hahn’s most recent attempt to save the store, which he began working at in 2001 and bought in 2009, included a December crowdfunding campaign that hoped to raise $50,000 to cover operating expenses, new purchases and the cost of transitioning Video One into a Denver-based nonprofit library.
That campaign failed, however, raising less than $2,000 in the four months before it was suspended.
The publicity the store garnered from that campaign also backfired: Hahn said the websites and TV stations that covered the crowdfunding alerted other businesses looking to use Video One’s two-story space, at East Sixth Avenue and Downing Street.
“It really was very counterproductive for us,” he said. “Everybody was getting ahold of our landlords wanting to lease this building as soon as they saw the stories. We were busy for about a week, and then almost instantly we were doing about one-third less business. Meanwhile, the landlords are looking to sign a long-term lease.”
In a December interview with The Denver Post, Hahn said his monthly revenue often fell about $2,000 short of covering his $10,000 in monthly expenses, including rent and the cost of acquiring new films.
Video One’s departure will leave Capitol Hill’s 31-year-old, LGBT-focused Videotique as the last video-rental store in Denver.
“It can’t hurt our business, I wouldn’t think, because many of our customers say they’ve been going to both places,” Videotique co-owner Jim Doescher said. “But I’m sorry to see another business bite the dust. It’s just another symptom of the way technology has affected the home-video business.”