Pandemic kills off Family Video; chain to close remaining stores

It is lights out at Household Video, the 42-year-old Midwestern chain that saved going at the same time as Blockbuster and Hollywood Video went bust.

The corporate on Tuesday mentioned its greater than 250 shops nationwide will maintain liquidation gross sales, providing offers on motion pictures, video video games, CBD merchandise and retailer fixtures.

Whereas streaming providers and different on-line rivals have lengthy dented its enterprise and helped carry in regards to the demise of different video chains, it was the coronavirus that proved to be the ultimate undoing of Household Video. 

“The impression of Covid-19, not solely in foot site visitors but in addition within the lack of film releases, pushed us to the top of an period,” Keith Hoogland, CEO of Highland Ventures, the Glenview, Illinois-based firm that owns Household Video, mentioned in a press release to CBS MoneyWatch.

Together with having to shut its areas, like different nonessential retailers, for 60 days beginning in March, the chain was additionally impacted by movie manufacturing disruptions and launch delays because of the pandemic. 

“Whereas now we have confronted digital competitors from Netflix and others for years, nothing has been as devastating to our enterprise as Covid-19,” the corporate mentioned in a information launch distributed to a number of media outlets.

Based in 1978, the chain began in 2020 with 510 areas, however needed to shut roughly half by the top of the summer season.