160 Australians are keeping the video rental industry alive
Just 160 Australians are still employed in the video rental industry, according to new data from 2021’s census.
Once a neighbourhood staple, the DVD and VHS rental store, or video shop, has largely been consigned to the past by the age of streaming.
But for Chris Gentle, manager at Network Video in Brunswick Heads on NSW’s north coast, it was no surprise that he was one of 160 people kept employed by hiring out physical media.
“It sounds about right, we know there’s a few other stores on the coast,” he said.
“There’s one in Ballina that we know about, and another one in Bellingen. Just in our store there’s four people employed, so it would add up.”
The figure from the Australian Bureau of Statistics is a stark contrast to one it published in 2000, which showed there were 1615 video hire outlets in the country.
Today, even the industry body in charge of those businesses, the Australian Video Rental Retailers Association, has ceased to exist.
Having weathered the storm, though, Mr Gentle said he was quietly confident his store had found a community willing to keep it alive.
“We’re optimistic, if not entirely comfortable. It’s always lean.
“We recently put it to the community and said, ‘if you want us to stay here then you have to support us’, and we’ve had a pretty good turnout of support. People are keen to see us stay.”
Across the country, a number of other video shops have hung in and lived to keep serving their community.
In Melbourne, Richmond’s Picture Search remains a cult favourite, while Galactic Video in Adelaide’s CBD boasts a collection Netflix could only dream of.
It’s in the breadth of a collection that video shops still have streaming services beaten, according to Mr Gentle.
“We’ve got probably more than 25,000 films, so there’s a real appeal to being able to browse the library without it being chosen for you by an algorithm. You see a lot more different films you’re not normally exposed to.”
