The Darkness That Was South Street, Gone Like VHS

I am going to jump out of chronological order because of the devastating news that one of my old stores has closed.

So, the story continues where the story is about to end.

After more than 24 respected and entertaining years of great home entertainment, a lack of vision will end the glorious vision that once was TLA Video 4th ST / South Street / Society Hill / Philly.

I'll preface this by saying that I still beleive in what once was TLA Video, very strongly. I think the concept was and forever will be great if supported. I am simply disappointed in where this has landed, and strongly believe that it didn't have to be.

One last visit before they turn it into the horror of a giant video flea market / bone picking. Trust me, you won’t enjoy the atmosphere. Hell, it won’t have an atmosphere, not like it had once upon a time.

I first encountered Vid One when I was deciding if I wanted to come to work for TLA Video. I parked on South Street, in front of PhilaDeli, and walked around. When I entered, I saw a store in 2000 that looked like a store in 1985. Even at the early stage of the DVD rollout, I saw a store that was still resisting change from VHS. I saw a small sales area, I saw porn, and was surprised to see that the film on the monitor was played silent, and music playing instead.

I also saw Kennie. My first impression was “Why is he playing music in a video store?” That never made sense to me, because TLA didn’t sell music. Turns out that was one of many “different” corporate edicts.

I also saw Kennie, by himself at the counter, working hard, which was a sight that I would see for nine more years.

I took the job and the first day of work was spent introducing myself to a staff that hadn’t seen an actual store manager in a long time, despite the parade of people TLA had put in there as store managers, some useless to a capital “U”.

After being grilled with questions that at times felt like “Why the hell are you subjecting yourself to this?”, I realized that I had a great staff in a neglected store. As I would find out many times later, growth didn;t seem to be paramount to what they wanted. Profit had to be achieved on a bit of a shoe string, despite being the pre-eminent independent video store chain in Philly.

I started to realize the first of many “TLA mistaken identities”, that I felt that I was really there to close the store down. It truly felt that way. The look of the store had not been updated since Philo T. Farnsworth was making TV’s. The attitude of the staff was one of doing their job extremely well, but knowing that job had what seemed to be a shelf date, a limited life span.

I didn’t need to change the attitude of the staff, we needed to change the attitude of the owners.

Once they got over their skepticism, I truly believed that they now believed that someone actually cared about the store as more that a place for them to bring their friends and showing how they owned this place. They owned it, but I and the staff tried to grow it.

When I went there, I was promised that there would be a remodel, and hell, the place needed it. This was August 2000. Business started to grow, the staff grew with the changes, and finally , three YEARS later, they decided to do the remodel themselves(why pay for real craftsmen when you have a wannabe contractor owning the place).

In any case, in 2003, the store now almost looked updated to the year 1995. The store responded with good sales, a great clientele, and a strong staff with a solid, great constant: Kennie. We worked our asses off is the only way that we can put it when you talk about how we did it.

All through this, we were given essentials for day to day, but never given anything with a vision to tomorrow. They were content to live on the laurels of what the TLA name had meant, and seemed to have no real desire to enhance that name in the stores. The boss and I talked about one idea that he had a few years ago that was very exciting, but it was never pursued. I think that idea would have been a home run.

This was also the time when I would first see the signs of the slight of hands that some would sometimes utilize to seemingly not fulfilling promises. About a year after I arrived, and even after being thanked from the Las Vegas stage by one of The Powers during the VSDA Video Convention when TLA won Store Of The Year (Yo, powers, did you ever put two and two together and realize that I was the reason you received that award?), a position opened up.

Imagine my surprise when the General Manager position was open in 2001, a position that had been said to be mine when available, and it was given to a useless refugee from West Coast Video instead of me. The many reasons given to me were all of the phony noble variety, not that I didn’t deserve it, but that I was more valuable where I was. That is because everyone else could smell what would come along at Vid One in the future.

Other sometimes short-sighted efforts included starting a subscription plan based on the then-current General Managers concept. We started this monthly plan, and to this day (10.21.2009), I still cannot give you a solid look at how it actually impacted us.

This was the start of the change in attitude that it felt we had to compete on price and not on confidence, moving us into a price competition that I don;t beleive we fully understood and I believe never executed properly. The ideas put forth were not the problem, they were great ideas. My concern was execution and support.

This was also the time that we started to test home delivery. Of course, the owners and theGM set up delivery for the entire downtown area, for three store locations, with ONE delivery person. Then, they expected that to be efficient.

In 2006, in a shuffle that is still incomprehensible, I was moved to another great store in Chestnut Hill. Kennie, who was very attuned to what a TLA manager job really meant, reluctantly accepted the managers position. Of course, it isn’t that cut and dried. Kennie still had to do his old position, as well. The South Street store was essentially told that they were not worthy of having the same hierarchy of the rest of the stores. We had an excellent GM who had promoted from another store, and then to clueless one.

For 4 years, Kennie did a super human job of making this odd combo work. Of course, the more that it worked, the more they would ask him to do, and be amazed if it couldn’t be accomplished.

I got to spend the last 2 and ½ years at TLA as the GM and Buyer. We used to have a GM, a buyer for rental, and a buyer for sale. I became all three. Kennie did his best, and the store still turned a profit, despite no improvements being made to both physical plant and the selection. Advertising was spotty, and then it was invisible. Office support was sparse at best.

However, I loved my job, loved the stores, and loved TLA, and tried very hard to do my best.

Now, one month after they decided that the stores didn’t need a GM/Buyer/Supply Delivery Guy and let me go in another acute lack of vision, they have five people doing my job.

Fortunately, I don’t have to be there for what I believe is an unnecessary closing, one reflective of their listening to people that I believe do not know what to actually do with the stores.

Competition is blamed, when competition is what make you better, but only if you are smart enough to compete.

TLA Video South Street competes no more, it sighs and watches it’s history being sold as if it was unloved toys at a garage sale. People will be picking at the bones like the worst buffet. This is not relective of the quality of the stock or the staff who will be there, it is reflective of what atmosphere these sales always bring, it cannot help but be an intense and exhausting experience.

Unfortunately, I cannot be there when I should be, to help in this most difficult time.

We had great years there, and the staff was the main reason. Until this past Monday, they were still the reason to choose TLA Video Stores as your choice for perfect home entertainment in Philly. Now, that choice is gone from your lives, and the other Vids may or may not soon follow.

I’ve previously mentioned a poster by the 5th Floor Elevator at the main office that showed the history of TLA up to the opening of the New York store. It is a magnificent and fascinating frozen moment in time, but sadly now means little to me, because what TLA is now has so very little relationship to the glory that it once was. TLA may morph into a different glory, and I would be as happy as anyone to see my friends thre continue on.

TLA has become narrowly boring in the product compared to how I knew it, and a bit farther from what TLA was once known for. They seem to follow the advice of people who may mean well, but who I believe have little clue as to how to compete in the physical retail arena, and have convinced them to take this is a very different direction. You can lay any notion of TLA as synonymous with great and knowledgeable film to a little bit less voracity. That TLA grows just a bit dimmer, and only lives on at the store level, which now decreases by 25%. However, in the remaining stores, it still shines brightly, and their staffs are a huge part of that.

I urge you strongly to continue to support them.

The last domino may fall. Still, there will always be the best and wonderful efforts of Kennie, Marianne, Jim, Griffin, Vicky, and the rest of a dream staff.

That last domino takes the last real and true home video experience on South Street away forever.

Who says a story has to be linear?

In the hallway by the 5th Floor Elevator in an office now far far away, there is a damaged poster that traces the history of the TLA stores. It was made before I arrived, and it is fascinating to see the pride that is shown for those stores and that history. It ends with photos of the then new store on 8th Street in New York’s Greenwich Village.

Someone in charge recently called it “walking down memory lane” when some talked to them about the stores.

There were no updates. This poster is frozen in time. Apropos.

So, let’s walk down Memory Lane, and over time, you will see why I loved TLA once, and what I truly believed TLA could have been and what video retailing can be far into the future.

So, it is the year 2000, March.

I was involved with putting on trade shows for video retailers through what was then known as VSDA, then became EMA, then split the indie retailers off into IDEA, then pulled them back because we didn’t suit their purposes as an independent wing (I’m shutting up now on this subject).

We had built a show that was held on the University of Newark (Delaware) Business Center, and drew over 100 East Coast retailers. For two years, I built this conference/trade show, and it attracted the powerful and the good video retailers as well as drew the eye of retail competition.

It was here where I first met the TLA group and was approached about coming over to them. At the time, West Coast Video was in the middle of a possible sale to a sad sack of a chain called Video City, as well as a changeover in software. As I’ve mentioned previously, I can trip over my loyalty with the best of them, so I turned them down.

5 months later, even a dumbass like myself could recognize the bad decision, so I made the move, and was installed in the South Street Store of TLA Video. There I met a great staff, led by Kennie, but I also felt a store that seemed to just be living out its days. The store was “funky décor”, which meant it hadn’t been updated for years and I started to question why I was there, because I had nothing to offer a store that simply was there to exist.

Thanks to a great staff, though, it made sense to question and ask. When I came over, I was told that they were going to remodel it. This was August 2000. If I told you that the remodel finally happened in the end of 2003, you would get why I felt at times like I was in a deathwatch.

Add to that a reluctance to embrace DVD, and change would be hard. That same reluctance is now being shown towards how to handle Blu-ray.

However, I think my enthusiasm, coupled with the great staff that took great pride in their work and who finally had a manager who gave a damn, made it impossible for that store to go away, and a better store to emerge.

Until I wound up transferred in 2006, I think we made a fantastic team, and the staff there still makes a fantastic store.

The next year, at the 2001 VSDA Convention, TLA Video won Retailer Of The Year. From the stage, the partner who accepted made a special thank you to me, a very prominent shout-out.

That may have been my proudest moment, not because it recognized me, but because I felt that I had changed their attitude, changed their mindset, and had breathed new life in a business, which is what any ambitious and driven person wants.

I didn’t get that feeling many more times after that. When the GM position became available later that year, I was told that either they didn’t give me the job because they needed me at that store (the old “you are too good to promote” gotcha) , that my need to care for my brother meant time concerns, or that they had this other person who they wanted who they felt could do the job. She lasted less than a year.

This was the first sign that this would be a difficult stay, one with great memories until the last one.

As of this writing, the South Street store is still alive and still has a great staff lead by Kennie. It has also been noted that it still looks like a store from the 90’s recently. The staff makes that a good thing, and I encourage you to postpone your Duckboat ride and your Jim’s Cheesesteaks and meet one of the reasonsI survived TLA for so long, the great staff of a TLA Video store.

BTW, for those who believe that the video industry has moved past a real life store, and some of them are still there, recognize this.

Back in 2000, there were a lot of video stores and competition was tough. There were very few websites that sold videos, so opportunity was there for something unique. Over time, the internet has been flooded with merchants who have to differentiate themselves without the human element, they have to fake it.

In that same time, many brick and mortar video retailers (call us "mom and pop" and I'll beat the shit out of you) have gone away, because it is easy to blame the marketplace when it is actually the stubbornness to grow and adapt.

It used to be easy to earn money in home video retailing quite by accident. Now, you have to think, adapt, and grow. That took a bit of faith, a bit of guts, a lot of experience, and no fear of the future. It took and takes someone like me.

The physical video store is now unique again, while websites are everywhere. The uniqueness of the physical video store now is that you can still be real life, but add the web elements to extend your stores experience and ability to engage your customer. You can have the customer in your store even when they are not there, and they can interacte with a real staff and not an algorithm.

You can still make an amazing brick and mortar store, but you have to want it, be ready to expand the rules, and love doing it. I do.

You can remember the past, you can embrace the past, but you have to recognize how to successfully grow them for the future. Video stores can still be that future, and a major player in it,

27 years: Redux. The resurrection of my video career

The new West Coast Video was auspicious because it was a great idea that came along at a time that the company was in transition. The Stanleys, who owned the company were really nice guys who were not at all prepared for the transition that the industry was about to face.

Frankly, that is the same problem faced by me later on, as well.

The store, at 15th and Walnut was gorgeous. A large, well lit, amazingly stocked video joy. The stock that I loaded it with, along with the West Coast buyer, David Wharff, was the best, I repeat, the best. Originally, we were going to have a coffee bar in there, but the space was a bit too small. That is a shame, because at the time in 2000, that was a very original concept.

The stores were going to be three or four in number, modeled after (but far exceeding) the TLA concept. The Philly store was to be a flagship store, with others in Lexington KY, Princeton, NJ, and on Houston Street in NYC. Those last three never materialized, because of the pending sale to a new owner.

It would have been spectacular, though. All the best that TLA was, but with a much broader customer base: a smart video store for the masses, a store where everyone felt included, everyone found and knew something.

I spent a year commuting from Philly to Hammonton and Sicklerville NJ, to other West Coast and Choices Stores (an acquisition from a video pioneer, Robert Klein) while building this store. My favorite memory was when I travelled with David Wharff amd Steve Randolph, a great guy who was the rep for Universal Video at the time, to NYC to scout out the TLA at 8th Street in the Village (Don't look for it, it was closed sadly two years ago, another great waste).

I saw this magnificient TLA store, and knew that I could do better. I did and continuted to do until 5:15 PM Thursday 9/16/2009.

But, in the tradition of owners who I loved but just didn't get it, things just weren't planned out correctly. I hired a great and quirky staff: one was a sweetheart who would do any job assigned, and another would fight anyone who came along, one hoped to become a comedian with Second City (and could have succeeded, but I lost touch), and one got to star in a MY CHOICE MY WAWA commercial, which then resulted in his picture popping up on static cling ads for hoagies all over WAWA stores, and magically, my store.

Construction took almost a year longer, and they dropped the coffer bar: Big Mistake.

Before the store opened, we loaded almost 30,000 (yes, thousand Redbox has five HUNDRED by comparision, Redbox is bullshit) videos. Most were VHS, but some were DVD, which was in it's 3rd year, but which WCV was not positive about for its success, whcih would be a problem with later employers: not being able to see far enough ahead to see what they need to do. Blu-ray and tentativeness with same will haunt my ex-employers. You cannot do this business correctly following sheepishly).

So, we had the store loaded up, but one problem remained: the alarm system wasn't finished. The bosses had not set up the installation properly, also a bugaboo of my later years. So, I got to spend 3 nights in the store to guard the tapes.

I'll do more specifically on my two years here, including my street fights with shoplifters and anarchists later, but for now, I'll skip to the end, to set up my next chapter. Think of it as any bad Hollywood film that thinks it is too clever to jump the timeline all over the place.

The WCV chain was sold to Video City. Shit, a mistake. Details to follow.

In January 2000, I was approached by TLA to come over. I turned them down. I am nothing if not blindly loyal, and had committed to helping make sure the WCV/Video City conversion went well.

In the summer of 2000, I was approached again. I decided to move, opening up the greatest joy followed by the biggest disappoitment in my career, and yes, much of it follows aligning myself with owner/partners who could be the greatest at times, but turned out to be disappointments.

Watch this space....

The absence of the VSDA/EMA/IDEA Convention this year

This would be the time of year for the VSDA (EMA/IDEA) Convention.

For those who are unfamiliar, these were the annual meetings in Vegas, and occassionally LA for the video retailing industry.

I personally am missing the networking opportunities, and the chance to find ONE idea or concept that will help my business and the industry.

I am not missing the last few years as much as the late 90's to mid '00's, when I think some amazing concepts shook up what had become a lazy industry.

We can remininsce and enjoy the "what was" but franky, the "what will be" is all that matters.

This year, we have seen splits to two seperate efforts: a closed, invitation only get-together under EMA control, as well as two IndieFEST Expos, with the help of VPD and the IndieEXPO AT SEA, all of which had valuable ideas.

However, I cannot help but think that each faction still didn't get the complete picture, and therefore, something is missing.

Whatever our size, we are an industry, and we need to view ourselves as that, or we simply become wheels tunring in wildly divergent and dangerous directions.

What do we do next?