LA HABRA — For decades, Video Town has had one of largest video rental selections among mom and pops in Orange County – but the familiar “now playing” posters and return bin outside have been joined by a “store closing sale” banner over the door.

Owner Bob Parekh sits at his counter ready to greet customers, a sea of DVDs and Blu-rays behind him. For 33 years, Parekh has grown his business, seeing it through a golden age of video rentals followed by sharp decline as viewers turned to digital.

Video Town closes for good on Dec. 31 – no more rewinds.

Bob Parekh has run Video Town in several locations in Orange County for 33 years. The video rental store’s last retail location in La Habra will close its doors at the end of the month. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

Bob Parekh has run Video Town in several locations in Orange County for 33 years. The video rental store’s last retail location in La Habra will close its doors at the end of the month. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

Sound The gallery will resume in seconds

Bob Parekh has run Video Town in several locations in Orange County for 33 years. The video rental store’s last retail location in La Habra will close its doors at the end of the month. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

Bob Parekh has run Video Town in several locations in Orange County for 33 years. The video rental store’s last retail location in La Habra will close its doors at the end of the month. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

Bob Parekh has run Video Town in several locations in Orange County for 33 years. The video rental store’s last retail location in La Habra will close its doors at the end of the month. Parekh plans to kick back and take it easy after the store closes. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)



Bob Parekh has run Video Town in several locations in Orange County for 33 years. The video rental store’s last retail location in La Habra will close its doors at the end of the month. Video Town outlasted a Blockbuster Video store across the street that closed in 2011. (Photo by Matt Masin, Orange County Register, SCNG)

“Times are changing, the medium is changing. It’s not that people are watching less movies – people are watching more, but they’re getting them in lots of different ways,” Parekh said. “People came here to browse and look around – but that time is gone.”

Linda Han flashed a sad look on hearing of Video Town’s impending closure – she, too, knows the challenges of staying open in the age of streaming video.

Han has made a career of video rentals for 25 years, operating Video Dollar in Fullerton the last 13 years.

“People used to be waiting in line when movies came out, every Wednesday or Friday. But not anymore,” she said. “Those were the good old days. Now, people have already seen everything from streaming it somewhere.”

Pressing play

Video Town opened in 1984 as a humble Buena Park shop.

Five years later it moved into a bigger space. Before long, the swiftly growing Blockbuster opened a store just across the street.

Parekh lost about 10 percent of his profits, but then business smoothed out.

“Hey, I can fight with Blockbuster,” Parekh said he realized.

His confidence bolstered, Parekh opened a second location – now his last – in 1994 in a former La Habra flower shop.

A Blockbuster was not 50 feet away in the complex, and much more visible from the street. The landlord questioned his decision, but Parekh simply responded “you’ll get your rent, don’t worry.”

That Blockbuster closed down 17 years later. Parekh had gone toe-to-toe with the Goliath of video and survived.

How did he do it?

The back room

Video Town had great customer service and a significantly lower overhead – its rent was lower and even at its peak, the shop employed just five people.

“The movies stay the same whether you rent from here or there,” Parekh said. “What happened is, I was charging 50 cents or a dollar cheaper than Blockbuster for any movie.”

Key also was his secret weapon, a niche his corporate rivals would not touch.

Anybody who grew up in the age of video stores remembers the back room – hidden by a curtain or swinging doors, guarded by an “adults only” sign.

Adult movie rentals were at one point 20 percent of Video Town’s business. In his battle with Blockbuster, Parekh said sex definitely sold, and Blockbuster’s “wholesome” company policy forbade the back rooms that often kept smaller competitors alive.

“We could not survive without adult movies,” Parekh said. “Blockbuster didn’t have it – that was an edge that most all independent video stores had.”

Even today, a similar chunk of business comes from the back room at Video Dollar, Han said – but with numbers falling across the board, that secret weapon of yesteryear isn’t enough to guarantee success.

In a comparison of the first half of 2016 with that of 2017, The Digital Entertainment Group, an advocate of entertainment industries, reported a 20.15 percent drop in brick and mortar rentals.

Roll credits

Netflix and other streaming services, Redbox and DVRs are too much competition for the little stores, Parekh and Han said.

“Each year, we can feel it – 10 percent down, 20 percent down. It keeps going down, it’s not getting any better,” Han said. “I thought it was a small store around the corner and people would want to come over and look at the real thing. But I started seeing less people, less regular customers.”

Parekh remembers when there was nothing on TV past 10 p.m. If you wanted entertainment, you relied on your local video store. Now, with entertainment available 24/7 and no need to even leave the house, technology has again eclipsed brick-and-mortar.

“That time was our golden period,” Parekh said. “I fought with Blockbuster and Hollywood Video and survived, but I can’t survive against the internet.”

Convenience is king, Parekh said. People favor services that bring entertainment and goods straight to their homes, even if it might end up costing them more than gas and a cheap movie rental might. A typical movie rental at Video Town is $1.99 for a week; movies less than two months old are $3.50.

In its best years, Video Town saw 2,000 weekly customers, 60 to 70 percent of whom were 15 to 30 years old and would rent movies three to four times a week on average. Now, the younger visitors have largely vanished, taking with them a majority of the store’s income. The store now has about 500 visitors a week.

One of the saving graces for small video stores, Han said, has become the bump in customers each time a peer closes down. It never lasts, though – eventually people tire of driving out.

“In two or three years,” she said, “I’m not really sure how this is going to be working.”

Rieko Santana, 62 of La Habra, has rented from Video Town almost every week for 23 years. Parekh and his employees feel like family at this point.

His regular visits were an effort to keep small video businesses alive, he said, and searching online is simply no match for perusing the aisles in person.

Others may have largely moved on, but Santana said he’s perfectly content to load up his multi-disc DVD player and watch things the old-fashioned way.

“It’s great to see a little family adventure pulling in there and seeing how happy they are. The parents are walking up and down the aisles saying ‘Wow, I remember that.’ They pick up the movies and come up to the counter with six or seven movies in their hands,” Santana said. “It’s great to see the smiles on their faces, and you don’t get that by sitting in a chair, pushing a button and fast-forwarding through 600 movies on a screen.”