If you go What: Loveland Showtime Video’s going-out-of-business sale. Where: 1821 W. Eisenhower Blvd., Loveland. When: All movies, TV series and video games are on sale now. Rentals will continue through Labor Day weekend. Store will close Sept. 22. Store hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Cost: Most DVDs $9.99, some $4.99; Blu-ray $11.99; games $9.99; TV series $14.99. Prices will drop after Labor Day. More info: 970-669-8799.

Bruce and Renea Herberger, owners of one of the last video rental stores in Colorado, have kept their show running longer than most, but they’re finally facing facts and pushing the stop button on the business.

Their Showtime Video shop at 1821 W. Eisenhower Blvd. in Loveland put its entire collection of 18,000 movies and games up for sale at the start of the month and will close for good Sept. 22.

“We probably have the same number of customers on average that we always had, but costs have overrun everything,” Bruce said, citing increased prices for rent, utilities and the minimum wage.

When they bought into Renea’s father’s business in 1993, they charged $2.50 to rent a movie. That price went up to $2.75 somewhere along the way and didn’t increase to $3.50 until this past January, Renea said.

Even when they first got into the video business, they knew it wouldn’t last forever.

“It’s been a great ride,” she said. “We thought we had five years, 25 years ago.”

Renea’s father and uncle started Showtime and launched 27 stores through the years, from the Carolinas to Redding, Calif.

“Someone related to me owned and ran every Showtime nationwide,” she said.

When she and Bruce moved to Loveland in 1993, they took over the two Loveland Showtime locations and one under development in Longmont. In 1998, they built a strip center in the 600 block of East 29th Street and moved the store from U.S. 287 and 29th Street into more than 9,000 square feet in the new building.

Loveland Showtime No. 1 opened in 1990, they said, and No. 2 on West Eisenhower opened shortly thereafter, they said.

Closing down

They also built a store in Windsor in 1998. They closed that location in 2010 when they sold the building.

As the video rental market faded, they closed two more stores: the 29th Street store in January 2016 and the Longmont location in June 2016.

Meanwhile, news accounts in 2017 recorded the obituaries of the last nonspecialized video stores in Northern Colorado — the last in Boulder in March, the last in Denver in June and the last in Fort Collins in October.

Bruce and Renea said they’re not sure there are any stores left in Colorado — maybe a survivor or two in the southern part of the state, plus the Gorehound’s Playground in Fort Collins, which specializes in rentals of horror movies and has a small theater for movie showings.

To explain why they hung on for so long, when the business was just breaking even, Bruce told of a young man who started working for him when he was just 16.

That employee eventually managed all his stores while going to college and trying to get into medical school, Bruce said. At age 38, he’s now starting med school.

“His last paycheck is being mailed to him,” he said.

“There were kids working to get into college. If we had just shut it down, it would have been really hard for them,” Bruce said. “It was worth it to keep it open just for the employees if it was breaking even.”

“But it’s not doing that anymore,” Renea said.

Bruce worked in the stores and hired and trained the employees, and Renea, who had worked as a CPA for a major accounting company in Texas, managed the books.

He’s proud of the many high school students he’s employed over the years, and the children of some of his original employees.

“At one point in Loveland, I think I’d taught every kid in high school how to tie a tie,” he joked, explaining that he required all his employees, boys and girls alike, to wear a white shirt and tie.

“They asked me why, and I said, ‘If you look professional, you act professional,'” he said. “It changed the whole attitude of the store.”

A paradigm shift

Bruce acknowledged that streaming video services such as Netflix and the ubiquitous Redbox rental business have contributed to brick-and-mortar stores’ demise.

But he also blamed a shifting paradigm at the movie studios, which several years ago started changing the way they did business with his stores.

Bruce was proud of his reputation for watching every single movie that came into the store, so he could decide what was worth buying and keep up the family-friendliness of the business.

“Now, if Paramount puts out a movie, I have to buy it, or I can’t buy any other Paramount movies,” he said. “They’ve forced me to buy movies that I wouldn’t normally have bought.”

And not only is he forced to buy movies, but he’s able to buy only as many as the studios allocate to him.

“For the past several years, we’ve had to go buy movies at Walmart on Tuesday mornings,” when new releases come out, Renea said, because the studios don’t always send enough.

The community

Although streaming services helped put rental stores out of business, they’ll never replace them, Bruce said.

“One thing that’s kept us going is that Showtime has always been kind of social,” he said. “A lot of older people come in and visit with the kids. … They don’t really know what they want. The kids get to know them and know what kinds of movies they like.”

Loveland resident Tommy Kroboth, a loyal Showtime customer who worked at the store for a couple of years when he was in his teens, echoed that sentiment during a visit to the store Thursday.

After his initial shock at hearing of the Herbergers’ plans (“What the hell! It’s closing down? I used to work here. This place is my jam!”), Kroboth said the community aspect was an important factor in the life of the store.

“The best part about working here was people came here to talk about movies,” he said. “Some of the best movies I’ve ever watched, Ty recommended to me,” he said, referring to longtime employee Tyler Doenges behind the counter.

When Kroboth heard that every DVD in the store is for sale, and possibly would be snatched up soon, he feverishly started making a pile of classics.

“I love movies. Movies are my heart,” he said. “This place has some nostalgia for me.”

Although the sale started Aug. 1, the word is spreading slowly. On Thursday afternoon, copies of many classics still were waiting to be discovered: “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “On the Waterfront,” “Platoon,” “Groundhog Day,” “North by Northwest,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “True Grit,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Casablanca,” “The Great Dictator” and, of course, many more of all genres.

At the beginning of the sale, the Herbergers said most DVDs are $9.99, some are $4.99, Blu-ray discs are $11.99, games are $9.99 and TV series are $14.99. Those prices will drop as the sale goes on, but “if you want it, and it’s in the store, you should buy it now,” Renea said.

Showtime will continue renting movies through Labor Day weekend, and sales will continue until Sept. 22.

“I’m heartbroken”

Lexy Donnelly, another longtime customer who lives within walking distance of the shop, said, “I’ve been a card-carrying regular for 20 years.

“I still have my original card,” she said, pulling it out of her wallet.

“I’m heartbroken. It’s sad that Redbox and Netflix have taken away our local store,” she said.

Customer Donna Hamernik said she visits the store at least once a week, usually on Tuesdays to catch the brand-new movies. But she also relied on Showtime’s encyclopedic inventory, she said, when looking for old flicks from the ’40s to show to the residents of the senior-living facility where she works. “You can’t find them anywhere else.”

After the store closes, Renea said their viewing habits would change: “What we’ll do now is get to watch movies we want to watch, not the ones we had to watch.”

Bruce joked: “I’m going into rehab right now. They’ve got me weaned off of black-and-whites so far.”

And the decision hasn’t come without emotion.

“My dad passed away in 2008, and this is the last of my dad,” Renea said. “There’s going to be some tears shed.”

Craig Young: 970-635-3634, cyoung@reporter-herald.com, www.twitter.com/CraigYoungRH.