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Locally owned Movie Stop fills rental niche
Published 11:50am Monday, July 26, 2010Fergus Falls didn’t have to wait long to get another brick-and-mortar movie rental place. Customers won’t even have to learn a new location; they can just head right back to the old Movie Gallery building.
Movie Stop, which could open as early as today, is locally owned by Joyce and Steve Schiller. The two have owned the building at 402 West Lincoln Avenue for several years, and, in fact, they’re old hands at the movie rental business: they used to own Total Entertainment Center, the movie rental business which occupied the building from 1995 until Movie Gallery bought it out in 2004.
Though Movie Gallery, Inc., the former local store’s parent company, began liquidating its assets in early May, the Schillers have not been planning their new business for very long. “We’ve been putting this together for about six weeks,” said Joyce. Still, the couple has already put together a sizable stock of DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and video games, and they’re planning on having a “soft open” early this week — possibly as early as today.
Joyce said the couple decided to get back into the movie rental game because they missed the work and their customers. They also feel like they’re fulfilling a need in the city. “We’ve always loved movies, and I can’t imagine living in a town where we can’t rent movies or watch movies,” she explained.
Movie Gallery’s last day of business in the building was Wednesday, July 21. Since that time, the Schillers have been cleaning and reorganizing. When they open, the building won’t be entirely remodeled, but it will be stocked with movies and video games.
Though the last rental business to operate in the store went out of business, the Schillers aren’t worried. Steve credited Movie Gallery, Inc.’s failure to the its buyout of Hollywood Video, which all told cost the company over $1 billion. The Fergus Falls Movie Gallery, the couple said, was doing quite well when the company folded.
“This store we know was always busy every time we’d come by,” said Joyce.
They’re hoping that trend continues. “We’re really interested in seeing all our old customers,” she added.
