Alice makes move on Fatso customers
A Christchurch DVD store and cinema is moving to fill a gap left by the demise of movie hire company Fatso.
Alice Cinemas and Film Specialists has launched a national subscription service where DVDs are mailed to customers according to a list they create on the store’s website.
Alice co-owner Julian Stewart plans to purchase Fatso’s database of nearly 10,000 customers and market the new service to them.
Fatso, which was owned by Sky TV, closed on November 23 after 13 years of sending rental DVDs in the post to subscribing customers.
Stewart said the new subscription service was a way to make Alice’s collection of more than 25,000 DVDs relevant in the age of movie-streaming services like Netflix, iTunes and Neon.
‘‘It’s 2017 and we were a DVD store in one of the most developed parts of the city.
‘‘We were not only starting to feel out of place, but feeling more and more irrelevant. DVD stores are closing across New Zealand and there are only a handful left in Christchurch,’’ he said.
‘‘They will be gone in a year or so, I imagine.’’
‘‘Our father, Paul Stewart, spent over 30 years putting this collection together. It’s loved and cherished by Cantabrians. Whatever we did, we had to keep and protect the DVD library, but also reinvent ourselves.’’
But he said the subscriptionbased postal service could only be offered to about 2000 people.
‘‘We can only accept a limited number of subscribers. We don’t have the copy depth that Fatso had, so we are going to cap it.’’
‘‘This is the future of the DVD library. We are going from a local business to a nationwide business.’’
The service costs between $11.95 and $39.95 a month depending on how many DVDs a customer wants. The postal service excludes new releases and new box sets.
Alice’s Tuam St premises had also been revamped, with a second cinema screen added.
Central Christchurch’s cinema industry is still recovering from the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes.
A new seven-screen Hoyts cinema is due to open on Colombo St in the middle of 2018, after the company’s damaged eight-screen Moorhouse Ave complex was demolished. The Arts Centre has plans for a new two-screen arthouse cinema to replace the Academy cinema, which moved to The Colombo mall after the tremors.
Alice co-owner Jeremy Stewart said he would consider operating the proposed Arts Centre cinema.
‘‘If the Arts Centre are looking for an experienced operator, then I would be open to having a look at it.’’