Dying breed in the digital age
Captain Video defies logic by keeping the lights on as a brick-and-mortar video store
SAN MATEO — How do you survive running a video store in the age of Netflix, Hulu and YouTube? Never take a day off.
It’s worked so far for Ira Belfer, the owner of Captain Video. In March 2010, declining sales forced Belfer to let go of his last employee. He decided he would try to run the store himself for six months and see what happened.
“That six months has turned into six years,” said Belfer, who has worked from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, including holidays, since March 23, 2010 — except for one day this winter when jury duty forced him to open the store at noon.
Belfer’s extreme dedication is one of the reasons his modest store on El Camino Real, unlike most other businesses that rent and sell DVDs, has persisted well into the digital age.
But there’s more to it. In an era when customer service often consists of automated phone systems that drive callers to the brink of insanity, Belfer takes pride in an old-fashioned concept: actually being helpful.
“That’s how I’ve been successful, and that’s why I’m still in business,” said the Brooklyn native. “Because I want people
to feel comfortable here. If they have a problem, I’ll try to solve it for them. If they need a movie, I can get it for them.”
The 62-year-old businessman has a core group of loyal customers, some of whom drop by several days a week to hang out amid the racks and shelves of DVDs and VHS tapes.
They watch one of the movies that’s always playing on a TV atop the counter, chat about film, life or politics, and munch on Belfer’s array of pretzels, M&Ms and other snacks. One longtime customer describes the store on El Camino Real as being “like ‘Cheers,’ but with videos.”
Adapting to survive
Belfer opened his store in 1985, when VHS was king. His shop was part of the Captain Video franchise, which had seven locations from San Francisco to Oakland. Only Belfer’s remains.
At its peak about 16 years ago, Belfer’s store had 10 employees manning the bustling counter. But as Blockbuster and retailers like Best Buy flooded the market with DVDs, business began to suffer. Then DVDs began to decline with the rise of Netflix and streaming video.
Now Blockbluster, the behemoth that failed to adapt, is out of business, while Captain Video keeps whirring. It is a hardy specimen of a dying breed.
Five Star Video closed its store on University Avenue in Berkeley in February. Del Rio Video in San Jose is now simply Del Rio: The store on South White Road is liquidating its 1,000 or so remaining DVDs for $1 apiece as it finishes its transformation into a retail store.
“I’m just trying to get rid of them,” said owner Maria Martinez. “People don’t rent videos anymore.”
That’s not entirely true, as Belfer has found. But to survive he has had to be resourceful. He has embraced the twin demons that threaten to destroy him — the internet and the personal computer — and now sells a few dozen DVDs and other items per week on Amazon.
And he has diversified by becoming a quasi-pawn shop. He pays a small price for people’s collections of DVDs, videotapes or memorabilia, does some online research to see which items are in demand and sells them to people as far away as Japan.
He makes up to $200 a month on videotapes he gets for free and sells in the store for $1 or less.
“You take garbage and you make it into gold,” he said. “I never know what things are worth.”
Customer dedication
Belfer is divorced and has no children, but he and many of his longtime customers — including a handful of colorful characters he calls his “wack pack” a la Howard Stern — form a kind of family.
“He’ll give his shirt off his back to you,” said Angelo Mitropoulos, 56, a regular patron. “Whatever he can do to help you out, he’ll do it.”
The owner knows the likes and dislikes of his longtime customers and recommends movies accordingly. That’s something, he said, that Redbox can’t do.
Rob Caughlan stopped by on a recent afternoon to check out the new releases.
“One thing I like about Ira is he knows movies,” Caughlan said as he mulled over his options. “If he says it’s a bad movie, if he says, ‘No, no, you wouldn’t like it,’ I take his word for it. He knows my taste.”
Belfer even knows what sort of movies Caughlan’s wife, Diana, likes.
“I know Diana doesn’t like violence,” he said. “So if Rob comes in and Diana’s busy with her Spanish work, I might recommend something with more action. But if it’s something the two of them are going to watch, I would suggest maybe a drama or something with a little suspense, but nothing scary.”
The store’s revenue is split between sales and rentals, including a curtained-off section of adult films for the ever-decreasing number of people who haven’t turned to the internet for such consumption.
Captain Video customers are more discerning than the typical moviegoer, whose passion for superhero movies dumbfounds Belfer.
“Got any Groucho Marx?” asked Mary Chavez Byrns one day last week.
Belfer asked if she’d ever seen a Marx Brothers comedy. She hadn’t. So he gave her their best-known movie, “A Night at the Opera.”
People have asked Belfer how he manages to work 70 hours a week without a break, a vacation, a day at the beach or countless other pleasures most people take for granted.
“I say I get up every morning and I feel good and I enjoy what I do,” said Belfer. “And I try to make this a fun place to be so that people feel comfortable here.”
He walked over to a spot behind the counter where a yellow piece of children’s art was taped to the wall. One day, he explained, a Foster City teacher called saying her elementary school’s VCR had broken, wondering if he had any for sale. He said he happened to have one, and sold it to her for $10.
A week later he got an envelope in the mail with that yellow piece of paper. The teacher’s entire class had signed it, adding smiley faces and individual messages.
In big letters, someone had written, “Captain Video, You’re Our Hero.”
“Stuff like that just makes me want to get up the next day and help people,” he said. “Because I made people happy. And I made a little money on the deal too. And that’s what it’s all about. That’s why I’m here.”