
‘Why are you still here?’: Inside the last Blockbuster in America - SQL2219
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/07/14/why-are-you-still-here-inside-the-last-blockbuster-left-in-america/
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mindcrime
I think there's something a lot more interesting here than a story about
people taking selfies in front of an archaic sign. That this Blockbuster
survives is an example of a pattern, although the details hard to tease out,
of how a local retail business can exist even in the Internet age.

Maybe a video rental store doesn't need to be part of a massive, nationwide,
"big box" chain. Maybe lots of other business can exist in a radically scaled
down, more personal, more local version. I'm speculating a bit, but part of me
thinks there is still a lot of room for business models that exist outside of
the online dominance of Amazon, or the meatspace dominance of Walmart, etc.

Micro-manufacturing is a thing, what about micro-retail? What about a
combination of both? What ever happened to the idea of "mass customization"?
Could a local business potentially do a better job of offering the kind of
hyper-custom goods that will appeal to their local community, than a national
(or international) behemoth?

I guess it's ironic to be discussing this in the context of a story about the
last remaining store of what once _was_ a national behemoth, but maybe that's
the whole point. "Blockbuster the chain" may not work anymore, but maybe
"Blockbuster in X" does for some X.

Makes you wonder what avenues might be viable for a Sears, or KMart, or
Western Auto, etc. Or just local business that never had any connection to any
national chains.

And to close the loop, it leads you to wonder how those local businesses can
turn around and leverage the trappings of the Internet era to enhance their
own businesses.

