Blockbuster was once one of the largest retailers in the world. It helped move the consumers’ ability to watch movies from the theater to the…
Blockbuster was once one of the largest retailers in the world. It helped move the consumers’ ability to watch movies from the theater to the home, via stores that offered videotapes of mainline films for rent. Eventually, it was buried by Netflix and other companies that offered DVDs via mail, and then the emergence of streaming. Two blockbuster stores survived as of this week. One will close later this month, and that leaves only one left in the world.
Blockbuster was founded in 1985. At its peak, in 2004, it had over 9,000 stores. About half of those were in the United States. Blockbuster’s employee count in the same year was 84,000, which is nearly triple what Google parent Alphabet has today. Blockbuster’s primary products were VHS and Betamax tapes rented to customers who did not want to invest in large, expensive video libraries of the clunky videotape boxes.
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Like McDonald’s, Blockbuster owned some of its own locations and others were owned by franchisees.
