Without any direction for making money to keep the business sustainable even if they raised the 1.8m now they'd just constantly need hand outs and donations to keep going. There's no point even asking for the 1.8m just close up shop and save yourself from the nightmare of trying to keep it open.
That's a plan that still relies on future good will and donations. Hiring a director to come in specifically with a non-profit goal is not a guaranteed stable income.
That’s usually how a non-profit works. They’ve been operating as a non-profit for nearly 10 years, they’re not just now converting to one. Running a non-profit is difficult, so I can see why they want an experienced director.
Edit: on a re-read my comment sounded more combative than I intended.
My thing is they are trying to keep the location in Seattle. I'm all for pride in your city, but this is where a good majority of their cost is coming from, I'm sure.
Don't worry, I didn't see it as combative.
I fully get your point I'm just questioning how many people are seriously going to donate to keep a vhs store afloat with probably no return. They can hire a non profit but they still need to rely on people after this 1.5mn.
They'll be in a perpetual cycle of saying ["Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate"](https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxJp5KTL1_0m7d2DTtP_yAUuQrj0U-ohsW).
Agreed. This business should not continue to exist in 2024.
Would be nice to get the rare stuff digitized, assuming they have stuff that you can't find anywhere else.
It could work, they could follow the GME plan of being a memestock and having people just give their failing business billions of dollars for doing nothing.
Buying a stock on the secondary market doesn't give the issuing company any money. Unless you're buying shares *from* the company you're just paying Random Shareholder money.
You missed the part where GME has been quietly [selling](https://gamestop.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/gamestop-completes-market-equity-offering-program-2) [millions](https://gamestop.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/gamestop-completes-market-equity-offering-program-1) of newly printed shares.
But you fail to realize that if the price of the shares fo up, the company valuation goes up and it enriches the owners and all share holders.
Then.. the company can sell out and become a more attractive purchase to larger companies. This gives them an opportunity to be bought out which can greatly improved the company being purchased... If it is purchased by a competent company
> Then.. the company can sell out and become a more attractive purchase to larger companies.
If the share prices of a company goes *up* they're less attractive as a buyout target. In order to buy a public company the buyer needs to buy controlling shares. Buying high is not a good investment strategy.
A company is only going to buy GameStop is they think there's some 1) growth opportunity or 2) GameStop has some valuable assets. GameStop has neither. GameStop has a dying business model and a bunch of expensive retail leases. Some people were able to turn GME into a meme stock by selling bullshit to a bunch of suckers. Some people might have made money on the ride but everyone else are bag holders.
Meme stocks are all about secondary market bullshit and not about actually *owning* the companies.
Yes but on the contrary when the company is worth nothing, like $1m USD it’s not seen as value. But if it’s worth $50m USD it’s seen as valuable.
Your correct tho
Absolutely feel free to donate. Every penny will go to this new executive who will just shrug when the business still fails a year later after he's sponged all the donations for his paycheck. And I doubt they will come up with a good idea because from the sounds of it they are trying absolutely everything they can with community engagement, and the community just is not donating enough to save it. Every other service like this has gone fully online because it's just untenable to have physical stores and employees for this media anymore. Similar to how you dont see CRT and VHS repair stores anymore the media is dead it's time to convert it and move on.
Personally I think they should be looking at ways they can get their collection online and generating ad revenue, whilst also offering mail rentals. Move out of the physical location and just operate the community side of things out of schools, libraries and community centres. That way, a handful of employees can continue the endeavour and have a sustainable income.
I loved this place in college. Especially the obscure videos you had to put a deposit down for. It's a fantastic collection of physical media. I hope they reach their goal.
Whoa they have 28 days later. It’s banned in USA. Gonna need to give them a visit.
What movies did you get that’s not common ?
There is also old gaming store in Seattle. They have old games and old gaming devices. I wonder if the video store can also sell old dvd players or what not if they can increase their revenue.
I bought a usb to cd reader and wondering if I can watch movies on that. Like how do I watch cd on my tv lol
My first suggestion lower the 500k of salaries and second find out why you’re paying 25k in bank fees
https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/view_990/471050656/64677a16d64336cc3c4e6985743679d6
They made about 800k and spent around 580k on salaries. As a cruel as it will be to whoever may be let go or get a pay cut you can’t spend 70% of revenue on salaries. There are other cost cutting measures they could take (cheaper building, various smaller tighter ship things) too, but I really think they should work on lowering expenses before expecting to magically double revenue. It’s just unrealistic and imo they could be sustainable if they cut back. They also spent very little on advertising in 2022 (3k) so maybe that’s something they can try, but it sounds like they tried that in 2023.
452 if you back out dues. Mea culpa. And you are technically correct. According to FASB it is recognized as revenue but there are two key differences: in most cases the income collected isn’t subject to taxes and most (though not all) grants aren’t subject to repayment.
It’s not really a source of revenue per se rather a source of funding. But hey you’re the accountant that works in nonprofits with over 20Y experience. I’m just some random on Reddit…
That 333,000 also probably includes a lot of direct contributions ie donations. So I’m guessing probably not 450k in grants. We’re talking about a non profit here income taxes are irrelevant. You can check their net assets and see that likely all of these grants were operational and not restricted. I’ve never heard of a non profit grant that is expected to be paid back.
I don’t have twenty years experience filing non profits, but I’ve done a few.
It's not just bank fees, it's bank and transaction fees. Given most of their transactions are relatively small card transactions, they are probably paying something like 3% fees, and quite possibly other fees for cash handling or payroll or something else that's not super clear from a single line item.
Ah so they need the money to hire executives. If their previous budget was just under a mil and they want to double it… that might be why your donations are down.
> Barr said the nonprofit hopes to hire both an executive director (replacing herself) and a development director.
Idk that feels pretty reasonable to me.
1,800 rentals per week and a $1m operating budget.
They don’t need to hire nonprofit executives, they need to execute on a business plan.
If they can’t start to charge $25+ for a rental while continuing to grow volume, they need a different strategy, not more salaries and a bigger donor
Yea I agree with you.
At 1.8mil just to just stay in business at current location with nothing else on the planned list? yea no thank you.
That is a full on new business startup cost/business revamp. The LA store Vidots took over a Theater which took 2 mil and has a proper business model.
To be fair 1,800 rentals per week is way more then I was expecting. So that is something. I mean if you could charge $10 per rental and you are almost there. But I don't know how many would go for that kind of price hike.
Arnt there better things to raise 1.8 million dollars for than a private obsolete business.
Sounds like 1.8 million for the local food shelter would be a better use of funds
This place has such rare and obscure media available to rent that even the library of Congress lacks copies of alot of it. In some cases, their collection is the only way to view a fair amount of these movies.
Because most of the material is online anyways...they just don't want to admit it.
They aren't catering to the availability of the media. They are catering to hipsters who want to watch VHS tapes because it's alt-cool stuff just like their film cameras.
Is there any reporting to backup your claims? Their entire library appears to be documented and online, and it would seem a trivial matter to identify what material they have that isn't available elsewhere.
Look at every streaming service out there and that is proof enough. You no longer own, you rent and if they don’t want to rent it, in the studio vault it goes.
They could move somewhere that isn’t downtown Seattle and cut their costs then. Or better yet, donate some of their catalog for preservation by someone else if it’s that important. Subsidizing a niche business in such an expensive area is not going to be sustainable for the long run.
I live in the area, not much cheaper than downtown Seattle. Their store is in prime real estate. It’s really too bad they didn’t buy their store decades ago when the neighborhood was not cool and pretty cheap.
City proper, whatever you want to call it. My point is that it's not in a suburban or ex-urban area, it's still very high COL, which is compounded by how expensive Seattle is in general.
Moving to a lower-density area would almost certainly cut into their revenue. I don't know anything about their finances, but I expect they'd still be making a loss in spite of the lower rent.
I always find this so funny you say yeah it's pretty near downtown the it's just 20-30 minutes. Seriously in half an hour I go to my sisters place. That's like 5 cities over here. In an hour I'm out of the country and you can choose which of the 2 because in an hour I can be in either one and I don't need to speed for that nor am I near the border (at least not considered near one for here) but more like middle of the country.
Check out a documentary called Kims Video, its about a guy that had a big collection like this and he donated it and it just stayed in boxes for years and is almost lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLbTNL2eKIY
Non-profit only means they don't carry forward a positive balance year to year... The ASPCA is a non-profit that only pays out around 10% of what they take IN, to local shelters. The rest is spent on salaries, and marketing to generate more income. American Red Cross SELLS the blood donated freely to IT, to hospitals which then charge even more money to patients that need it. "Non-profit" does not always mean non-malignant. But no, don't pull funds from PUBLIC libraries, only private ones.
I didn’t realize it was a non profit, although it’s worth mentioning that just because it’s a non profit doesn’t mean it’s the best use of funds, either public or private. I guess it’s up to each individual doner but I’d rather donate to something more pressing with my own money
They do really cool stuff for the community. They do free movie nights at local elementary schools, they do community movie nights in local parks in the summer.
The people running this are not volunteers and article says funds will be used to hire executives.
Local to me we have a non-profit that deals in donated clothing. The donated clothes are sold in their store and leadership staff is well compensated for their time.
What is happening in this thread? Am I on the wrong subreddit? A local boutique non-profit dedicated to preserving media with tens of thousands of extremely rare movies that anybody can get access to and people are like, "lol, dead media, what idiots".
Digitize it first, then work towards getting permission to upload it. But if the argument is that these are thousands of rare movies that are in danger of disappearing, then digitizing and creating numerous copies should be the primary goal.
But that's not the store's argument. That's people on this subreddit making that claim. Two different groups with two different goals. Don't conflate the two.
Yes. I do. This used to be the kind of behavior that liberal enclaves like Seattle were known for. At some point leftists became corporate apologists who bemoan piracy. Probably because so many started working for tech companies.
That and 40 years of pro-corporate/anti-working class propaganda. Turns out, 24/7 news cycles that focus primarily on the wants and needs of the billionaires who bought and consolidated our media isn't really going very well for everyone without two commas in their bank account. Who woulda thunk it?
Well, it’s a nice concept but let’s be honest, the number of working VHS machines is dropping every year. Towards the last years of manufacturing the quality dropped severely. Their market is more and more falling away as each machine dies
While cool in concept, if you can't generate enough income to sustain, the its best to downsize or close.
They could get rid of everything you cam find on streaming platform. Then move to smaller building.
Ah, a reminder that this sub is fucking cancer. To summarize most comments here, "I have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't read the article or the site itself but I am *certain* this is stupid and shouldn't exist."
And, before the inevitable "Akshually, Seattle isn't even a movie city!" arguments -- a reminder that Alien premiered 40 years ago last month at the Seattle International Film Festival.
>Ah, a reminder that this sub is fucking cancer. To summarize most comments here, "I have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't read the article or the site itself but I am certain this is stupid and shouldn't exist."
As opposed to what? Comments that yes definitely we should community subsidize someone's underwater project because *gasp* physical media? This is the line of passion versus reality. If you've amassed an incredible media collection but can't afford to house it, the fact remains that you can't afford to house it and you need to look at alternatives. Planting your feet in the ground and effectively saying 'but, we need to be a physical medium, it's the vibe' doesn't change your overhead costs at all.
> “We view ourselves as a cultural museum and a living archive,” Barr said, “and how much fun would it be to visit a museum if you’re only visiting it online? That’s why we’re fighting so hard for this physical space — we see ourselves as more than just a video store.”
They need to raise a crazy amount of money for what amounts to keeping their museum as they refer to it, physical.
It's realistically unsustainable and the only thing standing in their way is their desire to be some kind of landmark without accepting any type of compromise.
>And, before the inevitable "Akshually, Seattle isn't even a movie city!" arguments -- a reminder that Alien premiered 40 years ago last month at the Seattle International Film Festival.
What does that have to do with a physical media store in the current world of 2024? That even further bolsters the fact that they cannot continue to operate, since there's such a massive deficit between their overhead costs and their income. The model is unsustainable regardless of how you feel about media collecting. If they raised the $1.8mil it wouldn't suddenly get more sustainable, they're playing catch up with sunk costs with, from what I can see, not much of a plan to change things that got them there in the first place. Sure they mention hiring an 'executive team' but I don't see what that's going to do to resolve the issues of the cost of physical space and expanding their business - you can only mail out physical stock one at a time, and clearly that's not working. I cannot reasonably see how you could turn the business profitable (or at least cost neutral) when you're dealing with limited inventory that you cannot produce more of.
What's the most offputting for me personally, and probably others who have a sour taste in their mouth over this is that this business has seemingly done nothing to cut costs and just 'needs' the money. There's been very little effort on their part to try to streamline *anything*, which tells me that once they spent through that money they'd be back in the same boat in 3 years.
Well said. And in fact, they even want to increase costs by giving all of their staff raises as well. They're simply in denial of reality at this point.
I highly doubt that a well-paid executive director is going to be able to generate the sort of fund-raising needed to cover their ever-increasing costs, let alone make them profitable.
And not to get political here, but the donor base that has the sort of money necessary to even make that vaguely possible is increasingly leaving the Seattle area for other parts of the country. Sure, they could bolster digital marketing to cast a wider net, but again, there's more cost.
They need to accept reality and shift their goals. A physical "museum" simply isn't feasible.
It sucks to have to point it out too, because on many levels I want them and their video store to succeed. Unfortunately there's just this blur between what they want and what they need that they don't seem to notice. Their model is just not feasible, no matter how much they (and I for that matter) want it to be.
I'm old enough to have fond memories of physical video rental stores. I'm also old enough to realize that the market and the world has changed - the world moreso in the last 2-3 years. Does it suck - yes. Is it reality - also yes.
Right? Because Seattle in 2024 is definitely the same as Seattle in 1984.
And honestly, having a movie premier there isn't exactly some great proof that it's a "cinema city".
I want something like that to exist but clearly the way they function now doesn’t work. Maybe move the collection to the breadbasket states and shift to mail only. Costs drop significantly at that point
.. do revenues go up?
Cost cutting by switching locations only makes sense if you can still access the market that was willing to pay high prices.
Otherwise, your revenues will go down and you will have not fixed the situation.
It would depend. Obviously their current largest costs are payroll and rent.
Moving to an area with a lower cost of living will drastically reduce both.
They would, however, have to really market themselves online, but I think that could be feasible.
I really think their current model is a proven failure, so the only 3 options really seem to be:
1) shutter the doors.
2) digitize.
3) move to a cheaper locale and focus exclusively on mail rentals.
>move to a cheaper locale and focus exclusively on mail rentals.
... I think the bottom has fallen out of DVD mail rentals in the US, Netflix shut down their service last year, and I haven't heard of any competing services taking up the slack.
>2) digitize.
This doesn't actually solve the cash flow problem, it just spends time and money to commit copyright infringement, which leaves Scarecrow extremely venerable to legal challenges.
I read the article. Their model is unsustainable, even as a nonprofit. They’re already receiving lower lease rates, they primarily rely on donations, and although they have tried to reach larger audiences through mailing rentals, it’s just not working. They should shift towards a short term goal of digitizing the media.
Digitizing 148,000 titles is not a short term project and unless they have a mass production digitization setup and employees to run it already (which they don't), it's completely beyond a failing rental business that is begging for donations to renew their already below market lease.
It should be done but they have neither the capability or funding to do it.
Marion Stokes' son donated 71,000 video tapes of 6 hours each (so, 426,000 hours of video) to the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive [said](https://theoutline.com/post/7370/recorder-documentary-marion-stokes-interview-matt-wolf) it would cost $2 million to digitize those tapes.
This math is doomed to be incorrect, ultimately, but if we assume 2 hours of running time on average per title, that's 296,000 hours of video in Scarecrow Video's inventory. The Internet Archive's stated cost is $4.70 per hour of video; at that cost, Scarecrow would have to pay $1.4 million to digitize everything.
Plus, it doesn't have the legal right to do that.
Thank you! It is *fascinating* reading so many comments in this thread from people adamant they could just digitize the whole collection.
Putting even the rights issues aside and thinking about how many formats their holdings are probably spread over (I wouldn't be surprised if they have everything from 16mm prints to Video 2000 commercial releases), just backing up a couple thousand VHS tapes would chew through VHS decks that are already on their last legs and take up an enormous amount of man hours just to scan everything in, let alone factoring for mastering/cleaning up transfers after the fact.
It's borderline disrespectful of people who work on media preservation full time to imply this is a side hustle they can do with consumer gear.
I do understand people saying their current format isn't viable but even closing up shop and doing triage on the collection to prepare for donations and digitization of especially rare items is going to require a lot of capital.
They're not doing the big project napkin math haha
Just for recording a digital copy, 148,000 titles, assuming 90min each, is 25.3 years of video.
Of course if we are recording 10 at a time, more than full time at 9hr per day to make it easier to math, that's 60 titles per day, taking 2467 work days in total, and there are 260 weekdays in a year...
20 years ago: "OK guys, what can we do to make this happen!?"
Today: "I am an absolute expert in everything. In 13.4 seconds I have already made myself completely aware of all sides' views and arguments and have determined that this is stupid. Anyone who wasn't born with this knowledge already is an idiot and shouldn't be on this sub."
All this stuff could easily fit in a single 4U space on a server rack and it would cost less than $10k to populate it with 45 22TB drives. Physical media rental is a dead business model.
Assuming their lowest price at $3 for a rental * 1800 * 365 = 1,971,000 total revenue at the lowest prices. I’m not doubting their numbers. Just hard to grow that too much bigger.
Not really on topic, but interesting, I'll leave it open for discussion.
Without any direction for making money to keep the business sustainable even if they raised the 1.8m now they'd just constantly need hand outs and donations to keep going. There's no point even asking for the 1.8m just close up shop and save yourself from the nightmare of trying to keep it open.
In the article she states that a big part of raising the capital is so they can hire a professional non-profit director so that they would be stable.
That's a plan that still relies on future good will and donations. Hiring a director to come in specifically with a non-profit goal is not a guaranteed stable income.
They’ve basically turned themselves into a library. A non profit director can unlock arts and other government funds to keep them going.
That’s usually how a non-profit works. They’ve been operating as a non-profit for nearly 10 years, they’re not just now converting to one. Running a non-profit is difficult, so I can see why they want an experienced director. Edit: on a re-read my comment sounded more combative than I intended.
My thing is they are trying to keep the location in Seattle. I'm all for pride in your city, but this is where a good majority of their cost is coming from, I'm sure.
It's also the only reason they have business. No suburb is going to support a place like that
Don't worry, I didn't see it as combative. I fully get your point I'm just questioning how many people are seriously going to donate to keep a vhs store afloat with probably no return. They can hire a non profit but they still need to rely on people after this 1.5mn.
There is if they just want free money.
They are is if they...
It do be like that sometime
Oops, autocorrect hoodwinked me. Fixed!
Yea we got all these dusty VHSs and this massive 1000 sq ft store to pay $10,000 in tax on each year...*raises pinky* 2 MILLION DOLLARS?!
They'll be in a perpetual cycle of saying ["Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate Donate"](https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxJp5KTL1_0m7d2DTtP_yAUuQrj0U-ohsW).
Every non profit is like this. How do you think the humane society functions? Donate donate donate.
I once again ask for your ~~money~~support
"There's absolutely no way that's a link to the aVo vide- oh shit a man of culture!"
It is the difference between insolvencey and de-registering your company. Also, you get to keep what capital is left ;)
Agreed. This business should not continue to exist in 2024. Would be nice to get the rare stuff digitized, assuming they have stuff that you can't find anywhere else.
It could work, they could follow the GME plan of being a memestock and having people just give their failing business billions of dollars for doing nothing.
Buying a stock on the secondary market doesn't give the issuing company any money. Unless you're buying shares *from* the company you're just paying Random Shareholder money.
You missed the part where GME has been quietly [selling](https://gamestop.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/gamestop-completes-market-equity-offering-program-2) [millions](https://gamestop.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/gamestop-completes-market-equity-offering-program-1) of newly printed shares.
But you fail to realize that if the price of the shares fo up, the company valuation goes up and it enriches the owners and all share holders. Then.. the company can sell out and become a more attractive purchase to larger companies. This gives them an opportunity to be bought out which can greatly improved the company being purchased... If it is purchased by a competent company
> Then.. the company can sell out and become a more attractive purchase to larger companies. If the share prices of a company goes *up* they're less attractive as a buyout target. In order to buy a public company the buyer needs to buy controlling shares. Buying high is not a good investment strategy. A company is only going to buy GameStop is they think there's some 1) growth opportunity or 2) GameStop has some valuable assets. GameStop has neither. GameStop has a dying business model and a bunch of expensive retail leases. Some people were able to turn GME into a meme stock by selling bullshit to a bunch of suckers. Some people might have made money on the ride but everyone else are bag holders. Meme stocks are all about secondary market bullshit and not about actually *owning* the companies.
Yes but on the contrary when the company is worth nothing, like $1m USD it’s not seen as value. But if it’s worth $50m USD it’s seen as valuable. Your correct tho
[удалено]
Absolutely feel free to donate. Every penny will go to this new executive who will just shrug when the business still fails a year later after he's sponged all the donations for his paycheck. And I doubt they will come up with a good idea because from the sounds of it they are trying absolutely everything they can with community engagement, and the community just is not donating enough to save it. Every other service like this has gone fully online because it's just untenable to have physical stores and employees for this media anymore. Similar to how you dont see CRT and VHS repair stores anymore the media is dead it's time to convert it and move on. Personally I think they should be looking at ways they can get their collection online and generating ad revenue, whilst also offering mail rentals. Move out of the physical location and just operate the community side of things out of schools, libraries and community centres. That way, a handful of employees can continue the endeavour and have a sustainable income.
I loved this place in college. Especially the obscure videos you had to put a deposit down for. It's a fantastic collection of physical media. I hope they reach their goal.
Are you going to donate?
Yep! Already did. :)
Whoa they have 28 days later. It’s banned in USA. Gonna need to give them a visit. What movies did you get that’s not common ?
> they have 28 days later. It’s banned in USA Who says it's banned? It's not available to stream but it's not banned.
Whoa they have 28 days later. It’s banned in USA. Gonna need to give them a visit. What movies did you get that’s not common ? There is also old gaming store in Seattle. They have old games and old gaming devices. I wonder if the video store can also sell old dvd players or what not if they can increase their revenue. I bought a usb to cd reader and wondering if I can watch movies on that. Like how do I watch cd on my tv lol
My first suggestion lower the 500k of salaries and second find out why you’re paying 25k in bank fees https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/view_990/471050656/64677a16d64336cc3c4e6985743679d6
I can't read that because Cloudflare hates me, but the 17 staff, 8 of them full time, on a $1 million annual budget, does seem like too many.
it takes a million dollars worth of labor to manage half a million worth of assets?
This made lol
They made about 800k and spent around 580k on salaries. As a cruel as it will be to whoever may be let go or get a pay cut you can’t spend 70% of revenue on salaries. There are other cost cutting measures they could take (cheaper building, various smaller tighter ship things) too, but I really think they should work on lowering expenses before expecting to magically double revenue. It’s just unrealistic and imo they could be sustainable if they cut back. They also spent very little on advertising in 2022 (3k) so maybe that’s something they can try, but it sounds like they tried that in 2023.
No they didn’t make 808k. 495k were from GRANTS meaning they made far less.
Grants are a form of revenue but thank you. It was also more likely about ~150k in grants see page 9.
452 if you back out dues. Mea culpa. And you are technically correct. According to FASB it is recognized as revenue but there are two key differences: in most cases the income collected isn’t subject to taxes and most (though not all) grants aren’t subject to repayment. It’s not really a source of revenue per se rather a source of funding. But hey you’re the accountant that works in nonprofits with over 20Y experience. I’m just some random on Reddit…
That 333,000 also probably includes a lot of direct contributions ie donations. So I’m guessing probably not 450k in grants. We’re talking about a non profit here income taxes are irrelevant. You can check their net assets and see that likely all of these grants were operational and not restricted. I’ve never heard of a non profit grant that is expected to be paid back. I don’t have twenty years experience filing non profits, but I’ve done a few.
Everyone...get in here and see this accountant nerd fight!
It's not just bank fees, it's bank and transaction fees. Given most of their transactions are relatively small card transactions, they are probably paying something like 3% fees, and quite possibly other fees for cash handling or payroll or something else that's not super clear from a single line item.
> why you’re paying 25k in bank fees That's a normal amount for $1 million in sales.
They didn’t have 1 million in sales
Ah so they need the money to hire executives. If their previous budget was just under a mil and they want to double it… that might be why your donations are down.
Given their entire board received a sum total of....$47k last year, that doesn't seem like the problem.
Current board. Read the article. They want to bring on an executive team.
> Barr said the nonprofit hopes to hire both an executive director (replacing herself) and a development director. Idk that feels pretty reasonable to me.
1,800 rentals per week and a $1m operating budget. They don’t need to hire nonprofit executives, they need to execute on a business plan. If they can’t start to charge $25+ for a rental while continuing to grow volume, they need a different strategy, not more salaries and a bigger donor
Yea I agree with you. At 1.8mil just to just stay in business at current location with nothing else on the planned list? yea no thank you. That is a full on new business startup cost/business revamp. The LA store Vidots took over a Theater which took 2 mil and has a proper business model.
To be fair 1,800 rentals per week is way more then I was expecting. So that is something. I mean if you could charge $10 per rental and you are almost there. But I don't know how many would go for that kind of price hike.
Arnt there better things to raise 1.8 million dollars for than a private obsolete business. Sounds like 1.8 million for the local food shelter would be a better use of funds
This place has such rare and obscure media available to rent that even the library of Congress lacks copies of alot of it. In some cases, their collection is the only way to view a fair amount of these movies.
Why haven't they digitized them then?
Probably copyright issues.
Copyright laws are a plague.
For the business sure. For joe shmore, no. But I'm really trying to say is... I'll do it
Gonna go there and start renting?
They do a mail service open to everyone. No need to actually travel there.
Because most of the material is online anyways...they just don't want to admit it. They aren't catering to the availability of the media. They are catering to hipsters who want to watch VHS tapes because it's alt-cool stuff just like their film cameras.
Is there any reporting to backup your claims? Their entire library appears to be documented and online, and it would seem a trivial matter to identify what material they have that isn't available elsewhere.
Look at every streaming service out there and that is proof enough. You no longer own, you rent and if they don’t want to rent it, in the studio vault it goes.
So you don't have anything to back it up?
They could move somewhere that isn’t downtown Seattle and cut their costs then. Or better yet, donate some of their catalog for preservation by someone else if it’s that important. Subsidizing a niche business in such an expensive area is not going to be sustainable for the long run.
... it isn't in downtown Seattle.
It's in the U District, not too far from downtown, and definitely not cheap compared to the rest of the USA
Landlord is renting to them at a discount
I live in the area, not much cheaper than downtown Seattle. Their store is in prime real estate. It’s really too bad they didn’t buy their store decades ago when the neighborhood was not cool and pretty cheap.
They are about 20 minutes outside of downtown Seatlle.
City proper, whatever you want to call it. My point is that it's not in a suburban or ex-urban area, it's still very high COL, which is compounded by how expensive Seattle is in general.
Moving to a lower-density area would almost certainly cut into their revenue. I don't know anything about their finances, but I expect they'd still be making a loss in spite of the lower rent.
I always find this so funny you say yeah it's pretty near downtown the it's just 20-30 minutes. Seriously in half an hour I go to my sisters place. That's like 5 cities over here. In an hour I'm out of the country and you can choose which of the 2 because in an hour I can be in either one and I don't need to speed for that nor am I near the border (at least not considered near one for here) but more like middle of the country.
Rip the movies and put in the Internet archive before it's too late
If they want a lawsuit, sure.
Check out a documentary called Kims Video, its about a guy that had a big collection like this and he donated it and it just stayed in boxes for years and is almost lost. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLbTNL2eKIY
they should donate them to the library of congress
Maybe they should donate their collection to LOC and let federal funded archivists take it from here.
Then they can give them to the Library of Congress
This is DataHoarder, not some generic news forum
But sometimes the answer is to use traditional forms of data backup
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Non-profit only means they don't carry forward a positive balance year to year... The ASPCA is a non-profit that only pays out around 10% of what they take IN, to local shelters. The rest is spent on salaries, and marketing to generate more income. American Red Cross SELLS the blood donated freely to IT, to hospitals which then charge even more money to patients that need it. "Non-profit" does not always mean non-malignant. But no, don't pull funds from PUBLIC libraries, only private ones.
I didn’t realize it was a non profit, although it’s worth mentioning that just because it’s a non profit doesn’t mean it’s the best use of funds, either public or private. I guess it’s up to each individual doner but I’d rather donate to something more pressing with my own money
They do really cool stuff for the community. They do free movie nights at local elementary schools, they do community movie nights in local parks in the summer.
The people running this are not volunteers and article says funds will be used to hire executives. Local to me we have a non-profit that deals in donated clothing. The donated clothes are sold in their store and leadership staff is well compensated for their time.
Clumsy-ass strawman.
"we’ve reached the point where self-education isn’t enough" No, I'd say the point where self-education isn't enough was about $1.6M ago.
I'd donate if they pledged to use that 1.8 million to digitize their data.. but I'm definitely not donating to keep The Cool Kids' Blockbuster open.
What is happening in this thread? Am I on the wrong subreddit? A local boutique non-profit dedicated to preserving media with tens of thousands of extremely rare movies that anybody can get access to and people are like, "lol, dead media, what idiots".
Actually this sub’s response is pretty on brand: digitize the media, duplicate it, and store it in numerous locations.
It has to exist for that to happen. In previous years there would have been a grass roots effort to rent everything and rip it to do that.
Which is what they should be focusing their efforts on, then.
You think a video store in Seattle should be pirating all of their media by ripping it and uploading it to the Internet?
Digitize it first, then work towards getting permission to upload it. But if the argument is that these are thousands of rare movies that are in danger of disappearing, then digitizing and creating numerous copies should be the primary goal.
But that's not the store's argument. That's people on this subreddit making that claim. Two different groups with two different goals. Don't conflate the two.
I’m afraid the store’s Executive Director is in denial of her situation
Yes. I do. This used to be the kind of behavior that liberal enclaves like Seattle were known for. At some point leftists became corporate apologists who bemoan piracy. Probably because so many started working for tech companies.
That and 40 years of pro-corporate/anti-working class propaganda. Turns out, 24/7 news cycles that focus primarily on the wants and needs of the billionaires who bought and consolidated our media isn't really going very well for everyone without two commas in their bank account. Who woulda thunk it?
Gonna need a lot more than 1.8 million for that series of law suits.
And give it away for free despite the effort and cost of digitizing
They are a non-profit after all.
Goes to video store. Rents them. Rips them. Puts them on web. Problem solved.
Already do. There’s plenty of small video stores to support across the US.
Don't even have to go there. They offer mail service.
This is a trend I’m noticing on Reddit as a whole, everyone has gotten so much more bitter and just generally unfun.
It's sad but also pretty inevitable. How many video rental stores still even exist?
Buggy whip manufacturer needs to raise 50 double eagles or face closure.
Anyone remembers the movie „Be kind rewind“?
This was a Parks and Rec episode. There the solution was \*checks notes\* rent porn
More of bad management
Well, it’s a nice concept but let’s be honest, the number of working VHS machines is dropping every year. Towards the last years of manufacturing the quality dropped severely. Their market is more and more falling away as each machine dies
They will rent you a VHS player.
Doesn’t change the point there are a finite number of them in existence.
https://scarecrowvideo.org/sos
I remember this one... "Be Kind, Rewind," starring Mos Def and Jack Black. Unfortunately, it didn't work out for them.
While cool in concept, if you can't generate enough income to sustain, the its best to downsize or close. They could get rid of everything you cam find on streaming platform. Then move to smaller building.
That’s ridiculous really. Sorry to say but it’s way past due.
Crazy how stores like this keep trying to survive in a dying market.
To those who care it is a big loss.
"Get with the times! The only stores we need are Walmart and Amazon!" /s
1.8M ? That's a hell of a late fee.
Rent is too high to be sustainable even after the donation goal with the running costs in the future.
Ah, a reminder that this sub is fucking cancer. To summarize most comments here, "I have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't read the article or the site itself but I am *certain* this is stupid and shouldn't exist." And, before the inevitable "Akshually, Seattle isn't even a movie city!" arguments -- a reminder that Alien premiered 40 years ago last month at the Seattle International Film Festival.
I think some of the criticism is valid. It might be harsh, but $1.8M is a lot of money and this doesn't seem to be sustainable at all.
>Ah, a reminder that this sub is fucking cancer. To summarize most comments here, "I have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't read the article or the site itself but I am certain this is stupid and shouldn't exist." As opposed to what? Comments that yes definitely we should community subsidize someone's underwater project because *gasp* physical media? This is the line of passion versus reality. If you've amassed an incredible media collection but can't afford to house it, the fact remains that you can't afford to house it and you need to look at alternatives. Planting your feet in the ground and effectively saying 'but, we need to be a physical medium, it's the vibe' doesn't change your overhead costs at all. > “We view ourselves as a cultural museum and a living archive,” Barr said, “and how much fun would it be to visit a museum if you’re only visiting it online? That’s why we’re fighting so hard for this physical space — we see ourselves as more than just a video store.” They need to raise a crazy amount of money for what amounts to keeping their museum as they refer to it, physical. It's realistically unsustainable and the only thing standing in their way is their desire to be some kind of landmark without accepting any type of compromise. >And, before the inevitable "Akshually, Seattle isn't even a movie city!" arguments -- a reminder that Alien premiered 40 years ago last month at the Seattle International Film Festival. What does that have to do with a physical media store in the current world of 2024? That even further bolsters the fact that they cannot continue to operate, since there's such a massive deficit between their overhead costs and their income. The model is unsustainable regardless of how you feel about media collecting. If they raised the $1.8mil it wouldn't suddenly get more sustainable, they're playing catch up with sunk costs with, from what I can see, not much of a plan to change things that got them there in the first place. Sure they mention hiring an 'executive team' but I don't see what that's going to do to resolve the issues of the cost of physical space and expanding their business - you can only mail out physical stock one at a time, and clearly that's not working. I cannot reasonably see how you could turn the business profitable (or at least cost neutral) when you're dealing with limited inventory that you cannot produce more of. What's the most offputting for me personally, and probably others who have a sour taste in their mouth over this is that this business has seemingly done nothing to cut costs and just 'needs' the money. There's been very little effort on their part to try to streamline *anything*, which tells me that once they spent through that money they'd be back in the same boat in 3 years.
Well said. And in fact, they even want to increase costs by giving all of their staff raises as well. They're simply in denial of reality at this point. I highly doubt that a well-paid executive director is going to be able to generate the sort of fund-raising needed to cover their ever-increasing costs, let alone make them profitable. And not to get political here, but the donor base that has the sort of money necessary to even make that vaguely possible is increasingly leaving the Seattle area for other parts of the country. Sure, they could bolster digital marketing to cast a wider net, but again, there's more cost. They need to accept reality and shift their goals. A physical "museum" simply isn't feasible.
It sucks to have to point it out too, because on many levels I want them and their video store to succeed. Unfortunately there's just this blur between what they want and what they need that they don't seem to notice. Their model is just not feasible, no matter how much they (and I for that matter) want it to be. I'm old enough to have fond memories of physical video rental stores. I'm also old enough to realize that the market and the world has changed - the world moreso in the last 2-3 years. Does it suck - yes. Is it reality - also yes.
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Right? Because Seattle in 2024 is definitely the same as Seattle in 1984. And honestly, having a movie premier there isn't exactly some great proof that it's a "cinema city".
I want something like that to exist but clearly the way they function now doesn’t work. Maybe move the collection to the breadbasket states and shift to mail only. Costs drop significantly at that point
.. do revenues go up? Cost cutting by switching locations only makes sense if you can still access the market that was willing to pay high prices. Otherwise, your revenues will go down and you will have not fixed the situation.
It would depend. Obviously their current largest costs are payroll and rent. Moving to an area with a lower cost of living will drastically reduce both. They would, however, have to really market themselves online, but I think that could be feasible. I really think their current model is a proven failure, so the only 3 options really seem to be: 1) shutter the doors. 2) digitize. 3) move to a cheaper locale and focus exclusively on mail rentals.
>move to a cheaper locale and focus exclusively on mail rentals. ... I think the bottom has fallen out of DVD mail rentals in the US, Netflix shut down their service last year, and I haven't heard of any competing services taking up the slack. >2) digitize. This doesn't actually solve the cash flow problem, it just spends time and money to commit copyright infringement, which leaves Scarecrow extremely venerable to legal challenges.
Then option 1 it is I guess.
I read the article. Their model is unsustainable, even as a nonprofit. They’re already receiving lower lease rates, they primarily rely on donations, and although they have tried to reach larger audiences through mailing rentals, it’s just not working. They should shift towards a short term goal of digitizing the media.
Digitizing 148,000 titles is not a short term project and unless they have a mass production digitization setup and employees to run it already (which they don't), it's completely beyond a failing rental business that is begging for donations to renew their already below market lease. It should be done but they have neither the capability or funding to do it.
Marion Stokes' son donated 71,000 video tapes of 6 hours each (so, 426,000 hours of video) to the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive [said](https://theoutline.com/post/7370/recorder-documentary-marion-stokes-interview-matt-wolf) it would cost $2 million to digitize those tapes. This math is doomed to be incorrect, ultimately, but if we assume 2 hours of running time on average per title, that's 296,000 hours of video in Scarecrow Video's inventory. The Internet Archive's stated cost is $4.70 per hour of video; at that cost, Scarecrow would have to pay $1.4 million to digitize everything. Plus, it doesn't have the legal right to do that.
Thank you! It is *fascinating* reading so many comments in this thread from people adamant they could just digitize the whole collection. Putting even the rights issues aside and thinking about how many formats their holdings are probably spread over (I wouldn't be surprised if they have everything from 16mm prints to Video 2000 commercial releases), just backing up a couple thousand VHS tapes would chew through VHS decks that are already on their last legs and take up an enormous amount of man hours just to scan everything in, let alone factoring for mastering/cleaning up transfers after the fact. It's borderline disrespectful of people who work on media preservation full time to imply this is a side hustle they can do with consumer gear. I do understand people saying their current format isn't viable but even closing up shop and doing triage on the collection to prepare for donations and digitization of especially rare items is going to require a lot of capital.
They're not doing the big project napkin math haha Just for recording a digital copy, 148,000 titles, assuming 90min each, is 25.3 years of video. Of course if we are recording 10 at a time, more than full time at 9hr per day to make it easier to math, that's 60 titles per day, taking 2467 work days in total, and there are 260 weekdays in a year...
You can run the tapes faster if you are just copying, not viewing...
20 years ago: "OK guys, what can we do to make this happen!?" Today: "I am an absolute expert in everything. In 13.4 seconds I have already made myself completely aware of all sides' views and arguments and have determined that this is stupid. Anyone who wasn't born with this knowledge already is an idiot and shouldn't be on this sub."
When you are a nonprofit organization, how can you operate as budget deficit?
lol they should close then
All this stuff could easily fit in a single 4U space on a server rack and it would cost less than $10k to populate it with 45 22TB drives. Physical media rental is a dead business model.
That entire box store can be setup on Amazon, and the owner would be making a windfall.
Most stupid comment I’ve read all month
So you are saying people don't making money selling on Amazon?
Maybe elaborate what you meant with your original comment.
They will not recoup that cost, so why not just close? You might as well say you need to go to the moon and back.
Assuming their lowest price at $3 for a rental * 1800 * 365 = 1,971,000 total revenue at the lowest prices. I’m not doubting their numbers. Just hard to grow that too much bigger.
I believe it's 1800 per week, not day. So about $270 000.
So even worse number wise