DETROIT — Mike Konja never set out to be one of the last video store owners in Michigan, but that's how things worked out.

Konja has owned and operated Video Exclusive, a video rental establishment that houses 20,000 titles and sits along a busy stretch of Telegraph Road in Dearborn Heights, since the mid-1990s. Back then, the new release wall was flush with VHS copies of "Twister," "Independence Day" and "Apollo 13," lines would snake through the store aisles on Friday nights, and a hot title would come in and go right back out the door. Even if you weren't kind and didn't rewind, Konja would waive the fine.

Things couldn't be more different today. The video rental market has been all but eradicated by changes in technology, and no one has made it a Blockbuster night since the rental behemoth largely ceased operations a decade ago. Streaming services have essentially made entire video store libraries available on demand, at home, at the push of a button. The last remaining clump of Family Video stores closed in Michigan in 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic putting the final nail in the chain's coffin.

Which leaves Video Exclusive and makes it one of the last of its kind, a once common business — the humble neighborhood video store — rendered exotic by scarcity. Entering the store is like stepping back in time, with aisles upon aisles of titles to peruse, fawn over and yes, rent. You can't make it a Blockbuster night anymore, but you can still make it a Video Exclusive night.

"All in all, I love this industry," says Konja, who opened his first video store in Woodhaven in 1988, and, at one point, also owned Video Exclusive stores in Monroe and Rockwood. He was drawn to the variety of the business — new releases every week meant constant change — and at its height, things were booming.

"I was making $100,000 a month, we had three terminals going, and we had one person just taking back movies," he says. That stretch lasted four years.

Now Konja no longer takes a paycheck from the 7,000-square-foot store, which he says makes just enough money to cover rent and keep the lights on. But he intends to keep the store going, largely out of devotion to his employees, especially store manager Tina Galindo, who has worked there since the late '90s.

Working at a video store was once a prized job for movie obsessives, a way to get paid to spend your time surrounded by and talking about movies. Galindo still considers herself lucky, but watching the industry crumble around her over the last few decades has taken its toll.

"It makes me sad," says Galindo. "I love my job, but it makes me sad that we're dying, and that physical media is not really there anymore."

Decline of an industry

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