Surviving streaming: Inside one of Michigan's last video stores

Video Exclusive takes special orders on videos for customers, taking a small fee on top. Konja says he briefly considered bringing movies to people and eliminating the middleman.

"We were going to be on DoorDash," he says, but the economics didn't make sense, so the plan was scrapped.

But he's not giving up.

"There are innovations to be made; there are ways to make money," he says. In the record store world, vinyl came back around. Could video stores turn the corner?

The anti-streaming experience

The modern video store quandary goes something like this: Why, with so many streaming services and movies available On Demand, would anyone rent movies from a video store? (Many public libraries offer video rentals, too, and those are free.) Aside from the pure hit of nostalgia of trekking to the video store, the key is the selection of titles available — Hulu or Paramount+ don't have nearly the breadth of titles as Konja's library — and the decision it forces in customers.

How many times have you endlessly scrolled through libraries of movies on a streaming app, only to end up choosing nothing? A trip to the video store practically makes you select something, if only to wrap things up and get home. The entire ritual, including the ability to pick up the items and hold them in your hand, helps eliminate indecision from the process.

Alec Peterson of Taylor has made the 20-25 minute trip to Video Exclusive every five days for the last three years, and he rents a stack of movies each time, primarily vintage horror titles.

"It's my happy place," he says of the store, which he discovered in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He says the tangibility of physical media is a driver of the experience. "Sometimes I'll rent something, and my wife will be like, 'You know that's streaming on Peacock, right?'" says Peterson, 32. "It's like, 'yeah, I know.' But I don't know what it is. There's something about finding the case at the store, bringing it home, opening it up and putting the movie in the DVD player. That's half the fun."

Adam Zahr is a Dearborn doctor and amateur filmmaker who, in April, made a mini-documentary about Video Exclusive and its customers. He was drawn to the subject because, after driving by the store for years, he couldn't believe it was still in business.

"What I was surprised to learn was, talking to a couple of customers, that they are absolute cinephiles. I was struck by how knowledgeable they were, and how passionate they are about movies," Zahr says. "And this store represents something unique and special to them, in the sense that they can find titles that they can’t find on streaming, they can engage with like-minded people at the store, they can talk movies and get recommendations, and they cherish that relationship and that experience they have at the store."

Hanging on

Manager Galindo, who has an open budget from Konja to order whatever new or rare catalog titles she sees fit for the store, got hooked on movies growing up in Allen Park.

She was one of five kids and her father was a big movie fan, and on Sundays he would take them to the movies. They would also rent titles from the nearby King Video, "and at one time I think we might have rented almost every video in the store," she says. She remembers seeing "The Shining" at the early age of 6, which she says made an impression on her young brain.

She worked in concessions at several area movie theaters before coming to Video Exclusive around 1997, and she's been there ever since. Along with the other employees, she has a shelf in the store of her recommendations, which for Pride Month in June included titles such as "Moonlight," "Paris is Burning" and "My Own Private Idaho."

Konja says he would do anything for Galindo, and that he considers her family. He says he also considers the store's customers his extended family, and says there's been times when they've attended the funerals of customers.

Konja and Galindo both hope customers won't be attending Video Exclusive's funeral anytime soon. Konja says at the current rate, he can hang on to the store for another three or four years, but then he'll have to make a decision.

Despite the decline of the business, he still loves what it stands for and considers the store his break from the rest of his daily grind and 60-hour work weeks.

"This is playtime," says Konja who, in a bit of a twist ending, says he doesn't really consider himself much of a movie fan. (He ranks "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Misery" among his favorites, he says.)

"People say, 'What's your job?' I say, 'Why do people think this is a job?'" he says. "This is social. We are psychiatrists for these people. We give them something they want, and we make them happy to go home."