Single video rental store remains in Thunder Bay amid industry's collapse

Issac Seissan never thought he’d be the last man standing in the movie rental business in Thunder Bay.

But with the pending closure of Memorial Avenue's Great Canadian Video Network, his Arthur Street store is all that’s left for movie and video-game connoisseurs not interested in purchasing or streaming their entertainment needs.

It’s a different landscape than it was in 1996, when Seissan jumped into the rental game.

He’s outlasted the industry giants, like Blockbuster Video, who closed for good in 2011, Rogers Video, which exited the game in 2012 and Redbox, which just a year ago decided the Canadian market wasn’t lucrative enough for their shareholder tastes.

Seissan, who claims a loyal customer base, has survived the digital era, with on-demand movies available 24/7 and services like Netflix and Shomi charging inexpensive monthly rates to allow customers to choose from thousands of hours of programming each month.

“It’s been a lot of ingenious ways,” he said Monday, asked how they’ve managed to stay afloat despite the collapse of the industry around them.

“We try to cut down our overhead. We work ourselves, me and my family, plus we have two employees for our last location.”

It hasn’t been an easy ride.

At the height of his success, Seissan operated seven stores, five in Thunder Bay and two in Manitoba. He’s down to one, and while he won’t say it’s thriving, it’s still providing a service people in the city seem to want.

“We have lots of loyal customers who come in every day, almost,” Seissan said.

In his mind, he’s not competing with technology. He’s adapted where he could, switching from VHS video tapes to DVDs and finally Blue Ray.

Seissan said he competes on two fronts – first and foremost price. While on-demand movies are available for about $7 apiece, his seven-day rentals cost about $4. He’s also seeing a lot of customers coming in to rent full TV seasons that often retail for $60 or more.

While they are available on many streaming services,  many of his customers enjoy browsing in person and paying for what they want, when they want it - rather than paying a monthly fee for a Netflix account they may not use all that often.

“There are things that are beyond our control, so I do not worry about those,” Seissan said. “It’s basically up to our customers if they want to keep the business going, to keep coming here, which they have. Mostly they’ve followed us from the locations we’ve had to our last location (here).”

There is no typical customer these days, he said.

“We have young ones, university students, and older people. It’s really a mix across the board. We have people who like to come in with their family members, choose their movie as a family and then watch it.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.