4 ms·

Not exactly a brilliant customer base to target. It's like starting a publishing company for people not interested in reading.

• MBCook 2y ago
  If Bob watches one movie a month, you won’t have a good business. If there are thousands of Bobs in one area, you can do just fine. Meanwhile no streaming service will ever get Bob to sign up. As an silly example: no one rents carpet cleaners every weekend, you can still rent carpet cleaning machines. There is enough demand in aggregate for it to be viable.
  • TylerE 2y ago
    That "if" is doing a ton of work there, and even if we grant it, you've got physical costs that scale with the number of locations, which doesn't apply to streaming.
    • MBCook 2y ago
      True. But it’s not like Redbox is launching the kiosks today, that’s already sunk cost because they’ve made them all. Sure they need repair and stuff but they’re basically vending machines so I’m guessing there’s somewhat sturdy. And loading new movies in/taking old ones out could be done by the employees of the stores they are located in as part of the placement agreement. Could you start a Redbox from scratch? I kind of doubt it. I think the costs would overwhelm you. But that’s not the position they’re in. I’m not saying you’re going to become a fortune 500 company on the business model. But I think there’s enough for a real business to survive there, depending on the areas where you place the kiosks. However Redbox has history and the agreements may not be as favorable to them as they would need to keep operating, or they may have a lot more debt than necessary. There are a lot of Bobs out there though. It’s not a big theoretical.