Creston couple launches video rental kiosk business

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Creston for new business owners Shane and Grace Gilmour. They have just started the Kootenays' first independent movie and game rental kiosk through their company Video Fix Movie and Game Rentals and Sales.

“My parents had owned the local video store here in Creston many years ago and we got to see that people really enjoyed having that service available to them. When the last owners decided to close it down people were wondering what they would do for movies,” Shane Gilmour explained. “So after a long 6 months we finally have our machine up and running. It's been a slow start but it will take a while for word to get around about it. We have it set up in Overwaitea foods and if it goes over as well as we expect it will, we would like to expand to many of the smaller communities that are in the same situation.”

He adds that is a similar service to nationally known Redbox but with a local Kootenay application. He said, “Redbox owns over 40 thousand machines so we are priced a bit higher but we are still cheaper than Shaw and Telus for movies. The reason we decided to try is that Redbox will not come into smaller communities, these machines are very expensive so they need huge volumes to make profits so bigger centers like Cranbrook have Redbox. So it's a situation where these machines are putting video stores out of business but smaller communities get left out.”

Based on their initial success watch for Video Fix to possibly pop up in your community in the future.