People do not love the idea of purchasing DVDs and VCDs every time they want to watch movies from their home.

Most people will prefer to rent a video if they want to watch movies from their home. Renting videos is more convenient and far cheaper for people so it will be a good idea to open a movie rental business in your area if you are looking for a good business that you can engage in, particularly this festive season.

In less than four weeks from now there would be lots of festivities viz: chrismas, Boxing Day, and the New Year. In between depending on your location, there would be other celebrations going on that are either tribal or communal in nature. In all these, so many people are going to be on holidays and leave.

During this period, a lot of people will be indoors particularly at night relaxing with their families.

One great way of relaxing and entertaining is no doubt, watching movies. Unfortunately, the available satellite television providers are unable to cater for this need. Even then, only a few people can comfortably afford the installation and monthly subscription of these satellite TV providers? Also many new films are released into the market every time; how many of these can an average Nigerian buy?

This trend creates a boom for film and video rental business. It is not too late at all for you to start a video rental business if you have the capital.

Here are some of the things that you will need to know if you are interested in starting a video rental store:

What You Will Need

You will basically need a video store business outlet where people can visit to rent videos from you. Make sure that you choose a location where people can easily find you. Otherwise, take advantage of using a signboard or banner to direct prospective clients to your video rental store.

You will also need to purchase a number of videos (either in DVD or VCD format, the video cassettes is phasing out) that you will rent out for people.

It is a good idea to include a variety of movie genres such as comedy, horror, drama, action, science fiction, etc. You also want to make sure you have a large selection of new releases.

New releases are imperative to the success of your business since they are rented the most. This will make your video rental shop more appealing to a larger audience, which equates to more rentals and more money.

Many video rental businesses also place TV in their outlets but it will be up to you if you want to use one. You also need to check out the documents and business requirements that you will need to start a video rental store from the board of internal revenue in your area. This includes a business permit to operate.

Choosing Videos

You need to have a sizable number of videos that your video rental store will offer for rent to your clients. Make sure that you choose good and popular DVDs and VCDs particularly a wide variety of Nigerian Home Videos because these are the types of videos that people will look for in your movie rental business.

It will also be a good idea if you can purchase rare and special foreign titles for your video rental business. In addition to home videos, you can also offer video game rentals to your clients.

Making Profits from Your Video Rental Business

There are several ways on how you can earn from your video rental business. You can charge your video rental shop customers for an annual or lifetime membership. You can also charge your clients late fees for returning rented videos late. Get some timely offers by adding a lot to a little price hike – like, 1 DVD costs N50 a day and N150 a week or 1DVD prices N50 a day and 5 DVDs prices N250 a day. Produce a larger and better catalog – advertise using a big sign board just in front of your shop on your new movie collection – take viewer reviews and convey it to the prospect clients.

If you want to maximize the earning potential of your video rental business, it is important that you always update your video collection. Add new videos regularly and discard videos that no longer play well or have cracked.

Good customer service is also important because your clients will more likely continue to patronize your video rental store if they are treated and accommodated well in your video rental business outlet.

The Video rental business is very lucrative business venture that anyone can go into big time. If properly manned, the business can rake in fortunes. The film rental business is part of the entertainment industry at large, and as such, will keep flourishing.

If you want to start big, about N200,000 start-up capital may be enough. Nevertheless, if you do not have as much as N200,000, you can still start operation with an amount less than this, depending on the area and location.

As a new operator, you will need to rent a relatively small shop and also equip it with some furniture, including shelves for displaying films, a table, a chair and two stools. You will also need to acquire a television set and a DVD player. These are to be used for testing films before they are rented out.

Depending on how much rent one pays to get a shop in the proposed business location, N200,000 should be enough to rent a small shop, furnish it and acquire all the necessary operational gadgets, including a small power generating set, in case of power outage.

The next thing is for you to acquire various films, which for marketing purposes should be newly released films. Having acquired all these, any amount left can be used as revolving capital.

As a new entrant, do endeavour to register with the Video Rental Operators Association of Nigeria in your area to avoid a situation, where the body‘s task force will always come to disturb you.

As your business grows and increase your capital, a new line of operation may be accessed by you. For instance, you may start to buy films on wholesale basis from marketers and then sell in retail form to video club owners. There is huge profit in buying in large quantity from marketers to retail.

Develop video rental policies for your business. For instance, you can require a deposit for each movie that customers rent in case of loss or damage to your DVD or VCD or fail to return it as agreed. Agreements should discuss movie rental costs and late fees and address customer responsibility for lost or damaged movies.

Hire employees. It may be possible to operate the store on your own if you will be open for a limited amount of hours each day, but it will be easier to handle customers and the operation of your rental store if you hire at least one or two part-time clerks.

Offer services and amenities to your customers that they won’t find at other rental stores. Try hosting a free movie night for customers that have rented at least three videos that month, complete with refreshments. Or, you can retail collectible movie memorabilia and books along with your video rentals.