A large audience for film and video rentals is teenagers. And this is also the largest audience for games. So Cook was keenly aware that selling game cartridges was a good business for a video rental shop!

When Oriental Games competed with Atari for the home game console market, Atari once implemented a blockade strategy against Dongyou Company, prohibiting game distributors in the United States from acting as agents for Dongyou FC home game consoles.

Therefore, in addition to the initial arcade business, Dongyou's portfolio includes FC series home game consoles, GameBoy series handheld game consoles, and emerging computer stand-alone games, all of which simply abandon the intermediate distributors, and the distribution network built by Oriental Commercial Company directly connects with large and small retailers all over the United States.

When Cook, in the name of the general manager of Blockbuster, went to negotiate with Oriental Commercial Company for the game distribution business, Blockbuster only had three branches. But Eastern Business did not turn Cook away because of its small size.

On the contrary, the cooperation with Blockbuster has made the management of Orient Commercial aware of a new channel for promoting game products in addition to the game store. You must know that the number of video rental stores in the United States far exceeds that of game stores, and Blockbuster has therefore entered the field of vision of Oriental Commercial Company.

For the layout of the home video market, Li Xuan's plan is not the same as Sony's Akio Morita. Sony hopes to dominate the home video market throughout North America by controlling the format of intermediate copyrighted content. But Li Xuan understands very well that the entertainment industry in the United States is so developed that it is difficult for a single company to monopolize all copyrighted content.

So Li Xuan had already quietly taken aim. The last link in the entire video distribution industry chain - video rental shops. The current video rental market in the United States is still scattered, and there are no national chain stores. This is undoubtedly an opportunity for Li Xuan, who only needs to spend a small amount of capital. You can easily crush those rangers who are fighting on their own.

Immediately after the film is drawn from the theater, it is made into a videotape for resale. Most of the people who are willing to buy a new tape are big fans of the movie. In order to promote the secondary sales of videotapes, production companies often take small measures to attract these die-hard fans. For example, add some scenes that have not been broadcast in theaters, or add some behind-the-scenes footage.

But the price of the videotapes is not cheap, especially the hardcover versions, which are even more expensive, often hundreds of dollars. Only a small number of people are really willing to spend money on videos to take home and collect. Most people prefer to spend a few dollars. It's enough to rent the movie home and watch it once.

The main force supporting the huge consumer market of videotapes in North America is still the video rental shops all over the streets. If a movie is popular, it's just the number of videotapes that these rental shops buy for rent. That's enough for distributors and production companies to make a lot of money.

In addition to the video rental store channel, the sales channels of the new version of the videotape include national supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart and Kroger, as well as national chain bookstores such as Bode and Bonno. There is a special area for the sale of video tapes.

But supermarkets and bookstores don't have a scattered, cumbersome video rental business. Therefore, video rental stores all over the streets and alleys of the United States are still the largest terminal retail channel for videotapes. If you can control the video rental market in the United States, then it will be completely easy to make VCD discs spread all over the United States.

Supermarkets, bookstores, cafes, and fried chicken restaurants in the United States have chain brands all over the United States, but video rental stores have not yet begun to operate as chains. This is partly due to the fact that the videotape market has only been formed for a short time, after all, it has only been 15 years since the world's first video recorder came out, and the videotape rental market has really matured for less than a decade.

Traditional video rental shops, on the other hand, go it alone. Extensive operation, low efficiency. It's like the dilemma Cook encountered when he went to rent a film. Finding a movie you like can even take an hour, which is unthinkable in the labor-expensive United States.

Blockbuster, founded by Cook, has actually laid the foundation for the chain and large-scale operation of the video rental industry. The reason why the Oriental Group chose to acquire Blockbuster as an entry point into the U.S. video rental market was precisely because of its computerized management characteristics.

The Eastern Group is an IT company, and its core competencies are semiconductors and computer technology. Oriental Group is not a retail company, even if it needs to acquire some retail companies because of the development of its business, it should use its own advantages to transform the retail industry, and Blockbuster is exactly in line with Li Xuan's philosophy.

"Mr. Cook, I don't know if you know Mr. John Martin of CG. When I bought Computer Park, Martin was one of the partners in the company, but he only owned 10% of the shares.

At that time, Millard, the other major shareholder of Computer Park, had already sold the other 90% of his shares to me, so Martin was also forced to sell his shares. At that time, he was about to resign, but I managed to keep him! I told him that even if he didn't have a stake in his hands, if he wanted to stay, he could still be the real boss of CG!

So Martin chose to stay, and now his right choice has paid off handsomely. He is now one of the most famous retail managers in the United States, and is highly sought after by Wall Street capital. CG paid him a total value of more than $15 million in salary, dividends and equity last year, which can be described as fame and fortune!

And I hope you can stay here today, too, because I think Blockbuster can develop into the next CG company within the Eastern Group! Your choice to sell all of your shares is very sensible, because Blockbuster is too small right now.

Even if you retain a part of the equity, after the massive capital injection of the Oriental Group, these equity will be quickly diluted to the point of negligibility! But you should stay, because after receiving a large blood transfusion from the Eastern Group, it is the time for Blockbuster to show its ambitions!

You don't have to worry about whether your future work will be hindered by me. I can say something that is not very good, as a super large group with total assets of tens of billions of dollars, the current scale of Blockbuster can only be regarded as a marginal business, and I don't have so much time to pay attention to it!

Of course, the headquarters of the group will definitely supervise the development of its subsidiaries, and the development planning of the subsidiaries needs to follow the overall interests of the group!" Li Xuan said unhurriedly after taking a sip of coffee.

After the company is acquired by capital forces, the founder gets out, which is a normal thing in the United States. Because in many cases, the founder's development concept is often completely different from that of the investor. Rather than staying in the company and waiting to be swept away, the founder should leave in a chic way.

But starting a company is like giving birth to a child, a piece of heart that fell after the hard work of October to conceive, and there are only a few people who can really leave without nostalgia. Otherwise, the Qiao gang leader in another time and space would not have chosen to enter the palace for the second time, re-enter the Apple company and start a great road of revival.

"Mr. Cook, I may wish to listen to it, I am making a final decision on the plan for the next development of Blockbuster! The Oriental Group will inject $200 million into Blockbuster to support its rapid expansion in the U.S. market! In the next two years, the number of BesTV stores in the U.S. will increase to 1,000!

Of course, if we want to achieve this scale in the short term, in addition to opening new stores by ourselves and foreign mergers and acquisitions, we will also adopt the model of cooperation and franchise! In my opinion, the core asset of Blockbuster is not the storefront, but the computer database!

Of course, this database doesn't just refer to the film inventory management system you've written for Blockbuster. You've done a great job of managing your film inventory, and while there's still room for improvement, there's no need to change the overall structure!

One of the more important additions to the database is the increased collection of customer data. For example, according to the recorded data of users' rented films, the background analysis engine of our database can actively recommend other movies of the same type for them, which will greatly improve the company's business scale!

'Internet' should be a very hot word in the United States recently, and Blockbuster will open an online rental website while expanding the number of physical stores. In the future, Google will be able to log in to our website through a computer to select films online without leaving home.

Then, according to the delivery address filled in by the user, our online server will automatically assign the order to the store closest to the user's place of residence. Users can choose to pick up the film by themselves, or they can choose to have it mailed by us!

In this way, customers can avoid the waiting time at the rental store during the heavy traffic on weekends, and can also avoid the frustration of not being able to rent their favorite movies! And we can also improve efficiency on a large scale!" Li Xuan talked about the next development direction of Blockbuster.

The Internet, mailing services, this is the core model of Netlifx beating Blockbuster in another time and space. Netlifx moved its leasing operations online, saving on high brick-and-mortar rents and a large number of payrolls for its store staff.

Since the Oriental Group is preparing to enter the video rental market in the United States, Li Xuan will naturally design the subsequent transformation space from the beginning. Therefore, Blockbuster is not ready to open a large number of self-operated stores in the future, but prefers to adopt the existing video rental stores in the form of cooperation and franchise.

In this way, in the future, when the Internet industry has caused enough impact on the entire physical retail industry, Blockbuster can only stop joining the authorization without bearing any pressure to lay off employees, and it can immediately achieve light travel! )