criterionforum.org

Have been selling arthouse/foreign language dvds/videos in the UK for the past 20 years

This year I have seen an alarming crash in dvd distributors, first S Golds and Sons went early summer (largest independent European dvd distributor who stocked most of the small independent labels). Then T.H.E. (Another large distributor who had swallowed up other distributors like Ingrams (UK) and Terry Blood distribution) shut after being swallowed up by UK Entertainment (part of Woolworths). They have now also gone bust.

So over this Christmas period not sure how many labels will get their products to the shops. Also a lot of stock must be tied up in closed warehouses.

Anyone know how the situation is playing out and if any other distributor is taking up the slack (Plenty of small distributors still exsist but they seem only to stock mainstream titles).

I start to worry because only Amazon has a good availability of many releases that i am looking at.The other retailers seem to have stock problems (they have better prices though).I am not sure what is happening with the Tartan titles.Is the limited availability part of their administration,or that happened because of distribution problems?Maybe both... :-k

Can you elaborate a little on this (how exactly distribution of product is being harmed, which labels are most likely to be affected, etc.)?

foggy eyes wrote:Can you elaborate a little on this (how exactly distribution of product is being harmed, which labels are most likely to be affected, etc.)?

Below is an article from the Guardian regarding the collapse of Pinnacle Entertainment last week (which is mainly a music supplier but the same applies to dvds)


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008 ... try-retail" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


To me the great loss was S Gold and Sons as they used to be very good to the small independent labels and kept a wide range of stock. I believe they supplied a large number of UK libraries with dvds and had a large export business. S Golds and Sons turnover was about £40 million and a lot of this business was with independents. One could ring them up to order and the goods would arrive the next day.

Other distributors held a much smaller stock and it would take a week or two to get back ordered stock. Some distributor did not even acknowledge that some titles existed or reported them deleted when in fact they were available.

Of course an alternative would be that one could open accounts with the large number of smaller labels and order direct. But this would lead to the situation where one orders a couple of copies from each label. Time costuming and less profitable for the label.

All this will have an economic impact on the smaller labels, the large retailers will still order the blockbuster titles but bother less with small sellers.


Independent retailers might find they have difficulty sourcing stock as rdistributors go bust. For example at the beginning of this year I placed about 70% of my orders with S Golds and 10% with THE. Gold went bust, switched my orders to THE. THE closed and became ENTERTAINMENT UK. Each time I switched the service offered got worse. Finally as ENTERTAINMENT UK as gone bust have switched to GARDNERS (who have just started out with some staff from Golds and offer promise but at the moment out of stock titles are a problem).

Earlier in the year if a customer wanted to order say L'avventura (Issued by Mr Bongo) I could say to them I would have it the next day as Gold or THE would have a copy in stock.
Now I would have to say that I will let them know when it will arrive as I am less likely to find it in stock at a distributor. This might mean the sale is lost and in the end no order is placed and Mr Bongo sells one less dvd.

Good distributors also offered excellent promotions, new release information and knowledgeable help. For example I am trying to find out when This Sporting Life will ever appear on dvd in the UK. I used to ring up the buyer at Golds and Sons and he would come up with an answer or find out for me. Many of the remaining distributors are Internet only with little information or real people to speak too.

The nightmare for smaller labels must be that they cannot get stock to the shops in this Christmas sales period due to distribution problems. As many of the foreign language dvd labels are quite small, almost like cottage industries, it could be that they keep going but put back their new release schedules.

Would like to know if anyone in the trade has more information

I guess that's why Mr. Bongo sell their discs online themselves! I don't know how the process works for e-tailers, I imagine their stock is bought in similar fashion, hopefully the supply won't be affected too much.

I guess if it gets to the point that a small distributor can't get their discs to etailers then that will be a serious problem I imagine MoC/Second Sight/Second Run and so on make a lot of their sales online, I haven't seen many of their discs in B&M stores, though obviously any kind of dent would be detrimental, these companies need all the exposure they can get.

Of course there are other fuck ups going on - Tartan spreading themselves too much and a bad investment in Funny Games ruined them and I have heard another small distributor may be next.

EDIT: I think This Sporting Life was recently issued by Network, I saw a review in Sight and Sound but have not seen the disc itself for sale.

Zavvi (Virgin Megastore as was) may be in trouble, thanks to the collapse of Woolworth's (their distributor).

I've had my suspicions about their financial health for some time, as there are some sensational bargains to be had in their main Oxford Street branch - all five series of Peep Show for a tenner, that kind of thing.

That would also explain this.

I have heard that Zavvi owes 106£ million to Entertainment UK.Given the fact that how troubled Virgin Megastores were,i can easily accept that.After the demise of Zavvi,only HMV will be a nationwide chain selling DVDs and CDs.But even now,90% of my HMV purchases are made online.The sad thing is,very few online retailers offer excellent service as HMV and Amazon do.

As far as the UK goes, in twenty years' time (maybe even less) it may be that Amazon and Play.com are the only providers of music and movies on home formats. High street prices are too high and their non-chart titles are often out of stock. Book stores seem healthy in the UK, though. I think that it's a young person phenomenon, ie. high streets have lost the 12-35 year-old market to etailers.

The bookstores have a problem too.Only Waterstone's,WH Smith and Borders have stores nationwide.And they mainly stock the best-sellers.I think that only online retailers and dedicated specialist stores will survive in the next 15 years.

...plus a massive increase in books printed on demand.

As expected Zavvi goes into administration