James Siminoff

Blockbuster closed, who cares…

I saw a sign on the local Blockbuster that the store was closing.  What surprised me more about the store closing was that Blockbuster is still even in business as a company.  If there is ever a case study on a company that just could not evolve I think that Blockbuster would win the prize for that.  Why would I ever go to a Blockbuster, we have Netflix, Netflix streaming (on the xbox), AppleTV and Time Warner on Demand.  I have every movie at my fingertips why would I ever go to a store to pick one up?

Which I guess brings up the question, could Blockbuster have seen this change in market coming.  Well Netflix did and has been able to successfully move (so far) into the digital age.  What makes Netflix an even more amazing comparison is that they should never had been able to make it.  Blockbuster had the customers locked up all they had to do was evolve the model.

In order to build a long term highly successful company it is just so clear that the the right management team is a make it or break it.  It is why I always laugh when people bitch about executive pay of a company that is doing well.  If Blockbuster had the right team running/directing it things might be really different today.

To all of those people losing their jobs at Blockbuster during the holidays I am sorry that you have to go through that.  Hopefully in your next job you will be part of a company that is able to do a better job of evolving then Blockbuster has.