Interview with Dave and Linda Lukas

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An Interview with Dave and Linda Lukas of Dave's Video - The Laser Place

Linda and Dave Lukas

We so often talk about DVD from the studio perspective, or the perspective of those involved in DVD production, that I thought it would be interesting to find out what a retailer thinks of the format. With that in mind, I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Dave and Linda Lukas, owners of Dave's Video - The Laser Place.

Dave's Video has a long history of close involvement with the film industry. They are the hosts of a yearly, much-loved event called Studio Day, where consumers can interact face-to-face with representatives from the home video divisions of the major studios, and give them feedback about their product (be sure to read our in-depth report on Studio Day 1998). Dave's also hosts a number of regular special events, where major feature film directors and actors come to sign copies of their films on DVD and laserdisc, and meet their fans (recent signings have included directors John Carpenter and William Friedkin). A portion of the sales from these events goes to charity.

Dave's Video opened in March of 1983, with a 100 square feet, a handful of laserdiscs, and a $3000 investment. The store now occupies 7,000 square feet, and has a massive selection of laserdisc and DVD titles for sale and rent, as well as a terrific home theater equipment department.

Dave and Linda are well known throughout the film industry, and count an impressive array of film celebrities among their customers. They've seen it all in this business, through thick and thin. We talked about laserdisc, the industry, their store and DVD. We even get around to talking Divx. I think you'll enjoy the interview, so let's get started!

Bill Hunt - The Digital Bits: So how long has Dave's Video been in business?

Dave Lukas: We're going on sixteen years now - in February.

Bill: What are your backgrounds? How did the idea come about to get into the laserdisc business?

Dave: Well, after talking to various people, I basically saw a void that looked promising, and decided to try it. At the time, I was in between entrepreneurships, and I was working part time in a videocassette shop. We opened up 100 square feet inside that store with laserdiscs - they offered me the space - and we started with that. We were really the only laserdisc shop around at the time, so we started attracting all the studio people. I knew a lot about movies, and anybody we hired had to know a lot about movies, so...

Linda Lukas: The videotape shop knew they weren't gonna be able to hold on to Dave, which is why that gave him the opportunity to open up his own store in their shop. Because of his knowledge of film they just knew... that was the only way to keep him around. So they game him the chance. They asked, "What can you do in our store?" And that's how we started.

Dave: That's true.

Linda: And we started with 83 titles - at the time there were only 300 laserdiscs available. We went to a warehouse and picked through everything we could get our hands on, and walked out with 83 titles.

Dave: (smiles) That's all there was.

Bill: So it started with a real love of movies.

Linda: Definitely. We used to record a lot of old movies, back when there used to be good old movies on TV in the middle of the night. There aren't as much any more, but in the early 80s there were a lot of really good old flicks on TV, and we had this huge collection on tape. Stuff which just doesn't get played more.

Dave: Basically, I thought of laserdiscs as a rental medium. But it only took me about 4 to 6 months to realize that that wasn't true - it's a sell-through product. We've got a huge rental library now, just because we started putting them together in 1983 - and we've already weeded out thousands of titles. But it's only six percent of our business.

Linda: We eventually started renting as a preview tool really.

Dave: Yeah, exactly. You rent it, you like it, we'll take the day's rental off of the purchase price.

Bill: That's a nice option for your customers to have.

Linda: Yeah, especially when somebody comes back after they've bought a movie and they just didn't like it. We remind them that if you think you're not sure, rent it first. That way you're not losing anything other than the rental price if you don't like it, but you can buy it if you do.

Bill: Now, when you first started, about how big was the installed base of laserdisc players? Were there a lot of people then, or was it like DVD was in its first couple of years?

Dave: Well, there were a lot, but they were all here in the entertainment industry.

Linda: (laughs) And they were all Beta people.

Dave: Yeah, that's right - they were Beta people on top of laserdisc. They wanted the quality. Even today, easily 75% of our clientele are in the entertainment industry.

Bill: That's interesting - you guys were sort of able to capture that market because you were one of the first?

Dave: Well, one of the first... also location close to the studios. We catered to the studios and what they wanted to do. We've got a huge industrial clientele that are studios who rent for their research.

Linda: Also production companies - for example, when an entertainment figure dies, all of a sudden we get calls for copies of their work on laserdisc.

Dave: They rent the films looking for footage of the person for newscasts, and reports, or documentaries. Often times that's the first we hear of someone having died - all these news companies start to call.

Linda: We also do the Academy Awards. A lot of the companies that do clips for during the show - a lot of that will come from us.

Dave: Yes, actually we supply a lot of, as a courtesy to the film editors, we supply a lot of the films for them on laserdisc. So we try to return support to the industry. We just finished something with AFI, and supplied films to them as a courtesy.

Bill: So you've had a real long history with the industry, almost from the beginning.

Dave: Yeah. It appears that, just being around a long time, and catering to them, that we've become known throughout the industry as the place to come to supply films.

Linda: Even our first Studio Day, and we've just held our 11th, I believe it was in 1989 - we had all of the biggies come, because they knew us. When George Feldstein was at MGM, and Bud O'Shea was there. Buena Vista came then, Fox came then... Warner. All the biggies started coming at our first big event, because we'd been here so long. We were doing this when you worked directly with all those people.

Dave: And Studio Day was Linda's brainchild. As you know, laserdisc was always a struggle with the consumer. And she came up with the idea - why not have them meet face to face with the studios? To give feedback, and praise and criticism. There's always a lot of criticism...

Linda: Being a teacher, and I was teaching when we first started in this business and still do sometimes, I always try to tell our customers as I'm going through the lines, "Give the studios a pat on the back first, before you go for the jugular." Because, as I try to remind everyone, everybody wants the same end. We're not always going to get there at the rate we all want, but even these studio people that come in here year after year want to get there. And I think sometimes their hands are tied - I'm not always convinced that the technology is there, or the production capacity, to be able to do what all want now. But the consumers are where it's at. Without them, the studios wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be here, you wouldn't be here...

Bill: Absolutely. And it's interesting, because something that I've found with the web site - and particularly with DVD - is that people are really eager to give their feedback. They're just dying to get their two cents in. I hear all the time, "How can I contact this or that studio? Who do I talk to, to let them know what I want on a particular disc?" I think the Internet feeds that, because that's where the early adopters tend to be - everybody wants that channel to give feedback. And my experience with the studios is that they're not quite sure how to handle that yet. They do their focus groups and such, but they don't know how to handle 300 e-mails a day.

Linda: I think that's probably true. But with Studio Day, I think that they've at least come to know that this is one valuable avenue. They're more than willing to come here. Except for, of course, the last couple of years with DVD just starting out. I think some of the studios didn't come, because they didn't know what they were going to be able to say. And from a business standpoint, you can understand that. Because in the business world, anything you say is always printed as gold...

Bill: And that's particularly true on the Internet.

Linda: Yes. But the customers still want a store like ours, where they can come in and meet the studios face to face occasionally. I think a retail store will always outshine any kind of store on the Web, because most people want that one-on-one interaction.

Bill: Well... and the nice thing about this particular store at least, is that everyone here seems to know a lot about movies, and a lot about what's going on in the industry, and a lot about the technology.

Linda: Exactly. They may not have knowledge about all the same things - for example, we may have a certain employee who's favorite genre is SciFi, but can't tell you anything about the classics. But we have someone else who can. But it's nice because, between everyone in here, there's always someone who knows what a customer is looking for, and can talk with them about it. I like to consider us to be more like a library, where people can come in, and take their time, and talk about film...

Dave: We are definitely value added, and yet we still offer a great price. You can't get employees who know a lot about film paying minimum wage. But we offer good discounts on all our software. Our laserdiscs are always 20% off, and we offer 10 to 20% off of our DVDs too. So you're not gonna find what we can offer here going somewhere else. The people we have here are very knowledgable, and we think we have the best price in town. That's what we're all about.

Bill: This store really seems to be a resource, as much as it is a place to buy movies. It's a place to interact.

Dave: Yes, that what we want to be. We don't want to just sell and say good-bye. We want to remember people. Many of our customers even have a favorite clerk they like to see when they come in, and talk shop.

Linda: I like to tell the story, and I won't name the chain because they're no longer in business, but one of our customers picked up a machine from them, and then came in here to find software to play on it. And not only did he find movies, but our people actually showed him how to use his player, on our floor model, because he didn't know how himself. And he ended up returning the machine, and coming back here to buy it from us instead.

Dave: That really sort of reaffirmed our whole philosophy. I think people appreciate that kind of service and help.

Linda: And Studio Day is a part of that. Our customers wait for it every year. They like it, and the studio people seem to like it - it's good feedback, good knowledge, and a good experience for everyone. We also do a lot of signings, which our customers really like. It's nice for them, and it's a pet project of mine that I really enjoy, because of the fund-raising that we're able to do with them. We don't pay appearance fees for any of the people who come to sign, and we have our guest signer choose a charity that we donate a portion of the profits to. And if the signing is a few days after street date, we donate a portion of profits for that title, from street date to the end of the event, to that charity. So we've raised money for Aids Project L.A., and other specific groups that the director may choose.

Bill: How many different signing events have you done? I know you've recently had John Carpenter, William Friedkin and Steve Soderbergh...

Linda: It started way back, unofficially, with Critters 2. Is that right?

Dave: Yeah, it was done with Mick Garris, the director, involved.

Linda: Right. We had just about the entire cast, crew, special effects guys...

Dave: (smiles) Critters - we had all the little critters in here.

Linda: We had a lot of fun. And after that, the big events really started with Frank Darabont and Shawshank Redemption. He brought some of the cast members in, and the late Roddy McDowall was auctioneer...

Dave: It was a fund-raiser for AFI - for film restoration.

Linda: And Columbia TriStar donated a wonderful framed theatrical release poster, which we auctioned off. It was great. And since then, we've probably done ten or twelve other events. Universal sponsored an event for the release of 1941, and we had a cocktail party, and we had people dressed up in USO outfits, and people got copies of the laserdisc. Just lots of fun stuff.

Bill: One of the things that really struck me, is that these directors and actors who come in here to sign, seem to be really comfortable here. Obviously, many of them are actually customers themselves.

Linda: They're customers that know that when they come in, we'll go out of our way to make them comfortable. We make sure that they're not hounded, and that they can shop in peace. Our staff respects that, and we make sure our other customers respect that too.

Dave: We really do get a Who's Who of talent from the industry that comes in, but we'll do things like letting our more high-profile clients shop after hours if that's what it takes. They know that their privacy will be respected here.

Linda: And we get everybody from all levels - actors, directors, executives... right down to grips, and special effects guys. The entertainment industry just makes a big portion of our clientele.

Dave: And we have a lot of just plain folks who come in too - just working folks, who budget a certain about of money each month to buy their movies. Real movie buffs. By no means is this just a rich man's game.

Bill: What do you see now in terms of DVD? You mentioned that laserdisc always struggled for acceptance. Certainly, DVD struggled in its first year, and I'm sure it must have been a big concern as to how DVD would affect the laserdisc business. Do you think everybody looked at DVD kind of warily at first, because it was just such an intangible?

Dave: I think so, yeah. There's some real avid collectors of laserdiscs, who, in the beginning, didn't want to have anything to do with DVD. But now they all have DVD players and are buying discs. I don't really know of any laserdisc collector now, who is not pleased with DVD. And I would have to say that probably most everybody who bought DVD players early were laserdisc collectors. At least a good 80% of them. But, yeah... in the beginning there was a lot of, I wouldn't say hysteria, but there was apprehension.

Bill: How have you seen DVD perform since that time? Particularly in the last half-year, things have really started to pick up in terms of titles and studio support...

Dave: As far as sales, they're definitely jumping. In 1998, we saw well over a 100% jump from the first year. In the same time, laserdisc has taken a steep, steep fall. Our laser sales are easily off 40 to 45%.

Bill: Are those sales being made up for by DVD?

Dave: In units sold, definitely. In dollar amount, I'd have to say no. You're dealing with something that's 25% to 40% cheaper in some cases. But we still have people who leave here with a handful of DVDs and a handful of laserdiscs. Some are still buying both. Obviously, they're gonna buy the films that aren't yet available on DVD as lasers. It's a question of, how long are you gonna wait to get what you want?

Linda: But the same people who may now buy the laserdisc of, say Titanic, will come back in to buy the DVD too when that comes out.

Dave: Right. And there are a lot of people who are dumping their laserdisc collections. We have a lot of used product for sale. And it goes out as quick as it comes in.

Bill: I would think that this time, particularly if you're a big laserphile, would be really exciting, because you can get so many laserdiscs at great prices.

Dave: Oh yeah - you can get all these great films real cheap. Lots of people are expanding their collections that way. People come in and go through our used section every day, because we might put 100s of new titles in there each day.

Linda: It's also nice for those people who have combination players, to be able to do that.

Bill: Sure. I think DVD is good too, because it seems to be perceived as more consumer friendly. People really seem to like the 5" disc size, you know? So it's starting to hit with a wider audience. A lot of people are coming into the home theater experience for the first time with DVD.

Dave: I think that's true. And just like with books, people will always want to own their favorite films.

Bill: That's brings up an interesting point. My last question pertains to Divx. Divx sort of teases you with owing a movie, but you really don't. What do you think of that idea?

Dave: I think that what they've come up with is, as you say, a good teaser, in that it's a rental for $4.95, you don't have to return it, you can throw it away if you don't want it. As a movie fan, however, I just have a lot of questions about it. You can't take it over to your friend Joe's house to watch it - you can't watch it portably. What happens if your player is upgraded, or Divx goes under? I can sort of see the idea behind it, but it was a hellava time to decide to create it, with DVD just starting out at the time. I mean, Divx is definitely going after the videotape guy, but the videotape guy is not gonna spend $400 for a Divx player, when he's happy with his VCR. And you can get VCRs for what, $70?

Bill: The tape people are happy with tape.

Dave: You're darned right. People are happy with what they have. And the rest - the big collector's - are buying open DVD.

Bill: Well, I want to thank you both for taking the time to talk with me. I know readers of the Bits find this interesting, and I think it's good to get the retailer's perspective when talking about DVD. And I'm a big fan of your Studio Day. Based on what I hear from my readers every day, that's an invaluable opportunity that people appreciate. So thanks for that too.

Dave: Our pleasure.

Linda: Definitely. Thank you.

Dave's Video - The Laser Place is located at 12144 Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, CA.