Video transfers

Those home movies sitting in the closet can be another profit center

Movies are awkward. You have to dig out the projector, set up a screen. Then after the popcorn is popped and everyone's comfy, the projector bulb blows.

20 years after the first big rush of customers transferring their home movies to video, there are still millions of feet of movies sitting in closets. This can be an important profit center.

While it's a mature market, it's one that you can enter without any capital expense at all. You need to enter into a relationship with a video transfer specialist such as Reel-to-Reel Video. You need to put up a sign. You need a price list. You need a log sheet for orders.

You need to be really careful with your customer's movies, too. Often they represent a whole lifetime of memories. You must instill confidence, and you must do everything possible to deserve that confidence.

If you do all this, count on a good margin and happy customers.

Video transfers can make for a nice profit center without your buying any hardware, but you may want to buy one piece of equipment: a dual-deck VCR for copying tapes.

Dual-Deck VCRs are literally two VCRs in one. Even if you hook together two top-of-the-line single deck VCRs, you'll never get a really good copy of your original VHS tape. There are minute differences in tape speed and differences in the way the decks are engineered. Go-Video's dual decks incorporate proprietary circuitry called "Americhrome" that really works to give you VHS copies that are nearly as good as the original

It doesn't take long for such equipment to pay for itself. One day a secretary from a quasi-governmental agency called and asked could I make 15 copies of a video tape by the next day? I said yes and looked forward to making a quick $200 (15 copies at $15 each, less about $12 for blank tape.) After I'd started the job they called back to say "sorry, we meant to order 50 copies." We were up most of the night, and I brought in my own VCR from home to enable making two copies at once - but it was a fast $725 in profit! You'd have to sell a lot of SLR cameras to do that!

When you order a video transfer from the video lab, don't order extra copies - make them yourself and put the difference in your own cash register.

Here are a couple of video transfer specialists: