Comments on: Buy Your Own Redbox (well, almost)

By: sydigital

sydigital — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:02:49 +0000

I am just curious.. is there licensing or agreements made with production companies for the renting of their movies/games? what kind of fees do they charge?

By: Giovanni

Giovanni — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:47:33 +0000

Looks like his website is back up:
http://www.evobox.com/

Also, here is a mirror site of the same thing:
http://www.youhavechosenwisely.com/evobox/

He is also selling the domain name:
http://www.who.is/whois-com/ip-address/evobox.com/

Here is the active trademark (also selling):
http://tmportal.uspto.gov/external/portal/tow?SRCH=Y&isSubmitted=true&details=&SELECT=US+Serial+No&TEXT=78940491#

He also has both EVOBOX (trademark) and Evolution Entertainment, LLC registered in Utah.

Here is his current contact information:
Robert Heward
2250 N UNIV PKWY #48
PMB4888
PROVO, UT 84604-7575

Mobile: 801.319.2033
Fax: 801.421.2073

I spoke with him at he is selling for $7,500 each unit; however if someone purchases all units he’ll sell the whole business for $60,000. He’ll finance with $20,000 down.

By: Ed

Ed — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:55:44 +0000

At this time it would be difficult to compete with Redbox and Dvdplay
if they keep giving out promo codes. When the machine goes down you have to give refunds to everyone or you lose business. A tech told me in some areas people jam the machine then claim it was out of order when they tried to return the DVD so they pulled the machine from that location. Who has time to go out to fix it at about $50/hr or is your time free.

By: Bert steele

Bert steele — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:10:08 +0000

I work on a major army base (FT Campbell) and they have thier own machines, granted they are a lot slower and have less selection they beat the heck out of the local rental stores. So I would think if you don’t have red box then the next best thing would be the best thing going…. just my thoughts

By: ddthesm

ddthesm — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:55:44 +0000

This could be profitable…..if it’s planned & executed absolutely perfectly and lets say in theory that these kiosks work perfectly. I would think for this much money, no good business person would see it as a good investment, especially from a random posting on craigslist (unless they already have an established business). And the other posters are correct, unless one has a huge amount of cash to invest on top of a huge savings in the case the whole project crashes and burns, this would be a huge risk to any business owner because of restocking and maintenance.

By: Harry

Harry — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:44:01 +0000

So you buy one of these questionable kiosks for $7,500 or so (or one from DVDNow for @ $19,500), bust your hump convincing someone to put it in their establishment, then go out and buy 300-500 dvd’s from one of the distributors at $5 to $20 a pop to stock it.

What do you set your price point at? Lessee . . . How about $1 like Redbox? Take about $.05 from that for the credit card processor. Looks like you’re making $.95 per rental to me. Of course you’re going to be as successful as Redbox with their 8000 kiosks and average about 400 rentals a week, so that makes about $380 from your one kiosk. So maybe you won’t be that successful and do a whopping 200/week for $190. Are you SURE that many people will rent from a “me too” kiosk at Lois and Fred’s Family Market?

So maybe they will. You’ve spent a MINIMUM of $1500 stocking that kiosk with titles that might not rent more than 5 or 6 times. Then next week and every week after that you have to go out and buy maybe 5 to 10 each of 5 to 8 new releases to keep things fresh every week. Lessee, 5*5*$5(minimum, and some of the more popular titles will cost you $18-20) is something like $125. How much did you make on those 200 rentals? or was it more like 16 rentals? How much of the revenue are you sharing with Lois & Fred?

Then the kiosk goes down. Surely you have the technical expertise to get it running, right? And the time to go out to the kiosk every week to stock it and clear the inevitable jams caused by kids putting foreign objects in the rental slot?

Yessir, this looks like a REAL money maker!

By: Me

Me — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:50:09 +0000

Twice the capacity of redbox? Redboxes hold 630 disks.

By: Chip

Chip — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:07:09 +0000

E-mail me with some incentive. The cash is here, but can I make some money, too? Tickle me pink!

By: gadget

gadget — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:48:35 +0000

this is a great money making idea. anyone who bought a evo box shouldnt have any problem placing the machine i have a t least 15 places i could place them now

By: vallen

vallen — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:58:22 +0000

these machines still have to be maintained and stocked, rotated, not to mention you have to have a contract with the distributors in order to get movies on to market, and cheap (little guys dont get price breaks like a larger buyer just look at the mom-and-pop bookstore that went extinct in the 80’s).
Another point is- vending kiosks come in MANY flavors of software and hardware- All of them have glitches aplenty. these could be dated out prototypes, or re-purposed from another use. older kiosk vending is horrid, and lots of people got stuck with $10k boat anchors (See agfa Imagebox- now belly up, and noone will service them.

It’s a Bad move.