History is full of those what might have been moments…
It was the year 2000 and Blockbuster was a $6 billion dollar giant that dominated the home entertainment business with 9,000 global rental stores.
Netflix however was a 2-year-old mail order DVD website rental business with loses of $57 million, one hundred employees and 300,000 subscribers.
Founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph stepped into a meeting room with the then CEO of Blockbuster, John Antioco.
Desperate to strike a deal, Hastings and Randolph made their pitch, suggesting that Blockbuster purchase Netflix, and Hastings and Randolph would develop and run blockbuster.com.
After listening Antioco said: “How much would Blockbuster have to pay for Netflix.”
“$50 million” replied Hastings and Randolph, which Antioco flatly declined.
Little by little the world changed, and Netflix not only stayed on their feet. Netflix grew.
By 2010 Blockbuster had declared bankruptcy with just a single store remaining in 2019. Blockbuster had failed to transition from DVD rental to streaming.
Since launching their streaming service, other competitors have entered the industry. But Netflix has responded successfully, with four massive transitions in just fifteen years.
Bringing things right up to date. SKY has launched ‘Sky Glass’ integrating their steaming service within the TV itself, allowing consumers to purchase the latest TV on interest free credit, whilst signing up to their Sky Glass streaming service, in a closed loop subscription.
You could call this a fantastic transition by Sky. But not to be outdone. Netflix has transitioned again, and made sure they collaborated with Sky, to become a major component of Sky Glass in a win win.
As business leaders and executive teams, we should be on the constant look out for market trends and opportunities to transaction, either to keep up with competitors or create a new blue ocean.
Over the years we’ve transitioned numerous times. Initially from a retail business selling printer consumables to a business focused office supplies company, then to a print solution technology business, which we then developed into a subscription model and added internet office phones.
We’ll no doubt transition some more, as the market changes and as we find better ways to provide office technology solutions to help our customers grow their organisations.
It seems a bit a strange, as we’re still in the printer consumables industry, it’s just that we’ve found improved ways to deliver the service to our customers.
…just like Netflix continuously do with streaming.
