After 38 Years, The Video Store Will Close This September

This September will mark the end of an era in the Levittown area and the entire region.

The Video Store on New Falls Road in Bristol Township’s Levittown section will close for good on Monday, September 30 after 38 years in operation. It’s the last of its kind in Bucks County and one of the last in the Philadelphia region.

On a recent morning inside the shop at 4354 New Falls Road, Alice Tardino laid out the closure and relayed the history of the area’s last video store.

For Alice, the closure is not due to sagging business (she’s quick to note most of their revenue comes through services other than rentals), but due to a number of factors that make 2019 the year she and her husband John will retire from The Video Store.

“We’re telling everyone this is our retirement,” she said.

John, Alice’s husband and the business founder, has not been at the shop as much recently as he deals with some medical issues that required a surgery last month. On the recent morning LevittownNow.com visited, Alice briefed customers – some longtime ones and some new – on the future of the shop and her husband’s recovery.

The business began selling off inventory at 50 percent off marked prices on Friday and plans to do so until it’s all gone.

While The Video Store is known to some as a nostalgic shop with a large selection of movies on multiple formats, the notary services, lottery tickets, copies and faxes, video transfers, passport photos, and ink fingerprinting businesses have become their core as the video rental market waned in recent years with increased competition from streaming services and RedBox.

“Nobody is indispensable, but these are services that the community needs, and we offer them,” Alice said, adding she hopes to continue offering them in some form once the shop closes.

As other video stores and chains popped up and later closed, The Video Store, which moved to a smaller storefront in the same shopping center in 2017, remained a constant in the area.

“We have a lot of movies you cannot find elsewhere,” Alice explained. “Not even on Netflix.”

As she spoke of the store, Alice mentioned some of the wide variety of popular and niche genre films the store still has on its shelves. She noted that VHS formatted movies were dropped when the Tardinos downsized.

“There has been less and less demand [for movie rentals] over the years, but people still come in,” Alice said.

Customers love the mom-and-pop business because prices are fair, the selection is plentiful, and the service is pleasant.

For the Tardinos, The Video Store has been their identity since 1981.

Before The Video Store opened at their first location in a stipmall not far from their present spot, John had looked at selling hot tubs, opening a racquetball facility, and some other fads at the time. It was then the entrepreneur who previously repaired microwave ovens and other electronics came up with the idea to open a video store, believing home video players were the next big trend, Alice said.

“John understood how they worked,” she recalled.

From there, John, a friendly man who has manned store for decades, opened up shop and quickly grew the business with help from Alice, a skilled bookkeeper who was also busy raising their young kids.

Within a few years, The Video Store outgrew their stripmall location and Alice spotted the former PNB bank building on New Falls Road was for sale while taking one of their kids home from an appointment.

John and Alice, who live in Langhorne, moved quick and bought the former bank, converting it into The Video Store’s home of more than 30 years.

The Video Store beat back mega-chains including Blockbuster and West Coast Video, which ironically was not based on the West Coast but in the One Summit Square in Middletown, over their decades in business.

Competition was not their main concern, Alice said. She noted that John’s father previously had a restaurant in Bristol and knew that people still had to eat no matter whether a new eatery opened.

At the video rental peak, the shop was packed on Friday and Saturday night, cars jamming the parking lot.

With the couple never finding much luck hiring someone to run the store for them, they put in their hours at the business while dealing with everyday tasks and chores.

The Tardinos have looked at selling the business and had some bites, but in the end, no one has stepped forward to buy The Video Store.

As the close of the business comes into focus, Alice wanted to be clear that their closure was their choice.

“I think it’s time,” she said.