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Mansfield Mom & Pop Video Store Closes Its Doors

MANSFIELD (CBS) - Video stores, long endangered, are quickly becoming extinct.

Among them, long-time family businesses are being forced to shut down.

This week, Video Mania, a Mansfield store that opened in 1987, back when $0.99 VHS tapes were all the rage, has closed its doors for the last time.

Services like Netflix, Red Box, and streaming video were too much for this mom and pop shop, forcing owner Jim Glaropoulos to finally close up shop.

"I started this when I was 23 years old," said Glaropoulos."It was something that my adult life, that's what I grew up in. So it's very tough to think about closing it."

On the store's final night in business, long-time customers visited, looking for cut rate deals.  At the same time, they also wish this wasn't happening.

"It makes me sad," said one customer. "My daughter, she's 15… been here since the beginning."

"In the end technology is most likely the culprit that killed the video store.

There's no denying that plenty of great innovations have been born.

But the question remains, are we losing something?

WBZ-TV's Jim Smith reports

The phenomenon of walking into a local mom and pop store and actually taking to a real person is slowly disappearing.

Of course, large video stores are suffering similar fates. Last year, Blockbuster Video filed for bankruptcy and closed hundreds of stores.

In the end, if the story of Video Mania was a movie plot, the audience would be shedding a few tears during the closing credits.

But there is a sequel in store. Glaropoulos plans to replace the video store with a restaurant later this year.

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