Xtra-vision
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Xtra-vision Limited is Ireland's largest chain of video rental stores, founded in 1979. They have 205 stores across both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and have a workforce of almost 1600 [1] employees. The company offers DVD movies for both rent and sale. VHS has been phased out and is no longer available to rent or buy. In addition, the company has recently branched out into consumer electronics (through their Xtra-Vision Centres) and video gaming (available to rent in most regular outlets, however there are also dedicated Xtra-Game stores).
The company was previously known as "Xtra-vision Video Films" and was rebranded to "Xtra-vision Entertaining You" in 1998.
The company has offices in Belfast and Dublin.
Owned by Blockbuster since 1996, the chain has never rebranded, citing market research that the Xtra-vision name was better known and more respected than Blockbuster. Even in Northern Ireland the Blockbuster name is not used as it is in the rest of the UK. However, the few Xtra-vision stores outside of Ireland - those in Manchester, London and New Hampshire were rebranded to Blockbuster after the takeover.
The company (as Xtra-Vision plc) was involved in what was once Ireland's largest corporate bankruptcy, with massive expansion of their retail network causing a massive increase in their stock price on the Irish Stock Exchange. The company's value reached IR£27 million, but the low turnovers in the video rental market meant that there was no cash to continue their huge expansion-- up to 10 new stores a week-- and the company went bankrupt with its shares valued at 1/8th of a penny on its sale to Cambridge Investments, who in turn went bankrupt and the business was sold for cIR12m to a consortium of Montague Private Equity, 3i plc and the partners behind NCV (a local wholesaler of videos, etc..). Less than 2 years later the consortium sold to out to Blockbuster. The failure of the group, in both guises, was notable enough to be mentioned in Dáil debates [2] in 1994.
The company has an exclusive deal meaning that any movie with funding from the Irish Film Board will initially be provided for rental and sale solely through their network of stores.
The current Managing Director, Martin Higgins became Managing Director of Blockbuster's U.K Operations in 2006 in addition to Xtra-vision.
[edit] References
Xtra-vision website Xtra-vision have an in-store magazine called XTRA which is published by IFP Media.
