a long way home j publications hoogland springfield il

#A long way home j publications hoogland springfield il movie#
#A long way home j publications hoogland springfield il professional#
#A long way home j publications hoogland springfield il free#

“My dad, as always, made decisions very quickly. “That’s a damn good question,” his son says. Why did a man who favored John Wayne give money to a place best known for plays and other theatrical productions?

Aside from Family Video, the Hoogland family is perhaps best known for the Hoogland Center for the Arts on Sixth Street. That was his genius, I think.”Īs Hoogland’s fortune grew, he established the Hoogland Family Foundation, a nonprofit that has contributed to such places as Vanderbilt University, Stanford University and the Springfield YMCA. What Dad thought of as marketing was deals to drive people in. “Most people think of marketing as advertising, putting something in a newspaper. “My dad was a really great marketer,” Keith Hoogland says. Glass spires outside stores were inspired by a bar made of glass blocks at the family’s home.

#A long way home j publications hoogland springfield il free#

The idea of free movies for A’s came from his family – Hoogland paid his children $1 for every A and charged $2 for every C. “He thought that people should have the right to watch what they wanted.”

#A long way home j publications hoogland springfield il movie#

“Dad never watched an adult movie in his life,” Keith Hoogland says. Family Video realized as much as 17 percent of its revenue by renting adult movies, according to testimony from a company official. 11 to an undercover Belleville cop in 1997. Clair County jury decided that Family Video had violated obscenity standards by renting Where The Boys Aren’t No. “We reverse and remand,” an appellate court wrote in 2001, after a St. Hoogland, his son says, didn’t falter at renting adult videos in a pre-internet age: Go ahead, he decided, figuring that the First Amendment would prove out, and it did. But that’s what Dad always wanted to be.”

#A long way home j publications hoogland springfield il professional#

“We wanted to be as big and as professional as Blockbuster, for example, but still feel like the local mom-and-pop store,” Keith Hoogland says. Hoogland would scout sites during drives between Springfield and a home in Michigan, where he died years after moving from the capital city. Family Video didn’t charge rental fees for children’s flicks. Students with A’s on their report cards got free movie rentals. At one point, Family Video stores were giving away 32,000 turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Employees were supposed to greet customers by name. “He wanted to be part of the community,” Keith Hoogland says. Hoogland, his son says, made it a point to arrange financing with local banks when opening stores. Family Video once boasted 800 stores, mostly in the Midwest and typically in smaller towns. It cost a bit more on the front end, but delivered in the end. Family Video also bought rights to movies instead of splitting rental proceeds with studios. “The smartest thing he did was, we started buying our own real estate, and we paid it off in five years,” says Keith Hoogland.įorbes magazine two years ago estimated the value of the company’s real estate at $750 million. Uncertain how long the video rental business would be viable, Hoogland from the start avoided tenancy, buying property instead of renting store space. Family Video hangs on still, with a handful of stores left open and the family business diversifying into such areas as pizza and fitness centers. Hollywood Video went out of business in 2010 Blockbuster closed its last store in 2014. The Video Movie Club of Springfield morphed into Family Video, which became one of the biggest players in a dog-eat-dog world of video rentals that blossomed during the 1980s and 1990s.įamily Video, Blockbuster Video and Hollywood Video were the big three. Supreme Court, Hoogland and his ilk opened video stores throughout the land. To the chagrin of movie studios that fought the rise of video rentals all the way to the U.S. Adams St., charging $25 for an annual membership and $5 to rent a tape for three days. He’d gotten stuck with videotapes – no one wanted to buy a movie for $79.95 or thereabouts – and so he started The Video Movie Club of Springfield at 1022 E. Inspiration struck in 1978, when Hoogland was nearly 50 and running Midstates Appliance and Supply Co., a wholesaler started by his father that he had taken over after graduating from college in 1952. “The Quiet Man,” maybe, and not surprising, given Hoogland’s penchant for doing business the old-fashioned way.Ĭharles Hoogland, a Springfield High School graduate, was a Yale man who served in the Navy and got married on the Fourth of July. It probably would have been something old – he liked John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, says Keith Hoogland, Charles’ son.

Charles Hoogland was a video store pioneer, but wasn’t known for having a favorite movie.