Quickflix in trading halt, restructure, as jobs go.
Staff cuts of 20% are part of $4m in savings as Quickflix looks to new funding and investors.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Streaming
DVD and streaming company Quickflix, is in another trading halt as it looks for new funding, more revenue generating opportunities and a way out of its obligations from content licensing deals.
Business Insider reports cost savings of $4 million a year have been identified. Staff numbers will be cut by 20%, saving $1.7 million a year while cuts across call centre support, corporate overhead, technology development and infrastructure, content management and marketing will mean a saving of $2.3 million a year.
CEO Stephen Langsford says he has finalised an agreement with a major, unnamed studio for the release of about $2 million in debt and has an in-principle agreement with three other major studio licensors for the restructuring and release of a further $4 million.
The company says it is in discussions with a number of investors regarding potential additional funding.
But Quickflix has been losing 5000 paying customers a month since Netflix, Stan, and Presto arrived.
In August it did not proceed with the acquisition of a Shanghai-based film and TV company.
8 Responses
I’m a bit old fashioned, I like my twice a month movie arriving in the letterbox. I’m on a specially good deal, so I’m probably costing them money, but it was a special offer which is ongoing.
I too think this is a problem. I’m still trying to figure how they make anything out of my 3-discs at a time $30/mth plan when they pay postage both ways. I only need to get 4 or 5 discs a week to burn $30 in postage.
I really hope this doesn’t mean the end of Quickflix. I have Netflix and love it, but I’d definitely miss Quickflix for the greater range of movies and the physical DVDs. My husband regularly takes them to watch on the train, as there are big black spots during his commute where there’s no WiFi, and we also like being able to take them on holidays with us. So many of the movies we want to see aren’t on Netflix, and without video shops around any more what else are we to do?
Buy movies on iTunes or similar and download em to the laptop!
Any decent local library has a catalogue of hundreds, if not thousands of DVDs on free loan. Across their library network our council has “More than 7,000 DVDs covering all styles of music, popular movies, TV series and documentaries”. Make bookings on line. Usually available in a day or two if at another location. New titles often before Quickflix.
The “decent library” is the kicker. Being outside a capital city I was the kind of person who got frustrated by the lack of choice at my local video store back in the day. Our local library’s range is especially limited. Quickflix was a godsend to me because it had all of the cool stuff I’d hear about through At the Movies. If I wanted to watch blockbusters it’d be one thing, but the stuff on the fringes is hard to source in regional areas.
RIP Quikflix. The pay per stream model simply doesn’t work in a market when you are competing with flat rate streaming providers like Stan and Netflix.
Why would any company want to invest $2 million funds in a company that is losing 5,000 customers per month, and no clear plan to reverse that trend?
Bingo. While it was an acceptable stop-gap service, without substantial changes they were doomed the moment that Netflix et al. announced they were looking towards Australia. They had nearly a year’s clear warning, they didn’t adapt, and in a further … what, 6 months or so? … have been pushed out of the market they once dominated.