Published June 22, 2016 by Tom Porter

Bart D’Alauro ’95 on Running a Movie Rental Business in the Age of Streaming

Bart D’Alauro ’95 jokingly winces when you mention the name of fellow alumnus and Netflix cofounder and CEO Reed Hastings ’83, who drew large crowds when he spoke on campus in March, describing how he used the Internet to revolutionize the way we view media.

The advent of streaming, however, was something that presented fresh challenges for D’Alauro, who owns that increasingly rare type of business model—the video rental store. A movie buff who has been featured on film discussion panels for the German department, D’Alauro co-founded Bart & Greg’s DVD Explosion in downtown Brunswick fourteen years ago, and unlike many movie rental businesses, it has survived.

D’Alauro speaks about the challenges of running a bricks-and-mortar DVD rental store in the age of streaming entertainment: