The end of a era: Something Weird Video shutters it's doors at the end of '24!

[El_Fez]

Damn, this is some sad news. These guys kept me in all kinds of sleaze during my youth!

IMPORTANT NEWS FROM SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO

January 2, 2024 marks the ten year anniversary of the death of SWV's late great founder, Mike Vraney. He is missed by so many of us. With that said SWV has a major announcement to make. 2024 will be the LAST year for the SWV mail order, Downloads, and website. Mike Vraney never intended for Something Weird Video to continue after his passing. His wife and business partner, Lisa Petrucci, has been keeping things going since 2014 to honor her husband's legacy. She is the only employee still working at SWV, and frankly, is exhausted and has decided it's time to wind some parts of the business down. The current SWV website, Downloads, and mail order just doesn't bring in enough revenue for SWV to continue indefinitely and there are many expenses involved with keeping this website and company going. SWV basically brings in just enough money to cover the monthly business expenses, credit card fees, and overhead. So it's been like running a not-for-profit company considering there isn't enough income coming in to even pay the one employee who works there 24/7.

There are other factors like we're down to three DVD-R duplicators that still function, it’s very difficult finding 8X blank DVD-R discs that work with my old duplicators, and plastic DVD cases are also getting harder to find as well as being expensive now. SWV still offers a small selection of classic DVD-R titles that haven’t come out on Blu-ray yet, but not for long. Once the duplicators die and the manufacturing supplies run out, it’s time to pull the plug on that part of the business. There are many other good reasons why this particular chapter needs to come to an end, but it would take a book to list them all.

So that said, November 1, 2024 will be the LAST day people can order from the SWV website (as it exists now). We will be keeping the BACK END of the SWV website active until December 31, 2024 so that Weirdos can still access their customer accounts and Download Orders. But after January 1, 2025 there will NOT be a way to get access to past Download Orders! So we strongly suggest that you go into your customer account and make sure that you’ve Downloaded and backed up all your video files and store them somewhere safe! (Prior to December 31, 2024 we can also still add more Download Attempts on existing Download Orders.)

The SWV website was recently updated with the latest Blu-rays and there’s some new links on the front page for Pallbearer Press (who are doing our SWV t-shirts now!) and new products Links. Check it out!

Something Weird will continue, but as a leaner meaner version of itself. There will be a NEW Something Weird website starting in 2025. It will be a point of purchase for partner Blu-rays, the remaining deadstock of Image Entertainment DVDs, Modern Harmonic LPs and CDs, as well as old SWV catalogs, related paper ephemera, and anything else we feel like peddling and promoting on there. It will be a much simpler website that Lisa can maintain, manage and update herself.

On a brighter note, there are lots of Blu-rays and other projects in the pipeline with partner labels. We can’t say what they are, but 2024 should be a terrific year for new restorations and Blu-ray releases.