Serving the Venn diagram of Canadian movie lovers and collectors: My conversation with Pascal Fortin from Rough Cut Video
Pascal Fortin (pictured above) opened Rough Cut Video in 2023 to serve the Canadian boutique Blu-ray collector market. Since then, the business has quickly grown into a bigger success than expected.
I met with Pascal Fortin, the owner of Rough Cut Video, a Calgary, Alberta-based retail store focused on making boutique Blu-ray releases accessible to the Canadian collectors market. We discussed the store’s inspiration, how he developed it into a thriving business, and what he wants to do next.
What's the Idea: What inspired you to open Rough Cut Video?
Pascal Fortin: In my previous business, I was moving all the time, every 18 to 24 months. I had been doing that for 20 plus years, and my son was getting to an age where I didn't want to continue switching his schools that often. It was perfect timing to sell that company off and I wanted to start something. I didn't want to work for someone else. I've always been into physical media and movies in general and it just seemed like there was a void to fill in Canada specifically. So I thought it was worth a shot.
What's the Idea: When did you start collecting?
Pascal: Pretty much since I was a kid, when my parents were buying them for me. As I got older and went off to school, not a lot of money so I took a few years off and slowly got back into it, but on and off.
“It won’t ever go back to how it was where the average person would pick up a couple movies at the grocery store checkout... I see it as a collector market now and there will slowly be more and more collectors.”
What's the Idea: The market and industry has changed so much from when I was a kid. You had the rental stores and even something as ubiquitous as HMV. Then in the last decade, it seemed to move almost entirely online, so it’s great and almost a relief to see a store like yours filling the void of real physical media stores. Did you have concerns about the “state of physical media?”
Pascal: No, because I know it'll always be a niche thing. It won't ever go back to how it was where the average person would pick up a couple movies at the grocery store checkout or in big bargain bins. My parents aren't buying movies, you know what I mean. The average person is completely content with streaming. It's not like how it used to be, but I see it as a collector market now and there will slowly be more and more collectors.
My concern about opening the store was getting people to just be aware of it. But over time, that just happened.
What's the Idea: Did you do anything in particular to spread the word?
Pascal: I reached out to Ryan Verrill from Disc-Connected not even to spread the word, but just to ask him a couple questions about social media because I know he was always posting. I didn't even have a personal account before I opened the store. The Instagram account is the first time I’ve had any. I think I reached out to him a month before I opened, basically just asking questions about hashtags because I wasn't familiar with any of that stuff. And he's like, “How about we do an interview?” People became aware of the store because of that. Funny enough, the first guy I hired sent the store an email 30 minutes after that video aired.
What's the Idea: Very cool.
Pascal: I hadn't even opened yet, and he wanted a job. I obviously wasn't ready to hire anyone yet. It was just me, but I ended up hiring him three months after I opened.
Rough Cut Video offers a wide variety of releases from both major and smaller boutique Blu-ray distributors, providing Canadian collectors with a single source for importing titles from all over the world.
What's the Idea: When you were opening the store, was there anything in particular that you wanted to achieve with it?
Pascal: My goal was to basically provide the kind of service that DiabolikDVD does in the U.S. where they import everything, so that you get it all in one spot. My favourite stuff is a lot of the U.K. stuff and it costs an arm and leg to import, so my goal was to just import everything and then people can get everything all at once. People want to get U.K. stuff or Australia releases and then a Kino title or a Scream Factory or whatever. It just makes more sense to get it all at once.
What's the Idea: It's so nice to have a single spot in Canada where you can order from pretty much all of the major labels. It’s great that you’re serving this need in Canada. I also love that you highlight somewhat smaller labels like Mondo Macabro and Terror Vision, let alone much smaller companies, alongside the more well-known boutiques.
Pascal: It was a personal need for me and I was like, I can't be the only one, So that was the thought process and if it didn't work, at least I tried. My thought process behind it was as long as I broke even for the first year, I was fine. And I surpassed my expectations.
What's the Idea: I think you came in at a perfect moment. There’s a boom right now in this market.
Pascal: I think so too because it seems like almost weekly you hear of a new label popping up or even certain movies that most people have never even heard of getting releases. So it's a weird time where there's not as many people buying movies, but there's also stuff that's coming out now that wasn't coming out when everyone was buying movies. It's a strange dichotomy. They keep saying it’s the golden age of physical media, but there's less people buying it. But I don't know. I think it's a good thing.
What's the Idea: Most hobbies and businesses survive on that one percent of die-hard customers, as far as I’m aware.
Pascal: Yeah. What's funny is when I told people, like family and close friends, that this is what I was doing, they all thought I was crazy. They didn't all say it to my face, but I could see the look that they would give me. And the analogy I'd always use is if you live in a small town or you move into a small town that has a population of 25,000 people, and a thousand of those people are Ethiopian. If you open up an Ethiopian restaurant, you're not providing service to everyone, you're focusing on a small percentage of people that are going to be ecstatic and loyal and they're always going to go there.
The percentage of people that buy physical media is very small in comparison to the whole of not only Calgary but all of Canada, but there's not many outlets for it.
What's the Idea: There’s a handful of similar stores in cities like Montreal or Vancouver, but they’re so rare in even cities as big as Calgary, let alone smaller communities. I assume Calgary didn’t have a similar store at the time?
Pascal: No, unless you count Sunrise Records in the mall and stuff like that, but in the two years since I've been open, I think two Sunrise Records have closed in that amount of time.
Pascal’s ambitions extend beyond the retail store. One day, he’d like to start his own Blu-ray distribution label.
What's the Idea: Was there any thought about only doing an online store only instead of opening a retail store?
Pascal: Everyone that I told I was doing this asked me “why don't you just do it online? It's crazy to invest all this time and money.” My idea was partly just my personal bias. If I see a new popup online, a website-only store, I'm going to be hesitant to order from them. Is it a legitimate business?
What's the Idea: I feel the same way.
Pascal: I think the reason why Rough Cut Video has worked is because I opened both the online store and the retail store at the same time. Because in the first week alone, I got so many phone calls from people who just wanted to see if it was real, and I'd answer the phone and they're like, “Oh my god.” And then they would say that I can't believe this is real.
What's the Idea: It’s been two years since you opened. Is it overall going like you wanted it to? Is the retail store busy?
Pascal: Yeah. When I first started, 10 percent of sales were online, and 90 percent were in store. It took time for the online store to take off, but now it's the complete opposite. The sales are majority online. For in store stuff, there's a glass ceiling but I haven't even gotten close to the glass ceiling for the online sales yet. The trajectory is still going up month over month.
Like I said, I hired a guy three months in. I didn't expect the need to hire for a long time. I thought it was just going to be me. I started from being open six days a week to now it's every day, and four employees.
What's the Idea: How much retail and storage space do you have, and what’s your shipping and distribution like?
Pascal: I think the whole store is about 1,800 square feet. I'm very close to needing either a bigger space or a second shipping-only space. It's starting to be too much because when people order, sometimes it's partially filled and we have to wait for the next release date. We have shelves in the back that are just lined up with orders ready to go out.
What's the Idea: I can only imagine what a skid or a pallet coming in from Second Sight looks like because of how big their releases can be. Similar to the dichotomies you mentioned earlier, you stock a lot of big, bulky packages of cult movies that have a low rating on LetterBoxd that are getting the deluxe treatment.
Pascal: It’s funny because the stuff that sells the most is what the average person would consider a bad movie. I'm sure places like Amazon sell thousands of Marvel movies, but it's hilarious for me to see.
Pascal now has a team of four employees. Their first employee was interested in working for Rough Cut Video even before the store opened.
What's the Idea: Do any movies stand out to you?
Pascal: The one that surprised me with how much it sold was The Substance. That one sold a lot. We couldn't keep it. I thought I'd order plenty and then they were gone by the time they arrived and I'd order even more for the next shipment and they would almost all be gone by the time they arrived. I'd have three to put out on the shelf. I think that came out in November and they're still selling. It's crazy. It surprised me because that's not my type of movie, but it makes sense now because it's borderline mainstream and then all the Oscar hype it got, I guess.
What's the Idea: What kind of movies do you like to watch?
Pascal: The stuff that I like the most is the weirder stuff. I like 88 Films a lot and Eureka. I like a lot of Hong Kong and Italian stuff.
What's the Idea: Have you been collecting from those labels since they started? Are you a completionist as a collector?
Pascal: Those labels just so happen to put out a lot of stuff that I like, but I buy from every label. If something comes out from a brand new label, I'm going to buy it. I'm not label loyal, which some people are. I didn't expect that. I expected the people that would come into the store to be like me, just movie people, but I found the majority are more collector people. There's a Venn diagram of movie people and collector people. Some people will come in and be mad as they're at the counter buying something, they're mad that it's being released by a certain label. I'm like, “Why are you buying it?” They say, “I have all the other ones. I can't not buy it.”
“I now have ‘with slip’ listed when something arrives and it has a slipcover because I can’t tell you how many phone calls and emails people would ask if it had a slipcover before buying it because if it didn’t, they weren’t going to buy it.”
What's the Idea: I started as a young person collecting movies first, or maybe collecting directors or series. I look at my Evil Dead 2 DVD that I've had for 20 years and I have the beat up slip cover, but I never thought about it. It was just a thing that came with the movie sometimes. When I got more into this hobby again a few years ago, it really surprised me how much people care about slipcovers and steelbooks and making sure they are in perfect condition.
Pascal: Early on the website, I didn't indicate whether a movie had a slipcover or not. I now have “with slip” listed when something arrives and it has a slipcover because I can't tell you how many phone calls and emails people would ask if it had a slipcover before buying it because if it didn't, they weren't going to buy it.
What's the Idea: One of the things I love about shopping with Rough Cut Video is the transparency and reliability. Your system is clear, you know what you're going to pay without a bunch of unexpected fees, and you know relatively when things are going to arrive.
Pascal: The release dates are another problem. Most people that have been into this for a while understand that the release date is almost a suggestion at this point. Sometimes we get stuff early and sometimes it can be late but it's nothing I can control. I wish I could have everything early. That'd be amazing. But the average person that doesn’t consistently buy physical media, like the people buying The Substance, are like, “What do you mean you don't have it? The release date says…” But I can't control when I receive it. There could be a hold up at customs if it's an import. Sometimes there could be delays in transit. Sometimes the distributor doesn't ship it on time and it'll be three, four days late.
What's the Idea: How did you get deals with all these different companies? Do you just get wholesale access to the different distributors and companies?
Pascal: It was just a matter of reaching out to labels and asking for wholesale information. It took a bunch of trial and error reaching out to people, but over time it worked. When I started thinking about opening it, I did everything all at once. I was looking for a location and I was setting up accounts. I had accounts and I started receiving inventory for the store before I even knew where the store was going to be.
What's the Idea: Was there anything about opening the store in Canada that was either difficult or advantageous?
Pascal:The cost of shipping in Canada is not great. It took some time to figure out how I was going to do that. I was just eating a lot of the costs early on because I knew I needed to get to a certain point with the amount of shipping that I was doing to where I could renegotiate and bring the cost down.
What's the Idea: You added a surcharge for certain items at some point. Was that a way of buffering the cost of shipping?
Pascal: Early on, the box sets were $8 and now I have it down to five dollars. The U.S. has it much easier for shipping within the U.S. There’s nothing like it here. Businesses in the U.S. can send a package for $5.
What's the Idea: It makes me sad to see so many collectors choosing to import from the states or needing to, but shipping and other costs are just that much cheaper sometimes.
Pascal: Some customers order a lot of products with varying release dates and combine the orders, so I probably send out a giant box that costs 25 or 30 dollars, but the customers paid the flat rate of $5. So right there I end up eating 20 or 25 dollars. But those companies that charge exactly what it costs to ship are not selling as much.
You can never be sure what you’ll find at Rough Cut Video, so come prepared to stroll the aisles and find unexpected cult classics along with other oddities.
What's the Idea: Now that it’s been two years, what have you've learned from building this business? Is there anything you’re hoping to do?
Pascal: The original idea before I decided to open the store was to start a distribution label. And the more I thought about it, certain labels, like a brand new label, it could be six or seven movies that you release before people start paying attention, and that's a lot of not only time, but money that you're dishing out in the hopes that it gains traction down the road. It just made more sense to put that money into opening a store. Then once the store generates money, that can lead to starting a label that you create from the store. The store brings eyes to the label. So that was the idea.
What's the Idea: That's an exciting tease. Do you know what kind of titles you would want to curate?
Pascal: I would be releasing older movies, specifically stuff that hasn't been released. It's very easy or easier to release something that's out of print, and I'm not going to say that I will never do that, but that's not what interests me. I have a list of stuff that I started two years ago and I have a spreadsheet with all the titles, who owns the rights, who I need to contact, all that stuff. Now it's just the timing of everything that needs to be worked out.
What's the Idea: A Canadian answer to 88 Films or something similar sounds amazing. When people come into the store, what kind of titles do you typically recommend? Do you have any go-tos?
Pascal: It all depends on what they like. I'm not going to recommend some crazy Cat III movies to a grandmother that walks in looking for film noir.
What's the Idea: One of those might just be the movie she was looking for her whole life but didn’t realize it.
“Before I started this, I didn’t really know anyone that liked the movies that I liked, so it’s just been cool that everyone I talk to on a daily basis, whether it be in person or online, are all similar in a way.”
Pascal: That's what's funny because we do secret screenings every few months. At the first one I did, I had a customer who I believe is in his thirties, and he brought his mom. And yeah, one of the movies I played was The Seventh Curse, which is a Cat III movie but it's a mix of action martial arts, horror, fantasy. It's a crazy movie and when I saw them walk in, I was like, “Man, that's not going to go." But apparently she loved it. She's like, "I've never seen anything like.”
What's the Idea: That’s awesome. That will definitely be a memorable shared experience for those two.
What's the Idea: Is there anything else that you'd want to either share with customers?
Pascal: No, just my gratitude for people that order. Sometimes it's hard not to focus on the customers with complaints, but everyone's been cool. It's just been fun interacting with people. Before I started this, I didn't really know anyone that liked the movies that I liked, so it's just been cool that everyone I talk to on a daily basis, whether it be in person or online, are all similar in a way.
What's the Idea: It’s an amazing time now for people to discover both so many movies but also the communities that have formed online around these movies and certain companies. The cool thing about sites like yours and Vinegar Syndrome with all their partner labels and others is that you’ll go to the website to check out whatever title you’re interested in, and then you have that opportunity to find so much more.
Pascal: And that's the fun part, especially when you go into a store. You see something that you are familiar with and you want, and then right next to it is something that looks just as cool, but you have never heard of. I don't stream much, like I have one service and it's just because my son watches it, but years ago when I was, you'd be done watching one thing and then it just recommended something right after. So you never seemed to discover anything new.
What's the Idea: Do you have any titles on preorder for yourself right now? Are there any upcoming releases that you are super excited for in particular?
Pascal: The release dates all blend together. Gator Bait 1 and 2 coming from Terror Vision is one that I knew was coming before they announced it. I'm not even exaggerating, I was told they were releasing it the summer that I opened, so it was June or July of 2023. When they said that, I had the one sheet of Gator Bait in the store framed, so I took a picture and sent it to them. And then every month that they wouldn’t announce it, I was like, “When’s it coming?” It took over a year and a half for them to announce it. So that one I'm excited about.
Also, any of the Shaw Brothers stuff. I like that Indicator 4K of The Perfume of the Lady in Black. That one’s awesome, that’s a good movie.
What's the Idea: I'm a little nervous about Indicator starting a giallo line. Their releases are beautiful. It could be great, but expensive.
Pascal: Yeah. Yeah.
What's the Idea: Thanks for your transparency. It’s really helpful, I think, for people to understand how you've managed to succeed as a small physical media retail company in Canada.
Pascal: Thank you.
Visit Rough Cut Video’s website or stop into the store and say hi to Pascal and the team if you’re in the Calgary area.
The interview was recorded using Google Meet in July 2025.
Transcription edited by Matthew Long.
All photos are the property of Pascal Fortin.