Best Buy Anime Reductions Confirmed
ICv2 reports a confirmation that the Best Buy retail chain plans a drastic reduction of in-store anime retail sales. Over 460 nationwide Best Buy stores with historically low anime sales will run 50% off close-out sales from March 1 to 21. Following the inventory reduction, those stores will maintain a selection of only around 20 different anime DVDs.
Over 500 Best Buy stores will continue to carry over 100 anime DVD products, and roughly the 200 nationwide stores with the strongest anime sales will continue to carry a selection similar to what they offer now.
Best Buy carries the largest assortment of anime titles among nationwide mass merchants, and is America’s largest seller of anime titles apart the select titles offered by Walmart. This inventory reduction is expected to sustain or even increase anime sales revenue for the Best Buy company, but may have a devastating impact on America’s anime distribution companies. Having more than 500 of America’s most prolific anime wholesale purchasers suddenly cut their purchasing drastically will undoubtedly impact America’s anime DVD manufacturers.
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This is great news in the short run for anime fans, but most certainly bad news for domestic media distribution.
I will be first in line on March 1st at my local Best Buy for the sales, but I won’t be likely to buy much anime from a physical retail store anytime after that. Best Buy had good prices on a number of anime titles and I might indulge the urge to just buy something I found on the shelf there. Almost all of my anime purchases come from websites and cons, but Best Buy got the rest of my business after SunCoast went under. If I had some anime specialty store nearby, I would likely bring my patronage there, but I guess I’ll continue getting my disc based anime media from online retailers/distributors AnimeNation and RightStuf.
Not surprising. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I knew back in 2005/2006 that shelf space was reaching reaching (or had reached) its most critical limits and would soon dramatically decrease akin to Newton’s theory of the universe folding in on itself. (After reaching a period of uncertainty and stasis, which itself followed a period of dramatic expansion… there is a precipitous decline. Crunch.)
Back to our dimension though, Best Buy hasn’t exactly treated anime as the creme de la creme in recent years, and there’s been some speculation for quite a few months that in an effort to consolidate low-return assets anime would get the knife.
ADV Films and Bandai Entertainment each have a lot of titles sold through Best Buy. Guess what’s going to happen to them? ADV could very well go under rather soon (which I’ve been in denial of, really). And Bandai is going to find itself in even more of a pinch than they already are (canceled titles and all).
Bandai’s going under too. They really should’ve gotten out of R1 and just operated out of Japan, but this will finish it.
On the brite side, most of the stores, including the one I work at, have already cut their orders drastically back on ADV and Media Blasters titles over the last year. It’s certainly going to hurt them, but not as bad as if this had happened a year ago.
I also think this is directly responsible for the recent decisions to not dub titles like Clannad and Hayate. This has been in the works at Best Buy for sometime and the publishers were all aware cutbacks were coming. Luckily, it’s not as bad as had been rumored. Initially, there was a strong possibility that most locations would drop anime altogether, rather than just cutting it back.
Now I’m really worried about Bandai and Funimation. How does Funi plan on selling all those B and C list title it acquired with it’s largest customer drastically cutting it’s orders. And sadly, Bandai’s DVD’s haven’t been selling very well at all the last year. Even bigger titles that should do well have been flopping in B&M stores. Recently, my store pulled almost all it’s singles including most of Funi’s and Bandai’s due to poor sales. We even pulled titles that should have sold well, like Claymore and Darker than Black. If these titles aren’t selling well at Best Buy, imagine how badly series like Lucky Star or Sasami are doing.
“Around 20 different anime DVDs”?
So basically, if you’re not looking for not looking for Naruto, Bleach, or Dragon Ball Z you’re out of luck?
Suddenly, every series outside of Best Buy’s elite 20 will instantly become “niche” just because they will be even harder to find than they were before.