Forum - View topicNEWS: Tokyopop CEO Cites Borders' Bankruptcy for Layoffs
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2173 |
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I don't understand the relationship between what you posted and the text of mine that you quoted. I was talking about selling things on credit as a business practice and you're talking about shrinking markets and being a diversified company... |
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Then it must be Economics 201 or Economics 301 where the necessity of backing up claims with evidence is covered. Clearly, Tokyopop did not "refuse to" either find something else to sell or to try to find new ways to sell the things they sell. After all, the people who blame the WGO or the Priest movie for Tokypop's failure are accusing Tokyopop of trying to find new things to sell and new ways to sell the things that they sell.
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Deacon Blues
Posts: 383 Location: Albuquerque, NM |
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This, unfortunately, is not entirely true. Not ALL distribution to major retailers is done this way. There is still a great deal of merchandise that comes in via direct-store-delivery (aka DSD), which is paid once the merchandise has been scanned in and the invoice printed. There's no reason why TokyoPop being a "small" company couldn't have operated this way. At least this way it ensures a profit. Ultimately, relying too heavily on Borders was their ultimate downfall. You never ever want to place too much investment in one source that will (or should I say quite possibly) bankrupt your own company. But then again, their reliability as a company in terms of quality (translation issues, editing, printing quality, etc) also contributed to their overall downfall as well. They've been around for quite a while now yet you think they'd have a better understanding of market penetration. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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Yeah, I goofed. I took Path A and should have stayed on the current. Tokyopop has been in the news many times for its flagrant spending and is now blaming Borders for its financial woes. My original post stated "publishers". Plural. It had nothing to do with the credit lending, but in that Tokyopop was the only one blaming another business. This is what I should have said. One of these days, I'll learn to keep my mouth shut. Otherwise, I risk getting into discussions with...
I don't want to be argumentative here, but can you find anyone (other than the CEO) who felt these choices were in the company's best interest? I can't. If you do find someone, by all means, share please. I don't mind being told I'm wrong. Given this, however, it's okay to blame Borders for the financial situation now plaguing the small business? You'll excuse me if I don't accept the position you seem to favor regarding Tokyopop's accusation.
You should work at a pretzel factory, where your twisting skills would be more appreciative. |
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Sunday Silence
 Posts: 2047 |
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You shouldn't apologize. Look, only TOKYOPOP seems to have taken the decision to say that "Borders f***ed us." And yet no-one else seems to have blamed Borders for their woes (yet). In some respects, Stu should've kept his mouth shut about the comment. A simple "Due to the changing markets, we unfortunately had to let go of some folks," would've sufficed. Ambiguous enough to make sense, yet not enough fuel to tie into his "pet" projects. Blaming it on the recession is a much bigger scapegoat than specifically stating "Oh, Borders f***ed us." Yeah, Borders f***ed you, only because you let them!! If you spent half the effort and money you put into your f***ing projects into TOKYOPOP, maybe you could've salvaged your company enough so that it survives. But this is Stu Levy we're talking about. He'd be willing to throw his mother under the bus if it means his "babies" got a head start.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem is that TOKYOPOP had branded itself for a long time as a MANGA company. By creeping away from that core brand, you can't help that fans started to become hostile when TOKYOPOOP decides to throw out "MySpace Bastard" or "XXXXX movie, starring and directed and written by DJ Stewed Milk." Yes, you have to evolve, but you still need to retain your original identity to keep the people coming in. |
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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Hey! Look! More former TokyoPop licenses getting picked up by other US publishers.
animenewsnetwork.com/news/2011-03-07/dark-horse-adds-angelic-layer-tokyo-babylon-omnibuses I remember Chobits being a HUUUUGE title for TokypPop. That. Love Hina. Cowboy Bebop. Those were like the launch titles from when they first started calling themselves TokyoPop. I even got floppy single issues comics of Love Hina and Bebop somewhere. Plus CLAMP is a huge powerhouse and they've since moved all their work to Dark Horse. The only one I got was Clover. I got both the thin Mixx / TokyoPop Chix Comis volumes as well as the recent Dark Horse re-release. (Yes, TokyoPop once labeled their Shojo "Chix Comics".) Actually, now that I think about it, I did pick up the TokyoPop Rayearth omnibus of the first three volumes in a clearance bin. The only recent hit for TokyoPop was Hetalia. I even thought about checking it out. Then I saw the poor image quality on some pages. Such a popular title shouldn't have freaking large pixels on some of the comic strips. Plus a friend who was into the series said she didn't like the translations and was sticking with her Japanese editions (which she can read). Despite these quality control issues, it did still sell pretty well. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Since the claim is quite clearly untrue, no valid conclusions can be drawn from it. The claim that they tried but their efforts were either misguided or failed in their execution is arguable. The claim that they failed because they refused to try is simply contradicted by the evidence.
(1) You said that Tokyopop is in a declining market. (2) You said that this is why Tokyopop is not justified in citing the financial impact of the Border's bankruptcy as a factor in their recent layoffs. There is no way to connect (1) and (2) without some twist involved, since in the real world, a producer in a declining market that experienced a loss of accounts receivable due to bankruptcy of its largest vendor is at risk of having to cut back on its cost side in response. |
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bayoab
Posts: 831 |
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Maybe because TP is in a rather unique situation among all the publishers? Tokyopop is independent, so there is no major company to absorb the financial shock. Also, the borders crowd is more toward their key demographic and thus they are probably more dependent on Borders than the others. They are probably owed a larger amount than every other company except Viz. Yes, it's not the only factor since there is the down market, the loss of the strong licenses, the top heavy sales, but it's a major factor when you are suddenly told "You aren't seeing a dime for what you sent us."
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MrHatandClogs
 Posts: 283 Location: Between two ferns! |
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Hey I never said I was an expert.
I'm just going by what I see on the top selling lists, and what moves in the stores in my areas. And, for like the last 2 years, all the Borders, B&Ns, etc. in my area have had the same dusty TP volumes sitting on the shelves. And, the ones that move the quickest in the biggest quantities, are "the big three", Black Butler, FMA, Haruhi, etc. The only TP titles that move at all are Hetalia and Alice, and every store I've seen gets like 1 maybe 2 volumes and never restocks. And, the titles that you see on the top selling lists for any amount of time around what I said. Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, FMA, Black Butler, Haruhi, etc. These are on the lists for weeks. The only TP titles that make the lists are Hetalia and Alice, and they don't hang for long. |
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PrettyKitty$$$$$
 Posts: 119 |
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It doesn't look like you are actually reading the lists. Both Hetalia #1 and #2 are on the latest NYT list and have been on there for quite some time, the former for 21 weeks now. Also, I've seen Maid sama on there recently as well. They clearly have some strong titles, so I hope they can pull through. I'd like to see the end of Deadman Wonderland, Skyblue Shore, and all the other titles I'm collecting. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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I don't say this to contest your central thesis, but I'm sorry, ANY publisher that gets the plurality (let alone straight majority) of it's business from Borders is doomed to failure and deserves it. Wall Street Journal just put out a story today about how Best Buy is losing market share to online in general and Amazon in specific, and that's not Amazon's "core" business. As noted in the article, most people go to B&M stores to "handle" the product, and then go price and buy it online. Sure, you can make the case that grandma doesn't do that, but grandma ain't buying manga. I realize you were just throwing out a number to make your point, but really, Barnes & Noble + Borders COMBINED shouldn't be more than 40-50% of any manga publishers business. (I have no "inside" info to say that those figures are TRUE, I'm just saying they SHOULD be the case) According to this page: http://www.fonerbooks.com/booksale.htm Barnes & Noble has had more market share (based on gross dollar books sales) than Borders for at least the last 10 years. And Amazon has had more marketshare (than Borders) for at least the last 5, and in the last 2 (at least) Amazon has had more than 2x the sales (in dollars) of Borders. If we assume all three carry the same products (which granted, is a faulty assumption re: Borders & B&N) then Amazon should represent well more than twice the sales of Borders. Now granted, even if Border only represented 25% of TokyoPop's sales, that's not something to just "throw out" flippantly. But that said, in today's market, Borders should ABSOLUTELY not represent anything CLOSE to 50% of TP's business. (FYI, according to 2009 Bookscan numbers, TP's sales (overall) dropped more than 40% from 2008 to 2009, that's EASILY at least a year before the Borders issue was announced, and should be considered, since that's a 40%+ drop in SALES not in "profit") |
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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Dark Horse, DMP and Seven Seas are also independent. And Dark Horse, Seven Seas and Vertical (who are now corporate backed but weren't until a few days ago) have all actually seen their profits from manga sales rise over the past few years. Dark Horse, Vertical, DMP and Seven Seas do well because most of their titles are carefully selected to appeal to fairly niche and generally older (and thus relatively affluent) fanbases and they all encourage fairly strong brand loyalty within their respective markets. Tokyopop are screwed because they rely on a scattergun, quantity-not-quality approach to licensing and a do-it-on-the-cheap ethos. That worked out for them in an expanding pop cultural bubble with a buoyant economy and a big high street presence but none of those factors apply any more. Frankly, I'm amazed they're still in business at all. Edit: fixed typo. Last edited by Moomintroll on Mon Mar 07, 2011 8:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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lys
 Posts: 1008 Location: mitten-state |
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I just want to point out that Hetalia was originally a webcomic, and image-resolution for viewing on a computer is waaaay smaller than print-resolution. I don't think the artist was aware the series would explode as it did, when he started out drawing, so he probably created the early comics at the size they were meant to be viewed online. I'm pretty sure I've heard from an editor on the series that those low-quality pages were no better in the Japanese edition, and they just had to work with what was available. (maybe you confirm this with your friend who has the Japanese editions?) Anyway, there were only a few really bad examples in the first volume, and by v2 it looks like the art was all created at a high enough resolution to look good in print. |
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RestLessone
 Posts: 1426 Location: New York |
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Speaking of which, it's important to consider TP's general licensing moves. Look at every other manga publisher, be it independent or a branch; Yen Press, VIZ, Dark Horse, Vertical, Seven Seas. We get licensing announcements once in awhile from each of them, usually with only a few titles announced. VIZ may be the only exception, though they have fallen in line with the rest recently. Now look at Tokyopop. How do people first find out about their new titles? We find them on Amazon. How many do they license? We see 3+ new titles listed every few months, not counting Blu's acquisitions.
The resolution is probably about the same, though NA versions often differ a bit in quality when compared to the Japanese counterparts. I could rant about the use of honorifics and the translation being a bit flimsy, but that's for another time. I did recently notice some possible bad editing, though. I located a fan-translated scan from the original that seems to indicate there was text and no blotchy white patches. If it lacked them...Well, while it may be difficult to edit something with Hetalia's quality... This seems unacceptable. |
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