Forum - View topicAnswerman - Will Anime Discs Keep Being Sold At Major Retailers?
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SWAnimefan
Posts: 634 |
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Only place that had Anime was the local Best Buy, but they stopped selling Anime years ago. Now my only option it to buy direct from the North American Licensors online.
Buying elsewhere on the Internet is too risky since there is few official retailers, so it's a gamble to in buying online since you don't know if you might end up with a pirated copy. |
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TonyTonyChopper
Posts: 256 |
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Kalessin
 Posts: 931 |
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I think that the last time I bought any type of DVD or Blu-ray in the store was when I bought my blu-ray drive (back in 2010?) and realized that I'd forgotten to buy any discs to test it with. So, I bought Hidalgo at Costco, since it was at least close to the online price and got me a disc to test with so that I knew that the drive worked.
Buying discs at brick and mortar stores simply makes no economic sense whatsoever. Best Buy in particular has horrific prices in comparison to what can be had online, and online naturally has a much better selection - and you don't have to leave your house to boot. The only advantage that I can see to buying a DVD/Blu-ray in a brick and mortar store is if you're in a hurry to get it and don't want to wait for it to be shipped to you. And I'm never in that kind of hurry. It's not worth the money. And I buy enough anime and manga that I have to be smart about how and where I buy it to avoid spending ridiculous amounts of money (or at least to make the ridiculous amounts that I do spend pseudo-affordable). Paying anywhere near MSRP would be a very costly mistake for me. That would add up fast. I've bought almost all of my anime from rightstuf for years now. They pretty much always have a sale going, and most of those sales are 40% off of DVD/Blu-rays and 33% off of books from a specific publisher (which becomes 46% and 40% and with the 10% membership discount, which only costs $12 a year; so, all you have to do is spend $120, it's paid for itself). And those sales cycle through all of the major publishers. So, when the sale changes to a new publisher, I just order the titles that I want from that publisher and then wait for the next sale. And since pre-orders are on sale too, and rightstuf doesn't wait until absolutely everything in your order is ready before shipping, it works very well to just preorder most everything I want, and it shows up sometime around the release date, whenever that happens to be. Compare that with having to figure out when release dates are and having to go to a brick and mortar store to figure out whether they have what I want in their slim selection - and then having to pay way more money to boot. It really makes no sense to buy DVDs or Blu-rays from brick or mortar stores, and it makes even less sense with anime than it does with more mainstream stuff. I've saved thousands of dollars by buying anime and manga online, and being strategic with those purchases at rightstuf has saved me that much more. I've had to be smart about my purchasing to be able to afford my hobbies, and buying in brick and mortar stores would just be stupid. I can see anime publishers wanting to get certain titles in stores to see if they can get new customers, but as someone who is already an anime fan looking to buy DVDs/Blu-rays, brick and mortar stores are just plain worse than online and ultimately worthless. |
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RHorsman
 Posts: 151 Location: Loch Loman |
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On the overall corporate balance sheet one consolidated return credit looks better than incremental sales spread across stores. Now, is that practice actually the better fiscal choice? As someone who worked for Borders until shortly before it completely cratered, I have my doubts... |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4422 |
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What you said is quite true. When you consider those factors, oftentimes the money that retailers would get on a return to the publisher was greater than anything they could get selling at a discount. At the time, publishers had very little choice but to accept sales contracts on those terms, or else they weren't going to move anything at all. Companies, like Geneon, got caught in a dangerous game of hoping the money from those initial shipments outlasted what had to be returned. There is also the fact that during the bubble, streaming wasn't nearly what it is now, and most never made it to TV. Many good or decent shows would go overlooked because people were asked to blind buy most titles, at least if we're strictly talking about legal viewing. Speaking personally, the stores I visited almost never sold a disc for under $20, since this was already considered a substantial discount from the MSRP of $30. That seemed like a lot to just try out a series. I think from a retailer's perspective, they actually did give anime a chance, but a lot of factors came together to make them not want to stock much anime anymore. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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You can say that for a number of different things, but I am able to find home video sold at or near prices on places like Amazon at brick-and-mortar stores (Fry's being the first stop that comes to mind). However, because I live in a state where most of these sites have distribution centers, if not every single one of them, I still have to pay sales tax, and I also still have to pay shipping and handling, which can be 25% of the cost or more. (I read recently that my state now charges sales tax on all online purchases, regardless of where it's coming from.) I remember being unable to find BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger when it came out, as it was sold out at every brick-and-mortar store. I wound up having to pay about $82 for it online, even though it was discounted from $60 to $50: About $5 of sales tax, and about $17 of shipping and handling. (This was 3-5 business days; rush or priority would've cost more.) I don't know why, but S&P to my neighborhood costs a lot more than S&P for even surrounding neighborhoods. Packages also arrive late, and packages often arrive mutilated or damaged in some way. (My Universal Yums box from last month arrived with one side completely caved in, for instance. If it was anything other than snacks and candy in there, I would've been so mad. My sister had bought a mountain bike online, and there was a big gaping hole on one side of the box and one of the parts was missing.) In a few cases, packages don't arrive at all (I suspect they were stolen): I had ordered a One Piece DVD set from RightStuf one time, and I checked the package tracking. It stopped at the Bell, CA distribution center, and once 30 days had passed and it hadn't left it yet, I contacted RightStuf, so they sent another one. That one also got stopped at the Bell, CA distribution center, and when it was there for 30 days, I contacted them again, and it finally arrived when they sent a third copy on a route that did not pass by Bell. (Both of them are STILL at Bell, as far as tracking is concerned.) I'll go to brick-and-mortar first to ensure that I get the item and I get it in the condition that I see it in. I'll be willing to pay more for that. (It's also out of the question regarding items I'm not too familiar with or stuff I have to physically interact with beforemaking a decision, like shoes.) I can understand why you would rather shop online for home video: You don't have any comparable sales at brick-and-mortar stores, S&P must be low, and it sounds like your package delivery services consistently send the packages over unharmed. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1113 Location: Puget Sound |
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As I recall, you live in a Very Big City (or at least in the metro area thereof) in a (relatively) crowded area of your state and that changes things. That changes things a great deal. Even if this weren't an international forum, the US is a Very Big Place and conditions vary wildly across it. So it's very likely that comparing your local conditions to Kalessin's is comparing apples to oranges. Here in my state (WA), where population density varies greatly, conditions vary wildly depending on where you live. When I first moved here (on the Peninsula across the Sound from Seattle) thirty years ago, we were practically back of beyond. Now we're on the outer fringes of the commuter belt. Over the last thirty odd years I've seen the local retail landscape alter dramatically as we've moved (culturally speaking) closer and closer in to the Seattle metro area. Best Buy is particularly instructive here... when the economy crashed and the anime bubble popped, they altered their stocking to match local buying patterns. But they've maintained that stocking pattern, which has produced something of a positive feedback mechanism... areas that bought lots of anime have lots of stock and sell lots of anime, areas that didn't don't have much and as a result don't sell much. So, locally, even though the anime market is expanding, Best Buy's stocking pattern dooms them even though a market exists that didn't really exist nearly a decade ago. (And other retailers are taking advantage of this.) Our local Best Buy looks very different from one even forty five minutes away because one is stocked for a major metro area, and ours is stocked for a small town just barely on the edge of a major metro area. |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Hmm, I suppose that if you live in a less populated and less crowded area, things are also a lot less impersonal, and so you'd probably have more reliable package delivery service too. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2512 |
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 but everything I have ordered arrives intact and on time. BTW, FYE here had a number of store closings which saw a bunch of used anime appear at my local store but that has been mostly exhausted and the section is not large, my local Fry's anime section has likewise been dwindling so I'd guess 5-10 years will see only online anime sales for my area.
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Yeah, it's just our immediate area, particularly the USPS and our nearest post office. UPS and FedEx get so expensive that they more than cancel out the savings I'd get. (That's something I cannot fully understand, as no one else I know, online or off, seems to pay the S&H fees I do, not even people in my own neighborhood.) If the UPS or FedEx options are affordable, however, I'll take them--packages have gone missing with those before, but only once ever each whereas the USPS has something dumb happen to my packages like bimonthly.
The Fry's I like to visit, for the record, are the ones in Burbank, Sherman Oaks, and to a lesser extent Fountain Valley and City of Industry if I happen to pass by. Occasionally, an anime title will go on sale, and I'll pick it up. I got One Piece: Strong World at the Burbank location for $23 one time, where at the time RightStuf had it for $26 and Amazon had it for $25. The anime section has definitely been dwindling at all of these locations though. The Best Buys I like to visit are the ones in Porter Ranch and Pacoima, though "like" is a relative term as I've had some nasty service at the Pacoima one and the Porter Ranch one is pretty close to that leaking gas well that's been on the news for a while. But they do get anime. Full-MSRP anime, but I appreciate that they're there at all. Outside of Fry's, the most extensive anime retailer I know of is the Wal•Mart super center in Golden Valley, which keeps up with GKids's Ghibli releases and gets random unexpected releases here and there from FUNimation and Viz, though with a preference for movies over TV shows. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13552 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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The Fry's Electronics near my work carries a better selection of anime than the Best Buy there. Heck, to keep the anime together, they even put the anime porn in the same aisle put behind a gate indicating it's for adults.
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9836 Location: Virginia |
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Yesterday my wife received a doll ordered from Ami Ami on Saturday. Tracking showed it in NYC on Monday and the post office made a special trip to deliver it to her before 2pm. The funny thing is that if it had been mailed from NYC on Monday it wouldn't be here for another day or two.
I've been getting packages at various addresses here since 1971 from USPS, UPS and FedEx and never had one disappear or suffer significant damage. There have been one or two that went round in circles within the post office system (usually due to a bad barcode) but eventually arrived intact. The flipside of this is that I couldn't buy anime or anime related goods in a brick and mortar if I wanted. It has probably been five years since Best Buy stocked a significant number of titles and ten since any location carried anime related merchandise. I initially bought anime on VHS from a couple of local comic shops. They did not make the transition to anime on DVD and have since gone out of business. For awhile I was able to find anime at Saturday Matinée but they were sold to Camelot Music and closed. Camelot Music was later sold to F.Y.E. who took over their store. F.Y.E. also bought Warehouse Music but eventually closed both locations and left town altogether. I bought a lot of anime at Suncoast before they were sold but only when visiting out of town as they never had a location closer than a two hour drive. Of the big box retailers, Target had some anime for a couple of years but never anything I wanted that I didn't already have. If Wal-Mart ever carried it here they hid too well for me to find. The local B&N has only a couple of Ghibli titles. Books-a-Million used to have a good selection of manga but closed and left town before they stocked anime. That left Best Buy. They were a decent source for a couple of years but slow and unreliable. I later found that a stock clerk there held the new anime for his buddies before putting it out. When they started to reduce their selection I turned to online (RACS & TRSI) and haven't turned back. |
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Kalessin
Posts: 931 |
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I think that I've had a package outright lost once via USPS, and the company in question resent it without me having to pay for the replacements. And once, when I was living in the CA Central Coast several years ago, I had a package arrive in Bell, CA only to then end up in New Jersey a week later, and then back in Bell again the week after that. USPS made an extra delivery for that to make sure that it arrived on the last day of the window that it was guaranteed for. But it's been very rare that I've had any major problems with any of the major carriers at any of the places that I've lived, and I buy almost everything online except for food. I literally could not afford to own what I own if I bought stuff in brick and mortar stores. The price differential would suck up way too much extra money - not to mention that any imports that I buy would be unobtainable without ordering online. And I'm generally very picky about where and when I buy stuff online in order to keep the price as low as possible (like making sure that I buy enough at once to get free shipping or taking advantages of rightstuf's sale system to maximize my savings). Honestly, I buy so much stuff online that if I ended up in an area where the major carriers were frequently screwing up deliveries for some reason, I'd probably have to move somewhere where that wasn't happening in order to be able to function. But fortunately, my experience is that they're very reliable and problems are very rare. |
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iashakezula
Posts: 7 |
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I use to buy those dvd from Best Buy stores too but times are changing in the retail business in the past 8 years.
You can buy everything online now , well almost. |
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TnTDon
Posts: 4 |
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Browsing for anime used to be a past time I enjoyed, however, it is nothing like it used to be. Being able to run to Best Buy in its hey day was fun because I could send my wife somewhere else while I looked at what they had. Granted, I didn't buy as much as I would have liked (due to budget) but I came across more obscure titles than I would have online. Call it the lazy side of me but if what I'm looking for isn't on the first 5 pages, I give up.
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