best buy

Remember the misreported story last month about Best Buy getting rid of their anime section? Well, details of the company’s actual plans were revealed yesterday (saw via ANN) and they involve ranking of titles and clearance sales next month.

Once I read the words “A-list”, “B-list”, and “C-list” in the ANN article, I immediately thought back to two previous posts I had written in response to ADV Films’ John Ledford using similar terminology to describe how marketable different anime series are. In this case, the A-list titles will be “around 20 core anime SKUs”, according to ICv2, and would be carried in all locations; those would presumably include Afro Samurai, Naruto, and Dragon Ball Z. The B-list series (“over 100 anime SKUs”) would appear in about half of their 1,000+ stores and the C-listers would only show up in their top 200 stores nationwide as part of “large scale anime assortments”. So something like Baccano! may fall into the B range while Save Me! Lollipop and Indian Summer would likely fall under the C category. A reminder: these categorizations are based on expected marketability and not directly reflective of the quality of the series themselves.

I perused the list of stores ICv2 posted (ANN’s copy has store numbers) that will have 50% off clearance sales March 1st-21st and found two that I sometimes frequent – one in Vacaville and the other in Natomas – are on it so I’ll try to stop by both those in early March to see what’s available (and snag any good stuff) as well as do before and after shots of their respective sections. The ones in Citrus Heights and Arden Fair (Sacramento) weren’t listed so I’m assuming both will continue to carry A’s & some B’s.

There was no indication of a reduction in their online offerings but there may be a decline in how many copies they order as an entire retailer. This move will result in fewer total sales of anime in their B&M stores and pushing more people toward other online-only outfits but it may negligible for the company since the stores that are contracting their shelf space weren’t making an impact anyway. I hope many of those vacated spaces aren’t replaced by plastic instruments…

So just to recap: only the best-selling stores will carry the widest breadth of anime, the middle will carry a more moderate amount, and the least will have significantly pared-down sections – and there will be clearance sales next month.