Bye Bye Anime, love BB

According to ICv2,”Best Buy is about to dramatically change its anime strategy, eliminating most anime from nearly half its stores, according to an industry source. The change will focus Best Buy’s anime efforts on those stores that have historically done best with the category, and nearly eliminate anime in stores that have produced a disproportionate share of anime returns. The new strategy will kick off March 1st, when 50% off anime closeout sales will begin in over 460 stores nationwide. After the sales end on March 21st, those stores will offer only around 20 core anime SKUs.”

For a full list of stores, please click here.

One should keep in mind they are only removing anime from the stores that it performs poorly for. It should in theory have little impact to the masses. Take it as a good moment to get your anime at a great price while the sale is on. But as for John Sirabella, CEO of Media Blasters, stated on Mania.com, “Unfortunately the ramifications of this will be bad, real bad. You are looking at a market that already lost most of the major players. After now the loss of Best Buy, Transworld will probably be the largest company that will carry anime across the board. While there is always places on-line to buy it, this was never a major part of sales. Anime is basically going back in time slowly so it will eventually end up back into how the marketplace was in the early 90s.“