This is from the Kleckbait episode – the annual interview with RightStuf founder and owner Shawne Kleckner. The format I’m using here is a number or number range indicating about how many minutes into the episode relevant comments are made, along with a summary of what’s said. As usual, I’m not attempting to transcribe or even roughly summarize everything said – just trying to pull out data and factoids.

• 9: many shows under-merchandised, often due to right issues with Japan
• 11: Japanese companies assume international markets like their domestic market
• 12-15: Why not just import Japanese goods?
  • Japanese companies frown on US stores selling import goods (they’re gray market)
  • Shipping & profit margin and other wholesale concerns also cause issues
  • Japanese retail (at least for anime merchandise) is also generally one-time, just-in-time production model; reordering and returnability are generally out of the question, which means a would-be retailer needs to have a good handle on demand the months before the product is available.
• 16: mid-tier titles tend to be under merchandised
• 18: Japanese merchandise tends to be delayed from when the show first airs. Also, Japanese licenses get freaked out about a title having merchandise in the US but not in Japan, which means titles without significant merchandise in Japan (cited Space Dandy as an example) likely won’t much if anything in the US. I wasn’t clear if this was just a Japan-vs-US situation, or a Japan-vs-anywhere-else issue.
• 19-20: top sellers include the following (off the top of his head)
  • Attack on Titan
  • Sailor Moon
  • Haganai Next
  • Sword Art Online
  • Kill la Kill
  • Card Captor Sakura
  • Accel World
• 21-23: print on demand manga has been disappointing; there’s been pushback from Japan preventing titles from being made available. Shawne isn’t giving up though.
• 25: There’s been some growth in manga market over the last year
• 27: Manga collectors still not happy about buying middle volumes of a series electronically
• 30-32: Nozomi releases and their performance:
  • Utena has been a great success
  • Cat’s Eye has done better than expected
  • Rose of Versailles and Princess 9 also did well.
• 33: Older customers are big on buying things from late 80s early 90s because they couldn’t really buy those titles before
• 35: When it comes to new releases of older shows, there’s a lot of variability in terms of materials from Japan
  • Sometimes the show has been remastered and those improved masters are available
  • Sometimes they have to go back to film to remaster
  • Sometimes they have to press license holders because materials provided are not as good as those clearly used to produce an existing (recent) release in Japan
  • 37: a lot of 90s shows were produced to video (of the time), which limits quality of masters
• 39: Rightstuf labels Nozomi and Lucky Penny are looking at more releases in 2015 than in 2014
• 41-42: Competition for older titles is driving up license costs somewhat. A lot of older titles are being introduced to newer fans (e.g. Card Captor Sakura, a strong seller for RS)
• 49-51: Shawne would like to release Blu-Rays and keeps looking at titles to see which could support them, but there are economic and materials challenges.
• 52: Figures are generally doing very well (called out Madoka figures; I’m not sure if they’re extraordinary, or just an example that sprang to mind)
• 52-53: Preorders for Sailor Moon have been very strong. Gift-with-purchase set sold out in 3 to 4 weeks
• 56: Holiday sales differ from sales the rest of the year in that holiday sales have a higher proportion of catalog title sold to new releases.