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Broccoli Transfers Stores to Animate, Leaves Retail

The character goods manufacturer and retailer Broccoli announced (PDF) on Wednesday that it is leaving the retail business on June 1 in favor of its business on manufacturing goods.This will include the transfer of Broccoli's Gamers mail-order business and 16 retail store locations, branded AniBro Gamers after Animate — a larger manufacturer and retail operation — bought an 11% stake in Broccoli in 2008.

Broccoli will sell its retail operations to Animate for approximately 250 million yen (about US$3.02 million). Animate's business currently consist of 100 stores with annual sales of approximately 40 billion yen (about US$483 million). Broccoli's goal is to reach 5 billion yen (about US$60.42 million) within sales over the next five years as the results of this refocusing.

In a separate development, Animate re-opened its Fukushima store on Wednesday. The store had closed on March 11 after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake (Higashi Nihon Daishinsai) disaster. The store and the city of Fukushima itself are about 60 kilometers (about 40 miles) from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The Sendai stores of Animate and Broccoli have also reopened

Sources: Anime!Anime!, AnimateInfo