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The last Suncoast store that I know of is closing down. There may be another handful lurking around in the nation, but when this one closes for good, the chain will be functionally dead to me. While I will look back fondly at the early years, I won't mourn this loss. It had its day, and served its purpose.
There used to be many Suncoasts. If there was a mall of any reasonable size, there was a good chance it had a Suncoast. I remember when they were opening new ones regularly. Speaking as someone who once had to travel significant distances for anime, you would not believe how happy I was to find out one opened up in a much closer mall (15 miles instead of 75+). Then they kept expanding. I lost count of how many were in the vicinity.
For the time, they had a healthy selection of anime. Without going to conventions or specialty anime stores, their selection couldn't be beat. That was because back in the 1990s, VHS tapes took up a lot of shelf space. At home, in the store, and in the warehouse. The whole "sub vs dub" argument also meant that retailers had to carry two different versions of the same title. That meant very few retailers had the resources to carry a large selection (at least what was then considered a large selection), and fewer yet were willing to take the risk.
Then DVD happened, and the anime floodgates opened. The "sub vs dub" war ended, full stop. Selection increased by orders of magnitude, the physical volume for a given number of titles decreased, and suddenly Suncoast had a thing called "competition". More places started carrying anime, and more of it as well. BestBuy in particular went big, and used their anime selection almost as a loss-leader to get customers into their stores, hoping they'd by the big-screen TVs and fancy sound systems.
Yet, Suncoast continued to charge full MSRP. When there were more stores carrying anime, and at lower prices, and what wasn't in the stores was available online, there wasn't much point to going to Suncoast anymore. In the past the past decade, I might have gone there about once a year, and often left empty-handed. I could count on one hand how many people I know personally who have been to their stores at all in the past few years.
There wasn't much point for the parent company to keep the brand around either. The FYE stores did everything a Suncoast did, but there was nothing that Suncoast did that FYE couldn't do. And so, over the years, the Suncoasts were closing, one after another. Eventually any remaining holdouts will also close and will join the likes of Borders Books in retail oblivion.
So, the last one I know of, in White Marsh, is selling at 30-50% off. Which means their prices are almost down to where everyone else is selling at.
There used to be many Suncoasts. If there was a mall of any reasonable size, there was a good chance it had a Suncoast. I remember when they were opening new ones regularly. Speaking as someone who once had to travel significant distances for anime, you would not believe how happy I was to find out one opened up in a much closer mall (15 miles instead of 75+). Then they kept expanding. I lost count of how many were in the vicinity.
For the time, they had a healthy selection of anime. Without going to conventions or specialty anime stores, their selection couldn't be beat. That was because back in the 1990s, VHS tapes took up a lot of shelf space. At home, in the store, and in the warehouse. The whole "sub vs dub" argument also meant that retailers had to carry two different versions of the same title. That meant very few retailers had the resources to carry a large selection (at least what was then considered a large selection), and fewer yet were willing to take the risk.
Then DVD happened, and the anime floodgates opened. The "sub vs dub" war ended, full stop. Selection increased by orders of magnitude, the physical volume for a given number of titles decreased, and suddenly Suncoast had a thing called "competition". More places started carrying anime, and more of it as well. BestBuy in particular went big, and used their anime selection almost as a loss-leader to get customers into their stores, hoping they'd by the big-screen TVs and fancy sound systems.
Yet, Suncoast continued to charge full MSRP. When there were more stores carrying anime, and at lower prices, and what wasn't in the stores was available online, there wasn't much point to going to Suncoast anymore. In the past the past decade, I might have gone there about once a year, and often left empty-handed. I could count on one hand how many people I know personally who have been to their stores at all in the past few years.
There wasn't much point for the parent company to keep the brand around either. The FYE stores did everything a Suncoast did, but there was nothing that Suncoast did that FYE couldn't do. And so, over the years, the Suncoasts were closing, one after another. Eventually any remaining holdouts will also close and will join the likes of Borders Books in retail oblivion.
So, the last one I know of, in White Marsh, is selling at 30-50% off. Which means their prices are almost down to where everyone else is selling at.
