Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

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mbanu
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Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

Post by mbanu »

Image
(Animerica, September 1994, courtesy of Anime Nostalgia Bomb)

According to the internet, the original owners sold it sometime in 2005 and the store changed names to "Anime Avalon". Chugged along for a few years, then closed up shop August 2008.

A 1994 description of the place, courtesy of Usenet:
After turning down a street which seemed too narrow to admit two-way traffic, we identified the place by the temporary sign which proclaimed in plain black capital letters, "PLANET ANIME". We parked and entered, but only after scrutinizing the Ranma-kun/Ranma-chan/Genma-Panda picture painted on the front door. Pausing to view the cels in the front window, RoadBustr [his friend] identified them for me. Some Rei-Rei and many others.

Going on in, we found two young Asian gentlemen running the place. To the immediate right was a rack of T-shirts, and a "Night Night Knight Sabers" pillowcase. :) I surveyed the room and its contents. The rack of VHS rental tapes was very impressive to behold. The largest I ever saw. The line of 12 Animeigo Urusei Yatsura TV volumes particularly caught my eye. "Geez, it would take a considerable amount of time to cop-I mean watch. WATCH! all those!" I thought to myself.

There were models too, and some Matchbox dolls of some of the Robotech girls (Mimnei (sp?) I'm not a Robotech fan).

As I moved to examine the rack of laser discs, the shopkeepers offered their assistance. They were very polite. We talked to them for a while. I noticed many of the discs they had were ex-rental discs bought from the other two rental places. Gametronix's missing Lodoss War discs, the two City Hunter LDs from Colonel Video. The prices were not bad either. The first volume of Lodoss War was missing. "You don't have volume 1 of Lodoss War?" inquired RoadBustr. "Oh yeah, it's over there." He pointed to a little table where it was sitting. I examined it, looked good. It was going for the same price...the urge to buy it was too overpowering for me to resist. As I bought it, he assured me that if I wasn't happy with it, it had a 30 day warranty.

While waiting for my receipt, I asked him if he was worried about the cels fading. They responded that they changed them out every couple of weeks. Besides, the sun does not shine directly in. I found out the rental charges for the VHS tapes were $3 a night, a bargain compared to the $4.95 I was used to. One day soon I shall return to this place, and rent a few.

Good luck to them, I hope they can make it!
(https://groups.google.com/forum/message ... IiRSOPpWoJ)

Anyone have any more info?
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Re: Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

Post by mbanu »

A 1999 interview with the owner, Jean Binh-Valente, courtesy of Anime News Network:
Anime News Network: Could you give us a brief history of PA?

Jean-Binh Valente: I started Planet Anime in April of 1994. I was introduced to Anime by a friend and got majorly hooked. But unfortunately there were no places to feed my need for anime... then I took a road trip to California. I went to Tokyo town and the Shrine convention. I bought a lot of anime items, and found my self in heaven. On my way back to Houston, I thought, "I sure wish there was an Anime s tore in Houston." Well to make the story short, 3 weeks later, Planet Anime was born.

ANN: What are the year 'round hot sellers?

Valente: At the beginning of the year, everything 'Evangelion' was flying out the door. Mononoke was the biggest selling LD in Planet Anime history. Dragon Ball Z and Rock Man X action figures have been selling extremely well as of late.

ANN: What do you expect to be hot this holiday season?

Valente: The hottest selling anime this Christmas, hands down, is Pokémon.

ANN: What is your reaction to TokyoPop.com?

Valente: Honestly, I have not seen too much of a stir from the fans (about Tokyopop) so I really don't have too much to say.

ANN: What can we look forward to from PA in the future?

Valente: PA's future plan is to become the first place everyone visits to fill their anime needs. We plan to offer synopsizes, articles, and reviews at PA's website. We are also offering price matching and price guarantees. We will also double our inventory to meet with our customers needs. There is also a few other things that are in the hush-hush room that we are currently working on.
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/1999-03-01)
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Re: Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

Post by SteveH »

I strongly suspect they feel victim to the exact same issues that killed so many anime stores.

1. They couldn't identify what product would be popular and in-demand fast enough to have it in stock when it would sell. I would wager they eventually got stuck with a LOT of stuff that their suppliers told them were sure-fire hot hot hot and they were not.

2. They probably fell into 'bootlegs are really legal in (x) country' thinking. It's hard enough to sell Japanese CDs at 3000 Yen (mark them $30 just for now) let alone marking them up to $45 or so. I am 100% sure they carried the SM and other bootleg Taiwan CDs, and probably the bootleg Hong Kong wall scrolls. Wouldn't shock me if they stocked knock-off Chinese and Korean toys and models. Why do I think this? Because most every American anime retailer does that at the dying years of their business.

Of course when the cons got real serious about bootlegs, that put a crimp in their business.

I do not know these to be facts, they are only informed guesses based on observation. Corrections from those on-scene welcomed :)
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Re: Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

Post by mbanu »

Image

It looks like they had a Dallas store for a bit, too. (^_^)

A bit more on the other original owner, Hiep "Hip" Huynh, courtesy of a 1994 UH newspaper article.
UH business students bet it all on Japanimation store

by Naryth Phadungchai

Contributing Writer

Many of us would like to have our own businesses, but for many reasons, we do not act on our desires. For two senior UH business students, making an idea come true is nothing new, but nonetheless challenging.

Hiep "Hip" Huynh and Jean-Binh Valente, both 23, own and operate a retail store, Planet Anime, in Rice Village, selling Japanese animation and related merchandise. They both agreed that it took real-world experience and determination, not textbook knowledge, to make their most recent venture a success.

"It was his (Valente's) idea, and I agreed to it," Huynh said. "He's bounced a lot of ideas around, but I never liked those ideas."

After a trip to California during last year's Spring Break, where both men saw a booming animation business, Valente came up with the idea of starting a similar business in Houston. Before their store opened five months ago, a handful of other places in the city sold a limited selection of animation from Japan, and none of them had the soundtrack CDs, model kits, posters or Japanese-style comic books called mangas.

Themselves fans of the medium, Huynh and Valente decided to put their enthusiasm for the hobby and for business to good use. "Jean's been tossing back and forth ideas of doing something on his own," Huynh said. "He couldn't handle that nine-to-five job, and he always wanted to be an entrepreneur." Huynh is the same way.

Each have experience when it comes to starting up and running a business. Both Huynh and Valente have been friends for the past 12 years, during which each owned a comic-book stand and operated a video-game distributorship, putting video game machines in convenience stores. They used the money earned from their previous businesses and a loan from Huynh's parents to set up their latest enterprise.

Despite their eagerness to make their business work, at first, neither Huynh's nor Valente's family shared the same feeling. "At the beginning, they weren't real supportive," Valente said of his family.

"Everybody had doubts because it's an unexplored business," he added.

He said his parents were concerned that the store would fail and that he and his partner would lose their money. "They said we shouldn't have done it," he added.

Despite Huynh's parents' doubts about the success of the business, they loaned him the money anyway.

The store, located on Times Boulevard, now seeing a steady stream of customers, is expanding its inventory and branching into mail order. "They (his parents) are OK with it now," Huynh said.

A major reason for their success, Valente said, is a crucial decision they made shortly after they opened the store.

"When we were first starting out, we went to other people (distributing for their merchandise)," he said.

"We wanted to do everything safely. We didn't want to take any risk." Valente said that not taking risk meant going through a distribution channel – in particular, dealing with distributors in the United States – to get the goods from Japan.

That experience proved difficult, but in the end helpful. "They didn't treat us fairly," he said. For example, Valente said in order for him to get the goods he wanted, he had to buy merchandise he didn't want.

Moreover, domestic distributors overcharged the store for those items, so he and Huynh decided to bypass the normal pecking order and deal directly with the distributors in Japan.

"Going to Japan was a big risk," Valente said. He admits that he didn't have any idea how the Japanese conducted business, hence his apprehension dealing with a different business culture.

He has since made two productive trips to Japan. In addition to not having to bother with U.S. distributors, the store is now one of the players in the importing of animation-related merchandise from Japan.

To make their business work, Huynh and Valente put in about 50 hours a week at the store, with Valente's younger brother helping out at times. The effort they put in means they are able to take only one class this semester. Huynh is studying marketing while Valente is studying management.

Though their college work is going slow, that seems to be fine with the two entrepreneurs. When it comes to running a single, small store, "it (school) didn't help me any," Valente said. "What I learned from opening up my businesses, from my past failures and successes," he said, helped him the most.

Such experiences include stocking up on merchandise that didn't sell. When it comes to that kind of gambling, Huynh said, it's best to listen to one's business sense, not what happens to be the trend at the moment.

Both Huynh and Valente plan to further expand their business by next year. When that happens, Huynh says, what they learned in class will become useful.
(http://archive.thedailycougar.com/vol60/94-11-02.html)
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Re: Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

Post by Drew_Sutton »

SteveH wrote:I strongly suspect they feel victim to the exact same issues that killed so many anime stores.

1. They couldn't identify what product would be popular and in-demand fast enough to have it in stock when it would sell. I would wager they eventually got stuck with a LOT of stuff that their suppliers told them were sure-fire hot hot hot and they were not.

2. They probably fell into 'bootlegs are really legal in (x) country' thinking. It's hard enough to sell Japanese CDs at 3000 Yen (mark them $30 just for now) let alone marking them up to $45 or so. I am 100% sure they carried the SM and other bootleg Taiwan CDs, and probably the bootleg Hong Kong wall scrolls. Wouldn't shock me if they stocked knock-off Chinese and Korean toys and models. Why do I think this? Because most every American anime retailer does that at the dying years of their business.

Of course when the cons got real serious about bootlegs, that put a crimp in their business.

I do not know these to be facts, they are only informed guesses based on observation. Corrections from those on-scene welcomed :)
I knew of places that did Number 2 in even the boom years, too, at least for wall scrolls, CDs, artbooks ,etc.

I am glad to see the second advertisement, I remember browsing the online catalog but I don't think I ever bought anything from them.
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Re: Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

Post by DKop »

I have many Animerica with that second advertisement in them, I just kinda laugh at it tbh on how silly it looks to put anime people on models. But hey, whatever gave them business, it worked.
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Re: Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

Post by usamimi »

DKop wrote:I have many Animerica with that second advertisement in them, I just kinda laugh at it tbh on how silly it looks to put anime people on models. But hey, whatever gave them business, it worked.

Its a parody of the Calvin Klein ad campaign that was very popular at the time. If you look up 'CK one' ads you can probably even find the stills they used for it.

I think a friend of mine actually worked at the Dallas store when they were in high school. They liked it a lot cuz they got an employee discount, of course.
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Re: Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

Post by mbanu »

Slight correction, it looks like it was 2007 that Anime Avalon shut down, sometime in mid-September rather than August, due to landlord extensions. Not sure if there was any connection to the original staff of Anime Planet by then, though.
freshkazuki wrote:Sat Sep 08, 2007 3:54 pm

Yes, sadly tonight is the last night for Anime Avalon, the only store in Houston specializing in anime and manga to be open. Everything in the store is 50% off. They still have a lot of stuff. I went there first thing this morning. Their rental DVDs are going for 5$ each with the case included. There aren't many figurines left, mostly just a couple of the higher priced ones. But they still have a lot of manga on the shelves. Off the top of my head, they had most of Berserk, Hikaru No Go, some volumes of Naruto and Bleach, Black Cat, Yu Yu, and more Shonen Jump stuff. They had a lot of other titles, but I'm just remembering the most popular. I would say they have about 10 tall bookshelves of manga left in the store, along with various bargain titles and out of print large old school manga like Guyver. They also still have some rental DVDs for 5$, about 1/4 of their original stock. They also have some new DVDs at half off. I did see many rental Inuyasha DVDs, Dragonball Z, but most of the other titles were older or just not the most popular titles. It is open till 9pm tonight, so if you are an otaku in the area, definitely get down there to see if there's anything you might want. You'll regret it if you don't! I'm gonna miss that place.

Sat Sep 08, 2007 8:46 pm

Well, some good news. I just checked the Anime Avalon website and it said that their landlord was giving them another week before they would have to close. So that means another week of 50% discounts. It does say they will be closed tomorrow but will reopen at the normal time on Monday. It also says that they will be getting in some merchandise on Monday and are currently restocking shelves with stuff they had no room for before.
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/php ... hp?t=42655)
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Re: Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

Post by mbanu »

usamimi wrote:I think a friend of mine actually worked at the Dallas store when they were in high school. They liked it a lot cuz they got an employee discount, of course.
Nice! There's hardly any info out there about the Dallas store, other than that it existed. (^_^;) According to Usenet, the Dallas branch opened on July 26, 1997: https://groups.google.com/forum/message ... wvOsJfxdUJ

Not sure when it shut down.
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Re: Planet Anime, "The Largest Anime Store in Texas" (circa 1994, that is)

Post by usamimi »

I'm assuming around the same time as the other location, or soon after, if it was their landlord giving them problems? That or when the bubble burst in the 00s wouldn't surprise me.
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