Beez Interview

Written by Kevin Leathers on 18 Sep 2009

Beez Entertainment has a long history of bringing top notch anime titles to the UK, including classics such as Cowboy Bebop, Planetes and of course a selection of Gundam series including the lastest Gundam 00. So, now the dust has settled from Ayacon, Andrew Partridge of Beez Entertainment has agreed to sit down with us at UKA and talk about the first half of 2009 and what the company’s plans are for the future.

Hi Andrew and thank you for taking the time to talk with us. Let’s get right into it. Beez seemed to go quiet towards the end of 2008 and the start of 2009. Bandai Namco was going through a restructuring period at the time, was Beez feeling this as well?

Yes, it was unavoidable sadly – not much more to say than that!  Nothing apocalyptic and life goes on though so not much to comment on there.

How successful was the release of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya for Beez in Europe?

We only licensed it for the UK so I can only comment on it there – but it’s done relatively well in the UK.  I’ve been re-examining the sales figures though and overall it went rather well.  However the problem with the release was it was done right on the cusp of the whole Pinnacle problems that came up so sales are not as good as they should have been.   That said by the time we transferred stock to LDMS a good deal of Haruhi stock was gone – so take that as you will!

It was mentioned at the London Expo back in May that Beez was hooking up with Manga Entertainment to help with Digital Distribution. Has Beez seen any major success with this format?

Certainly by working with the Starz group for digital distribution there is a larger range of online sources to legally acquire content.  However the trade-off is that the marketing for said distribution technically does not fall down to either Manga or Beez easily barring mentions on Twitter etc – which makes things more of a challenge!  Certainly from a distribution standpoint though Gurren Lagann is easily accessible across a wide range of sources that it otherwise wouldn’t have thanks to working with them.

One of Beez’s bigger titles for the summer, Gurren Lagann, saw release via both traditional retail as well as iTunes and streaming for free for a period on Manga’s website. Has this different approach to delivery of anime titles proved successful for Beez?

Effectively it’s the same answer to this as above, Gurren Lagann certainly has had a wider amount of exposure to different distribution methods in the UK.  Whether it be because of a wider availability or the coverage it has received both online and in print though is hard to tell.

Beez is quite well known for being knee-deep within the UK communities via forums, Twitter and the Beez blog. Do you find these are good methods to hear what the fans have to say?

Absolutely – we’re all about hearing from UK fans and listening to what they want.  Moreso than any other company out there, which has its pros and cons. It requires a lot of time but it means that we not only get to hear from the fans who can make it to events like London Expo but everywhere in the UK.  The result is we genuinely listen to what fans ask for – like with Code Geass when its pricing caused uproar I compiled that and ensured the price points were reduced, so now you can get them on Play.com for £29.99 per half-season.  I guess the underlying point is that we’re not only knee-deep in the fan community but we also take action based on it.