It's been a while since I've had the time to sit down and provide some updates but we have been feverishly working to get caught up and stay caught up all while trying to keep everyone safe and sound here at RightStufAnime.

I'm not certain we can say that 2020 is safely behind us, but it is behind us and we are all praying for a safer, kinder and calmer 2021. However, the industry publishers as a whole continue to have struggles and while we are shipping everything we can get our hands on as it comes in, their struggles trickled down to our ability to get product in the quantities we requested and the time we requested. So we wanted to provide you all with some links to statements made by various publishers so that we remain transparent about the challenges we will most likely continue to have during 2021.

Our friends over at Anime News Network published an article on 03/10/21 where they spoke with leaders at Yen Press, Tokyopop and Viz Media. Click here to review this article or click on the publisher to check out their latest and greatest products on our site.

While the joint venture between Universal and Warner Bros. was announced last year, an article published on 01/15/2020 mentions the "divvy up" of the distribution and in simple terms this means warehouse moves. I have done a lot of warehouse moves in my career prior to joining RSA and I can tell you, no matter how good you are it is slow and painful, so we can almost guarantee supply issues until the divvying up is completed.

Additionally Seven Seas announced a change in November of 2020, moving their sales and distribution to Penguin Random House Publisher. Needless to say this will mean yet another warehouse move in the industry, all of which will be taking place this year.

I find it sort of interesting that they continue to say that physical good sales will continue to decline and digital will continue to grow, I'm no expert on this topic, but I wonder, with access to shows and books being moved or removed, I wonder if their statements will hold true?

Regardless, we will always do our best to bring you all the best. So let me give you some insight into things we are doing internally to try to make things a little smoother for shipping the products we have.

• We have added a second shift in the warehouse, we are actively hiring and the group is small but we hope to have them powerful very soon.

• We are adding additional pack stations and hopefully get enough people hired to run them.

• We have added additional aisles to our warehouse so we can order a bit heavier when ever possible and will cross our fingers every time we order that the publisher will be able to fulfill our orders with the quantities we order.

Covid has made hiring a bit of a challenge because of course you can't pick or pack our orders remotely. So, we continue to scout for some more amazing RSA family members and ask that everyone be a little patient with the delays as many of them are not within our control.

Well, I need to get back to our projects, lots going on! But I want to thank you for being loyal RSA customers, so I ask our fabulous Marketing and Merchandising teams to come up with a little promotion to accompany this email.

Use code SPRINGUPDATE to take 5% off your next order*

Kindest Regards,
Christine Morgan
Vice President

Wanted to share this email from RightStufAnime that I got today:



And here is the article (https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2 ... 0850710025) written by ANN discussing with CEO's of three major publishers in the U.S. about the huge rise in manga sales in 2020 occurring at the same time as printing and shipping setbacks in the publishing industry.

Now I wonder if any retailers RightStuff, Amazon, B&N, etc. will be able to even meet the demand (manga sales were up 43% in the U.S. in 2020, which would be a lot higher for the more popular series themselves) of pre-orders moving forward, much less keep a stock of newly released books in stock after they're released.