Manga Retailer Out

A small-town friend of mine had noticed that his Suncoast store had cleared out all of their manga. (I mention the “small town” because that was one of his few outlets for browsing.) Now, ICV2 is reporting that they are “exiting the category” and returning all of the books due to their parent company’s bankruptcy.

I stopped into my local branch yesterday, and when I asked, the clerk, without prompting, told me something similar, only she also said that the chain was looking for another distributor and would continue to carry the product in future. That matches how ICV2 concludes their article:

A Suncoast store manager confirmed that he was shipping back all of his manga inventory, but he also said that managers were told in a conference call that the move might not be permanent if future supply could be obtained.

I suspect it’s unlikely that another distributor would want to get involved with a company in bankruptcy that’s previously bounced checks, but I hope they do — the store was convenient for browsing for me as well.