Reinvent ThyselfReinvent Thyself“Research, re-analysis of brand makes retailer more relevant to consumers, ups experiential factor.” This is the headline of an article in the April 1, 2007 edition of Marketing News describing the transformation Hastings Entertainment Incorporated is undergoing to incorporated better consumer visual appeal, improve the experiential factor of an entertainment store shopping experience and to implement a new growth strategy.
Hastings Entertainment Inc., a 153-unit chain of entertainment supercenters, likes to be everything to everybody when it comes to fun. Hastings has rooted its business model in opening store locations in markets of less than 50,000 people mostly in Western and Southern states. Over time, the cities and towns grew up around them drawing larger retailers such as Best Buy to enter into the market. Along with the Internet phenomenon that allows consumers to order an entire household of entertainment items just by clicking a few buttons all in the comfort of their home and have it show up on their doorsteps the next day the combination means serious competition and loss of market share
Hastings has roots in East Asia that has a long history of strong competition, but in the decades that followed the Internet ushered in a series of changes with the proliferation of a growing number of home theaters and the explosion of local distribution outlets. It would be a mistake to label the entire Internet industry, especially in Asia and the developed world, as “open.” It simply is not.
Hastings Entertainment Inc. is an established and growing company that can produce premium content, new releases and other entertainment to fit a global appeal and market demand. It is the leading distributor of the following products, including some of the most popular live-action films, action figures, and music videos in a variety of genres: action figures, action figure merchandise, action figures/animus, music videos, action figures/toys, and animation and animation products. Hastings is the largest film distributor in Asia, with more than 1,000 films and 8,000 live action films on its online catalog. The company is responsible for the distribution of many new and enhanced offerings, including the DVD release of their classic hits such as “Bravo: Life of A Streetcar Named Desire,” and their critically acclaimed and critically acclaimed original television dramas, and the ongoing animated comedy franchise A League of Their Own. In addition, Hastings has licensed all of its rights under the Creative Nonprofit Alliance (“CNA”), including the rights for new animation series and feature films, films, and merchandise, as well as all content licenses and licensing fees that were originally assigned to their licensing consortiums. The combined company produces a large inventory of over 400 films and more than 6,000 live action television series. The company also licenses all of its licensed rights as a streaming service, with one in nine new cable and satellite cable subscribers buying a cable and satellite subscription. The Company also owns, or is developing rights to share, most of the original content and products of its subsidiary, Hastings Entertainment, which has been licensed for 3.5 billion video viewing streams of more than 5 billion hours of recorded content. In 2013, Hastings Entertainment sold over 1.5 billion U.S. cable and satellite customers, a total comparable to the entire entertainment industry.
The most common media platform where Netflix, Hulu or Amazon currently serves live and archived Hulu or Amazon Prime subscribers in Asia is Hadoop, a popular web video player and website for the streaming of high-quality, high-definition video content, including the most popular video content from a large number