NAVARRE SHUTS DOWN BCI ECLIPSE
Corporation looks to reduce costs due to recession

By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 12/17/2008

DEC. 17 | Navarre Corp. is shutting down the primary licensing operations of its in-house label BCI Eclipse in order to reduce costs in the current recession.

As part of this decision, Navarre will be reducing its workforce and writing down assets. Going forward, BCI's exclusively distributed disc business will be folded into the corporation's distribution unit. Its BCI brand is not expected to be stamped on future releases. Among former BCI-managed titles now distributed by Navarre Distribution Services is the ongoing Ultimate Fighter mixed martial arts releases.

Retro TV titles, featuring the licensed He-Man and She-Ra series, have been among the label's more popular titles.

Current BCI president Bob Freese will be in charge of the company restructuring. Its expected that about 10 employees will be losing their jobs with the label's closure. Navarre did not specify layoffs and did not further comment about executive departures.

Navarre CEO Cary Deacon said that BCI needed adjusting because it has been an unprofitable business for the last two years.

The company did not quantify the number of BCI-related layoffs. But Navarre expects that its fiscal 2009 third-quarter results for the period ending Dec. 31 will include a significant charge due in part to severance costs.

Navarre hopes to complete the restructuring, which is part of the company's general strategy to lower costs, by the end of January 2009.

"To deal with the effect of the recession, we are moving quickly to decrease expenses in all areas of our business," said Deacon. "Rapidly changing conditions in the licensing and budget DVD markets during this holiday sales season have prompted us to make more fundamental changes. We continue to be very excited about the DVD content that will now be exclusively sold and marketed through Navarre Distribution Services. These changes will allow us to focus our efforts on growing the sales of the DVD content that is most appealing to our retail customers and consumers."

man, that sucks. BCI/Eclipse always put out the type of obscure, off-the-radar typa stuff where you'd be like, "man, i wish i could get that on dvd." and than boom! this label drops it. guess not anymore....

Not only that, their sets were all reasonably priced. They might not have had super high quality remastering, but getting Ultraman sets for around $25 can't be beat. Think they did the Red Baron set, as well (it was about $35).

BCI released ULTRAMAN, IRON KING and SUPER ROBOT: RED BARON (and lots of other cool Japanese stuff). If you haven't gotten them yet, you'd better do so... It's too bad that the future for the upcoming releases of FIGHT! DRAGON and SILVER MASK is unclear.

That really is too bad. I feel sorry for the folks losing their jobs, but I also am sorry we may not be getting any more Toku action.

Yes, it sucks. But, don't worry, JN Productions/Generation Kikaida is still out there...

so August are you saying

SUPER ROBOT: RED BARON

is still on track to be released?

- Chad Hensley

Red Baron has been out for couple of months

Chadley, Red Baron hath been released already. Did you maybe mean Silver Kamen?

http://www.amazon.com/Super-Robot-Red-B ... 675&sr=8-1

RED BARON was released in March '09. Everything else that was scheduled for release from BCI, including KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (starring Shatner) and SILVER MASK, are now off. For the time being, who knows how they are going to do with these holdings.

So, if you haven't picked up IRON KING or RED BARON, get to it!

Wow, I am a bit confused now. The BCI team members I spoke with at SDCC 08 led me to believe Red Baron was not out yet...

Glad it is!

Chad, yeah, I announced the release last Spring (and I saw it for sale at SDCC):
http://augustragone.blogspot.com/2008/0 ... o-dvd.html

Amazon.com listing:
http://www.amazon.com/Super-Robot-Red-B ... B0010T3UO8

Deep Discount listing:
http://www.deepdiscount.com/viewproduct ... d=32333366

So August, any word on Fight! Dragon or Silver Mask?

Dude....it's been a day....he said yesterday "It's too bad that the future for the upcoming releases of FIGHT! DRAGON and SILVER MASK is unclear."

Totally sucks. Just when I was going to get my hands on silver kamen. I thought the sets they put out were pretty damn good esp. considering the price.

Go 'dude... its been a day....' your fucking self.

Thank you though, I didn't see that part.