Otaku Horde Dooms Evangelion Conbini
- Categories: Anime, News
- Date: Apr 25, 2010 19:45 JST
- Tags: Anime Goods, Asuka Langley, Cancellations, Evangelion, Kanagawa, Marketing, Rei Ayanami, Shopping
The recently opened Evangelion themed Lawson store has been shut after mere days thanks to a vast horde of otaku pilgruns overwhelming the store.
The event was supposed to last a month but was cancelled after mere days, a victim of its own popularity.
Insufficient parking, excessive noise, too many visitors and the likelihood of even more visitors come Golden Week were given as reasons for the cancellation, with Lawson particularly concerned at the disruption to local residents caused by the huge influx of otaku pilgrims. Lawson is too polite to mention it, but there is some suspicion visitors were behaving in an inconsiderate fashion.
Lawson probably have themselves to blame for this – their theming was rather good, and the store they chose for the event turned out to be a tiny rural store in the middle of nowhere and barely accessible – hardly the appropriate venue a promotion involving a huge franchise like Evangelion.
There is no word from Lawson as to whether they will restart the event later under better conditions – the level of interest rather suggests a permanent store could be maintained.
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for the glory of the HORDE!
who saw this coming raise ur hand.....imagine how much stuff they would have sold in those few days!
Raises both hands and feet.
Obvious success was obvious.
To CLOSE a store due to a TOO GREAT popularity... wow.
They'll most probably restart the event in a better location soon enough. Businessmen never give up on profit-making ideas.
7000¥ like 70 dollars?
Wonder how otakus can afford stuff at those places. I took a look at an eva tumbler of which they sold for around 7000¥. So damn expensive.
They absolutely knew this would happen. Their plan was to sell as many of those tacky(expensive?) products as possible. Normal customers wouldn't walk around wearing Eva Unit 01 headphones or anything else in there.
I'm sure they made plenty of money, but this must have been extremely annoying for regular store patrons.
nah, they needed to close down just to restock the store; it's a cool.
It was closed because the pilgruns bought out the whole store.
I'd be frigging be tehe xD
Otaku Casts Overrun
zerg rush?
Except now with K-ON crap as well.
Did some one say: obvious?
Successful advertisement is successful.
But really I totally didn't see that coming. Guess that's why I don't work with publicity.
Just shoot them into space. They can meet Angels there.
Use Bombs Wisely, Gradius!
^ Noblesse oblige, may you continue to serve as our messiah
^ Juiz. Help me to set up a giant container disguised as a huge Evangelion store so that I can trap all the NEETs and otakus in there. Then have them transported to the harbor and shipped off to Dubai.
rorix not like women or people aren't creepy when they open a store with clothes that has lower prices because of opening.We are all on the same boat only with different interests and needs.
So otaku are like a herd,women are like a herd lol.The pact is dangerous when there are to many people pushing over lol.
Just drop a bomb when is full of them there!
Otaku creepiness will never cease to amaze me.
I'm not the least bit surprised this happened.
Lol at the car parked on the walkway in front of the store.
They were not lying about insufficient parking.
*sigh* so obvious. Its like opening a K-ON! store, you wanna take a guess what will happen next...
aw I was looking forward to going 8(
*raises hand*
I was rather surprised this didn't happen on day one.
I truly saw this coming. Devoted otakus will continue their pilgrimage here for generations to come.
Obviously Lawsons is too nice to the community. If this was an American owned company, they would simply hired more staff and wouldn't care for the community, especially for a month-long campaign. I do find it funny it was staged in middle-of-nowhere location though and not some more urban area where such issues wouldn't exist; an obvious underestimate of the otaku culture.
Had they placed the store in a more urban location, that would've taken care of the parking and noise issues instantly.
1, Big cities, espeically ones like Tokyo, always have some level of noise going on. People start to not care and even begin to ignore it after a while.
2, Why park? If it were in a city (once again, one like Tokyo), then there'd be no need to park. The pilgrims could simply take the nearest train, then walk the rest of the way. And we all know they'd do it, no matter how far they had to walk.
==/ No surprise at all this remind me of the convenient store in TokyoBigSight in Comike days.
lols i think its not poor planning .. i think everything WAS planned ...
the month long event was a hoax to get ppl dissapointed ,
so when they open a new store somehwere bigger it'll get swamped by "dissapointed" otakus who could not make it
i say i wanna a share in that lols .. there's big bucks to be made from otaku's xD
No Surprise here. I'm shocked they chose to have it at that type of location. It should have been a minor city location at the least.
I wish someone could send me some Eva stuff from Japan. =P
So when your store starts making insane money that's the time you decide to close it down? Business genius!
hehe we all saw it coming, after they announced the store XD
Wait, wait, they're closing down because they're getting TOO much business?? Why didn't they open a store with larger parking, in a more populated place rather than in some corner store in the middle of nowhere??
I mean if they seen this coming.. and since they have the rights if I was them I'd be like "Okay gentlemen, it's time for us to go national with this business model for evangelion themed stores, we're going to be trillioniares by the time this is over..!" Trillionaires in the yen sense of course..
I wonder how such an inaccessible store could ever organize an event like that. I mean, if it's so easy to have such good business, why don't all the stores do it? They must've had some capital before, and that comes with customers.
Customers don't go to places where it's inaccessible, get the point?
Basically --
location, location, location.
If I were the store manager, I'd keep that place open 24/7. Just imagine the $$$ you can get(especially under this economy).
Isn't a combini opened 24/7 anyway ?
I don't think they'd be able to. At some point, you're going to run out of stuff to sell. It's not like they had an unlimited supply of that stuff anyway. The company only planned to do it for a month -- meaning they only made enough merchandise for a month.
If they hadn't closed the store due to the amount of people coming, they would've closed it due to a lack of supplies. Either way, it would've closed eventually.
Bet they will open Eva store again
Lawson's got the marketing right, but they've got the location and timing absolutely wrong.
As Arte has pointed out, there's only one of that themed store, and they had to put it in the middle of nowhere. It wouldn't have been a problem if it were a permanent fixture, but the fact that it's only for a limited period means there'll be tonnes of desperate and passionate otaku flocking in before it ends.
u noe what will be a good plan? re-open eva theme store in a better location and also beside the eva store have another k-on themed store.
Eva and K-ON stores next to each other - The otaku groups would kill each other
These Evangelion "otaku" have some pretty good fashion sense.
when i was there,it was so crowded....and Reis'plugsuit got sold out and so i bought figures instead
photos, or it didn't happen :)
wow... i'm amazed. i think it's a hell of a gimmick.
I'd trample some Japanese to get into that store.
Damn those people are like a force of nature over there...
Nice promotion trick...