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Google+ PageHi Moonies! We are still continuing to run our latest survey, and if you have not taken it, please do (as you will read below, now is the time to). We have learned that sales of Sailor Moon merchandise at Hot Topic have been down for some time now, and there is some worry about new stock being added. We have noticed especially with the latest run of t-shirts, that they have not followed the general trend other designs follow when they sell out. Usually within a week or two sold out sizes have been restocked. Sailor Saturn was restocked, but Sailor Neptune has not been as of this writing. And many of the other designs are now disappearing. When we were notified of this a month ago, we didn’t think much of it, since store managers we spoke to in both large and small cities all told us the same thing: That Sailor Moon merchandise could not be kept in the store, it always sold out pretty quickly. And 2 of these stores were among the biggest Hot Topic stores in the nation. A few weeks later, one of these stores had a little more stock of other Sailor Moon merchandise, but had only 6 T-shirts remaining (3 of the black shirts with the whole group, 2 raglans, and 1 purple shirt), when there were usually 3-4 times as much. They had not received any new T-shirts in a while. One of the managers had hoped to buy her Sailor Neptune T-shirt when it had shipped to the store, but it never came in and she missed out. Even we are scratching our heads wondering why the Sailor Saturn shirt never made it to store shelves, because from our survey and other comments we have heard from fans, it was one of the more popular ones. We have also learned that FYE has not ordered any new designs in some time, but that they continue to order their previous designs.
While in the past to save Sailor Moon, others have suggested “procotts” of products to boost Sailor Moon, we’re not going to Save Our Shirts that way. Instead, we would rather find out the reasons behind this and present this to those who put the merchandise in the stores. Do the fans not like what is there? Are the prices too high? Are you expecting there to be other things in the store? Is it difficult to order from Hot Topic because the shipping is too high, or do you prefer to buy your merchandise in person and the stores are simply too far away? Would you rather see the merchandise at a different store? These are all key questions we ask in the survey. We’ll give you some vague spoilers from what we have read so far. Opinions about the thickness (or rather the lacking of it) are very popular, as well as the price and smaller sizes. We’re hoping that fans that have not bought merchandise (or for whatever reason stopped), will add their voices to our survey. We still need some more, and since we have the ears of those who are involved, we hope to reach our goal as quickly as possible so we can continue to have Sailor Moon merchandise. But, those on the receiving end need to understand where us fans are coming from for future merchandise cycles. We don’t want to see the merchandise disappear from Hot Topic, but at the same time they should know where the fans are coming from and how this can be improved. A lot of the new merchandise that is out is hard to find easily anyway, and having a major store to sell the product helps improve fan access to it (and by the looks of it, the vast majority of you don’t have an FYE nearby). So if you have something to say about any of the Sailor Moon merchandise, please take our latest survey. Word of mouth also goes a long way as well – we’ve been able to get people we interact with daily to think about what’s on the shelves and add their input.
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