Tsutaya is the largest rental DVD, CD, Game and book store in Japan. With over 1,000 stores and 20 million customers, they have established themselves as leaders in their field. Recently, Tsutaya, Culture Convenience Club (CCC), have been opening new stores in niche areas which occupy about 10% of the size of traditional stores. Whilst being small in size they are still able to stock thousands of titles and locate themselves nearer to their customers work place or communing station.
I met with the staff from Tsutaya’s Ebisu office the other day and was discussing with them ways to make their stores more friendly and enjoyable for the large amount of foreigners who visit them daily, particularly in the Ropppongi and Ebisu stores.
Tsutaya is currently looking for ways they can improve the service at some key locations for their foreign as well as Japanese customers. In particular they are hoping to hear from foreigners who use their stores as to ways service and products can be changed to meet new market demands.
If you are a regular or maybe just occasional user of Tsutaya, it would be great to hear some ideas. I suggested to the staff that they make it easier to search in English and other languages for movies and that they establish some form of online Tsutaya community for foreigners using their stores.
I thought it would also be interesting to automatically tweet out your rented movie title when they swiped your card at the register (if you have opted in of course). I am not sure you will see that in operation soon, but in a few years who knows. I came across this site, blippy.com, recently and was surprised how open people were to share information. Maybe I could auto-tweet my conbini purchases as well!
You can follow Tsutaya on Twitter (in Japanese) if you want to learn more about in store promotions and latest releases.
Don’t forget to let me know in the comments what things you want changed/ improved. Tsutaya is ready to listen to your requests.
Tsutaya Rental, Japan shopping http://bit.ly/dsJ2QG How do they compare to Kinokuniya, in size and products? Just signed up for a blippy acct. invited you to join, ok? That would be neat for you to auto tweet your conbini purchases, that way we would know what you bought.
Speaking of conbinis, will you be doing a u-stream of conbinis,? It would be neat to see live inside a conbini, and hear reactions of those in side. Also will you be doing another conbini box run? Also can’t wait for your next contest coming up. My curriosity has been piqued.
Have a great weekend,
your freind and #1 follower. 🙂
Not sure the Japanese conbini’s are quite ready to stream your purchases. Maybe I should talk to Family Mart about doing it 🙂 Strictly speaking, filming inside the stores is not allowed so it would be difficult to do a ustream conbini monday. If I find a friendly store that will allow it then it will be on 😉 May have another conbini box coming up. Just working on a mini online Rilakkuma store at the moment. sneak preview http://rilakkumastore.com (this is not released yet and is still only 1 day old, but you can take a look around)
Good evening. Do they do movie downloads a-la netflix? Does anybody in Japan? That I would pay for happily. It seems the Japanese internets are a bit backwards and lacking in innovation when it comes to revenue from purely online services. A pity since everybody has 100Mb connections. I hope I am wrong?
Tsutaya have an online movie system where you can watch a number of movies on demand. It is quite good, but the software to search and find movies is lacking. The quality of the picture, billing procedure is very good though.
I just got hit with a 2700 Yen fine for returning my DVDs 3 days late. A fine if fine but 2700 is way too much and turned me off renting out another DVD. Tell them to lower fees!!!
Other than that, English information would be great.
That doesn’t sound too good. 🙂
Im looking for the raid redemption is there a blu ray copy now?