Thursday, June 09, 2005

Aiming for the Niche

via CNET News.com

Some of Netflix's competitors don't have a chance of displacing the pioneer giant. They appear to be content just to have the crumbs from the table. They succeed by focusing on subculture films and building an online community.

AnimeNation.com, a community Web site and online and offline store that specializes in Japanese animation. Like Netflix, their year-old RentAnime.com subsidiary is offering DVD rentals by mail for a monthly fee. But there's a big difference: Every single movie in their catalog is anime or anime-related.

Greencine is a DVD rental service focusing on a number of niche content areas--not the "National Treasure" crowd, its employees say--which has built up a loyal group of "tens of thousands" of subscribers in its third year of operation.

"We see ourselves as more of a supplemental service in the DVD rental field," said Craig Phillips, one of the company's editors. "Diversification seems to be a key, as well as being creative. We're really filling in gaps that aren't catered to by Netflix or the other big services."
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