Odex – Art of doing business is lost?

For those not in the know, recently Odex a Singapore company that license and release anime has obtained a court order in Singapore to get ISP to release data on their subscribers and issue letters to people whom they claimed to be downloading anime illegally in Singapore via fansubs all over the world. (more forums on Odex can be found here and there is even a summarized version of what Odex did here) This earned the company scores of criticism from both anime fans and non-anime fans. To add oil to the fire, one of its directors was even found to have passed sarcastic and insensitive remarks in national paper as well….. excellent PR skill.

Well I am not here to argue about the legality of downloading or the benefits and harmful effects of fan sub. What I wanted to look at is how the company runs it business.

I just boggles the mind. a simple search over the net will summarize the reasons for the company’s low sales. Reasons like the sub titles are not accurate and did not pay attention to the details, the video quality is poor, VCD in stead of DVD, poor artwork on the CD package, no marketing or promotion, low visibility in the local market (that is until their legal letters were being sent out)…. and many more.

Before everyone gets too emotional, lets take a step back and see everything from a helicopter view in terms of running the business. Letters were sent to people who downloaded anime to watch , i.e. their potential customers. Not too sure about you guys out there .. but I tot a rational business man would, instead of harming their own potential customer base, try to win as many over to their side instead (with improvement to thier product, marketing and promotion and increasing of awareness)….IMO… The way they carried out their enforcement only made matter worse. They not only kill off their own existing customer base but their potential customer base. It is like giving a loaded gun to their competitors, placing it on your own head and and asking your competitor to pull the trigger.

I would have tot the first thing a rational and reasonable business man would try to find out what is wrong with his product. (Marketing 101 right?) If my product is already one of the cheapest in the market, I am almost the monopoly player and people are not still not buying … this only shows that there is something terribly wrong with the product and it needs more improvement. Suing people would not help as it would not solve the problem. (This is simple economics. People compare and would always go for the cheaper alternative given the quality of the goods are about the same.) And there will always be people whom you can never satisfy. These are the people who will download no matter what and it is impossible to catch them all. Generally companies are willing to tolerate these people if they do not form the majority.

So I am really wondering what would be the fate of Odex…. if they do not do something to improve their publicity well …. I wonder how much longer they can last.