Navarre shuts down BCI Elipse
Corporation looks to reduce costs due to recession
By Susanne Ault -- Video Business, 12/17/2008
DEC. 17 | Navarre Corp. is shutting down the primary licensing operations of its in-house label BCI Eclipse in order to reduce costs in the current recession.
As part of this decision, Navarre will be reducing its workforce and writing down assets. Going forward, BCI’s exclusively distributed disc business will be folded into the corporation’s distribution unit. Its BCI brand is not expected to be stamped on future releases. Among former BCI-managed titles now distributed by Navarre Distribution Services is the ongoing Ultimate Fighter mixed martial arts releases.
Retro TV titles, featuring the licensed He-Man and She-Ra series, have been among the label’s more popular titles.
Current BCI president Bob Freese will be in charge of the company restructuring. Its expected that about 10 employees will be losing their jobs with the label's closure. Navarre did not specify layoffs and did not further comment about executive departures.
Navarre CEO Cary Deacon said that BCI needed adjusting because it has been an unprofitable business for the last two years.
The company did not quantify the number of BCI-related layoffs. But Navarre expects that its fiscal 2009 third-quarter results for the period ending Dec. 31 will include a significant charge due in part to severance costs.
Navarre hopes to complete the restructuring, which is part of the company’s general strategy to lower costs, by the end of January 2009.
“To deal with the effect of the recession, we are moving quickly to decrease expenses in all areas of our business,” said Deacon. “Rapidly changing conditions in the licensing and budget DVD markets during this holiday sales season have prompted us to make more fundamental changes. We continue to be very excited about the DVD content that will now be exclusively sold and marketed through Navarre Distribution Services. These changes will allow us to focus our efforts on growing the sales of the DVD content that is most appealing to our retail customers and consumers.”
