ANN has confirmed reporting from Screen Rant that Crunchyroll has recently laid off a number of employees, after a restructuring and redistribution of roles based on location. The company’s restructuring is also due to a shift in its e-commerce strategy, and not due to cost-cutting measures.
Screen Rant’s reporting on March 10 stated the layoffs were “roughly 1/8 to 1/7 the size” of the amount of staff Crunchyroll laid off last August. A former senior product designer at Crunchyroll stated on LinkedIn on March 9 that she was part of what she called “mass layoffs” at Crunchyroll. Other former Crunchyroll employees who posted on LinkedIn about being laid off this week were from HR or e-commerce departments. ANN could not corroborate the size of the layoffs reported by Screen Rant or the former senior product designer.
Commercial real estate marketplace LoopNet is currently listing for sale an office and warehouse in Grimes, Iowa that had Right Stuf as a tenant, but currently has Crunchyroll as a tenant. The listing states Crunchyroll has a lease through 2030. Crunchyroll purchased anime retailer Right Stuf in August 2022. ANN could not confirm if Crunchyroll’s shift in its e-commerce strategy is related to this sales listing.
In January, after Crunchyroll had started delisting a “significant portion” of Discotek’s back catalog including titles that were not out of print, video post-production company MediaOCD announced it will begin carrying distributor Discotek Media’s entire back catalog (that the company specifies “to the extent that it’s available”) through its newly launched Discotek Deep Dives project.
Other reporting from ANN last month found that Crunchyroll has been systematically delisting SKUs from independent publishers, including both anime and manga, as the company is looking to limit its SKU count for products with low inventory turns.
Crunchyroll’s Layoffs Last August
Last August, entertainment websites such as Variety reported that Crunchyroll had laid off a number of employees, according to a memo that Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini sent out to staff. The memo stated some employees would expand their scope, and others would get new role assignments. The changes affected employees in the U.S. and in other countries.
At the time, Purini stated Crunchyroll plans to build engineering hubs in the U.S., Mexico, and India “to spark innovation and fuel transformation.”
Crunchyroll is an independently operated joint venture between U.S.-based Sony Pictures Entertainment and Japan’s Aniplex. Sony Pictures Entertainment and Aniplex’s Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) parent are both in turn subsidiaries of Tokyo-based Sony Group.
Sony’s Funimation Global Group completed its acquisition of Crunchyroll from AT&T on August 9, 2021, after the company first announced the acquisition in December 2020. The purchase price was US$1.175 billion, and the proceeds were paid in cash at closing. Funimation’s home video releases are now listed under Crunchyroll.
Sources: Email correspondence, LinkedIn, Screen Rant (J.R. Waugh)
