Bandai Namco Experience exports its Japan retail format to two new US stores

Bandai Namco Experience Inc. (BNXP), based in Tokyo, and Bandai Namco Amusement America Inc. (BNAA) said they will open two "Bandai Namco Cross Store" character-retail shops in the United States: one at Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, opening October 30, and one at Westfield Southcenter in Seattle, due in early 2027. BNXP is sharing its domestic store-operations know-how and support, while BNAA will run the stores and handle merchandise imports, according to the companies.

The Minneapolis store covers about 911 square metres and the Seattle store about 1,114 square metres, each carrying roughly a dozen official shop sections, including Gashapon capsule-toy machines, Tamagotchi merchandise, figure lines such as Ichibansho and Tamashii Nations, and a Namco amusement corner, plus, in Seattle only, a branch of The Gundam Base, the company's model-kit retail format. Both are the chain's second and third US locations, following its first American store in Brooklyn, New York.

Cross Store began in Yokohama and Hakata, Fukuoka, in July 2022 and now runs 13 locations in Japan. With the two new stores, its overseas count rises to five, three in the US and two in the UK. The companies said demand for Japanese anime and character merchandise remains strong in the US and is still growing, and that they expect the market for Japanese-style character retail there to keep expanding beyond Cross Store and other official shops.

What is being exported here is the format itself, not just the merchandise. Bandai Namco's bet is that the curated, multi-brand shop-within-a-shop model it has refined across 13 Japanese stores, rather than a single licensed outpost, is what gets American shoppers spending on official figures, candy and stationery instead of resellers and grey-market goods. Mall of America and Westfield Southcenter give it two of the busiest shopping centres in their regions to test that against.