Comics / Comics News

Cut Throat Marketing in Comic Production App World

By Hervé St-Louis
July 13, 2015 - 00:01

Made with Manga Studio by Dwayne Biddix

One of the most popular comic creation app, from Japanese shop Celsys currently has a fire sale on its popular Clip Studio Paint program. But why?  

Many comic cartoonist use digital software to create comics. It used to be a side endeavour from a few enterprising geeks. But soon, the discovery that there was more to digital practices stepped in. While most digital artists rely on old industry products such as Corel PhotoPaint, Corel Painter, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash and of course Adobe Photoshop, many are using apps specifically designed for comic creators. Clip Studio Paint is better known by North Americans as the old stalwart Manga Studio. What’s happening here?

California-based Smith Micro sells Japan’s Clip Studio Paint outside of Japan under the Manga Studio label. It also resells Anime Studio, another Celsys program better known in the animation world as Retas Pro. This is where things become complicated. It appears that Smith Micro has the license for Manga Studio outside of Japan. It’s not clear, if there is a non-competitive agreement between the two companies. The regular price for Clip Studio Paint is significantly cheaper than Manga Studio. With the fire sale which is about to end, Clip Studio Paint is the best deal of the year.

Were the folks at Smith Micro aware that their Japanese partners would pull this stunt in the middle of Comic Con non less? Based on the Manga Studio Twitter feed, Smith Micro is matching and promoting the deal too. However, they do not advertise any deal for the more professional version of Manga Studio, unlike Celsys which has a significant discount on both versions of its programs. It’s not clear what is happening. However, I think that I understand some of the motivation behind this sales. Remember that I mentioned that this space was very competitive...

Another Japanese comic production app has been making headlines for its cut throat price. Tokyo-base MediBang Paint is a similar comic production app with cloud-collaboration and storage utilities. MediBang Paint is also free. Yeah, like totally free. The company has been very aggressive recently with promoting its products outside of Japan.  Of course Japan-based Celsys knows about them and their parts of their plans. MediBang also offers a deal that’s almost impossible to match, unless Celsys and Smith Micro can capture enough cartoonists on their own platform to make the switch to a free competitive product difficult. For cartoonists.  Cutting the cost of a product which was probably selling slowly to capture the whole market before the free alternative can entice enough users is the right strategy. The smaller margins don’t matter if it’s your entire market that is at risk.

There is no free lunch after all!

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12