Disney plan to sell stores, Ducks presses forward (http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2004/03/12/rtr1297185.html) - Reuters, 3/12/04

QuikQuote: Walt Disney Co. is plodding ahead with plans to sell two money-losing units -- its Disney Stores and its Anaheim Mighty Ducks hockey team -- despite the distractions of an unwanted takeover bid and a revolt by unhappy shareholders.
The two divisions on the block have different problems, but they both share the ignominious distinction of weighing on Disney's earnings. The stores lose as much as $50 million a year, according to analyst estimates, while the Ducks lose about $20 million.

Did The Disney Store do well once upon a time? I suspect they did. There are so many synergy (stop cringing!) opportunities with the rest of the Disney assets, I don't see why it was decided that they had to produce independent revenue. Probably Eisner (I'll stick with that until proven otherwise). That's why the big sellers are all that has been offered at them for the past many years.
I remember being able to get Halloween costumes for my boys when they were younger. These days, they'd have to settle for Princesses if there weren't other stores wanting my money. (NTTAWWI.)

Build a Better Disney Store! Taking ideas, and in an un-Eisnerlike fashion, I won't shoot any down that aren't mine or aren't short-term profit-inducing.

Mine:
1. Offer a taste of the Disney magic, but not a full meal. Draw them to the parks, where the big money is. Draw them to the Cruise Line. Draw them to the store to buy the latest DVD release by selling them ahead of time and with store exclusive edition.
2. Top-line plush and clothes for all ages. All kinds, not just Princesses, Pooh, Grumpy, and Tinkerbell.
3. Change the theming every quarter to the latest Disney film classic release, or new film or new TV show or new park ride or major holiday (or make light of a minor one!)

Can't think of any more right now.

How about stop undercutting their own stores by selling similar merchandise through Wal-Mart at much lower prices?

Originally posted by Mark Goldhaber
How about stop undercutting their own stores by selling similar merchandise through Wal-Mart at much lower prices? Ding ding ding ding ding ding!

AVP

I worked at two stores -- both of which avoided the "GAP" makeover -- both of which closed in areas they were needed (mid-Missouri and north burbs of Chicago).

Disney doesn't know when to say when:
-- the movie was good? make a sequel
--the sequel was OK, make a TV show
-- the stores are good, lets open 500 more
--Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is good, lets overexpose it.

I had some of my best memories working at those stores.
Now it isn't a problem for me since I can get to the parks when needed, but my sister in Illinois doesn't have that luxury -- and neither do most people.

The stores were a "little slice of Disney" -- and instead of portion control, Disney went on a binge (sorry for thje food analogy, I just had a snack).

You'd think that Michael would have figured it out by himself by now.

Oh, did I say that out loud again? :rolleyes:

At one time the Disney Stores were a little local slice of Disney heaven. In the New Orleans area sometimes they flew in characters from WDW to pose for pictures and give autographs. They had a little bit of everything, adult clothes and collectibles (other than watches, such as the WDCC and Ron Lee sculptures, and cels and paintings). You could buy your park tickets there or arrange for an Annual Pass voucher there. You could, and still can, buy Disney Dollars there to give to a child to spend at the store or at a Disney theme park.

One of our local stores got the makeover. There was a computer terminal in there for anyone to go online and either learn more about a Disney vacation or shop online at the Disney Catalog. Mostly kids wanted to bang on the keyboard. There was another area where kids could select one of the new Disney computer games to try out. When kids wouldn't relinquish a turn for another child there'd be the crying and gnashing of teeth you'd expect. There'd be a TV monitor showing promotional Disney videos. Parents would park their kids there as a electronic sitter. In fact even before the makeover I remember local Disney Store CMs complain parents would let their children simply watch the video wall while they went off and shopped. I heard once, many years ago, of a mall employee dropping off a relative's child in the mall employee's care while she went to work, thinking the kid could be safe and happy just watching that video wall in the Disney Store while she went to work her shift elsewhere in the mall.

As long as the Disney Stores were classy and exclusive, they were great, overall.

When Disney began expanding their markets and seeing they could get their products for sale in other stores, that was the end of the Disney Stores. Also, the nature of shopping changed. People wanted bargains, deals and sales to save money. So Wal-Mart and Target began rising in popularity. You can pay full suggested retail at a Disney Store, and if you pre-register you get a frameable lithograph as well for "free". Yet you can shop closer to home, save a couple of bucks by buying the same video at Wal-Mart, and some people just aren't into lithographs, they just want the video, period. At Wal-Mart, for instance, sometimes there's the extra incentive of if you buy the video and a partner product you get $ off immediately at the check-out register. People are going to err, usually but not always, on the side of saving a few bucks and saving time. The mall is perceived as "expensive" but Wal-Mart is "cheaper". So the dollars flow to the discount retail chains of the world and less to malls. If less traffic to malls that's not good news for Disney Stores. And since you can get a basic Mickey Mouse or licensed product anything anywhere now, not just at Disney Stores, why bother going to Disney Stores? Last, Disney Stores with so much very young child merchandise (toys, pajamas, clothes, costumes, various trinkets) may be perceived only for "little kids" and unless a family has a little kid in it when they grow out of "little kid" merchandise they don't want to go back.

Disney with all their money and the ability to attract excellent managerial talent, didn't spot these trends or didn't act or act soon enough to counter them, or took their "brand" for granted thinking the world would always beat a path to their door as long as "Disney" hung outside it. A lot of "brands" that took themselves for granted had to reinvent themselves, like Coca-Cola and McDonalds, to lure their market share back to them. Disney is just now learning what McDonalds and Coke found out, and they have got to reinvest and reinvent themselves and woo the formerly dedicated core consumer back to them.

I see more of SpongeBob Squarepants in local suburban stores than I do of Mickey Mouse sometimes. Disney, get a clue!

If Disney made the Disney Stores exclusive and boutique-y again, a classy shopping experience that extended what it's like to be at a Disney theme park (remember the olden days when "Disney" and "synergy" were used in the same sentence, and they meant it and carried it out?), people would maybe come back, but I'm thinking there's too much water over the dam for that to happen any more.

Originally posted by sediment
[....] Build a Better Disney Store! Taking ideas, and in an un-Eisnerlike fashion, I won't shoot any down that aren't mine or aren't short-term profit-inducing.

Mine: [....]

2. Top-line plush and clothes for all ages. All kinds, not just Princesses, Pooh, Grumpy, and Tinkerbell.
[....]

Make whatever the product is look as closely as possible like the original animated character in the original movie. Disney was painstaking about this for years, most recently they do it for the Walt Disney Classics Collection sculptures or high-end paintings or cels. When it's a cheap little resin statue or a face on a T-shirt, or worse a face on a plush, it's noticeable "Hey, that does look a lot like Tinkerbell" or "Nah, doesn't even look close to looking like Tink, ewwwwww!" I don't mind that they do Princesses, girls like girly things, but they need to get the appearance of the faces exactly right on the merchandise.

Secondly they need to be true to the original source material. The cheapquels (videos and the merchandising based on teh cheapquel videos) are making Disney characters do things the original scriptwriters didn't have in mind. Pooh and friends were charming characters who operated out of Christopher Robin's imagination in a bygone era, period. They did not do then all they are attributed to doing today. The merchandisers are replacing perfectly good story and writer's imagination with dilution. The modern merchandise steals a child's imagination from them by extending the story too much, just as the cheapquel videos do.

Stop oversaturating the market with things. Create some classy stuff and only a little of it. Limit it. Make it exclusive, well made and very special and some rarity to it. It'll mean more to consumers and they'll return for more and like the quality of it.