Disney to buy back Disney Store chain

I've worked for The Disney Store for about 8 years now. About 5 years ago or so (during Eisner's reign) Disney sold off the chain of stores to The Children's Place and most of the Disney Stores you see in malls now are actually owned by them.

Well, things might be changing! I just got this email from my store manager:

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Today, The Children's Place (TCP) announced it is in advanced talks with The Walt Disney Company for Disney to regain ownership of two-thirds of Disney Stores in North America. [/FONT]Disney confirmed it was talking to TCP about potentially buying back a portion of the chain.

From an email our store received today ...

In an effort to return TCP to its historic levels of productivity, our management team and advisors evaluated various strategies. Unfortunately, as we looked at the potential for this business compared to our initial plans, we realized it would take many more years to achieve the results we expected at the time the acquisition was made. We simply do not the luxury of time. As a result, we concluded the Company should exit the Disney Store Business.

We are actively pursuing alternatives for immediately exiting the business, and we expect to make an announcement very shortly.

That's actually good news for everyone!!! :sohappy:

No more Disney Dollar Store? Let it be done. Stick a fork in it. Maybe we can get back to the way it originally was, with quality, decently priced clothing and nice collectibles. Remember all the art, cells and figurines? Ahhhh, the good ol days.

Well Disney couldn't make it work and Children's Place couldn't so I can only see them being closed down. Not good for staff if they close down. I believe Children's Place never refitted all the stores? In the UK Disney is refitting the stores and the one in my City is a great improvement over the old design which was aged (It was like the old US stores).

I just read that 220 will go back to Disney and 115 will close. I hope they will refit these like the UK stores rather than the cheap boring refit they got under Children's Place.

http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/03/20/afx4800433.html

YES!!!

Best news I've heard all day!I can't wait for some actually interesting merch!


:sohappy::sohappy::sohappy:

They closed 3 stores in our district since January. We were saved but some managers moved to our store and stole our CM hours. I haven't worked a shift there since mid February.

But we were very profitable in the olden days with our Disney Gallery and Disney Store combo (double store) but there were hacked for a smaller store, and cheaper rent, when TCP took over.

Finally we will be able to sell true Disney merchandise once again. And the perks for us CM's will be returning too!

TCP got way behind on remodeling the stores, and those that they did remodel were a little less than spectacular (in my opinion). I also don't think that TCP ever quite "got it" when it came to Disney Store. I was really not a fan of the TCP upper and middle-management, when it came to communicating with the individual stores and their insane expectations.

I do hope that this goes through, and the Disney Store returns to what it started as--little theme park "outposts" with moderate, to high-end merchandise.

Buzzforprez said:

No more Disney Dollar Store? Let it be done. Stick a fork in it. Maybe we can get back to the way it originally was, with quality, decently priced clothing and nice collectibles. Remember all the art, cells and figurines? Ahhhh, the good ol days.

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There's still DisneyShopping.com. You can get dirt cheap stuff there.

uklad79 said:

Well Disney couldn't make it work and Children's Place couldn't so I can only see them being closed down. Not good for staff if they close down. I believe Children's Place never refitted all the stores? In the UK Disney is refitting the stores and the one in my City is a great improvement over the old design which was aged (It was like the old US stores).

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Are you kidding?! The "old style" stores are the best! They have all the Disney characters around the top of the store! The new designs are so generic.

Captain Hank said:

I do hope that this goes through, and the Disney Store returns to what it started as--little theme park "outposts" with moderate, to high-end merchandise.

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The problem with the stores before TCP took them over was that they were too many of them. The Disney Store, like the parks, should be a destination in itself. They were good when they started but then they popped up in just about every mall across America. That killed the excitement and they were trying desparately to "entertain" their guests with other ideas (new store concepts, different merchandise, etc.) but it crashed quickly. Now they TCP has already closed about a 3rd of the current locations in America I believe Disney can revive what was once lost. We once had 7 stores alone here in Detroit but now there are 3 plus a new outlet store just openned.

It seems people think Disney will go back to the old days of adult clothes, gallery items and high end collectors items. If you look at the sucessful European stores you will see it's blocks of brands in the stores. So expect to see a block of Princess's, Cars, Pooh, Fairys, Pirates and a wall of plush. The stores will look much better but the stock isn't in for much a change I wouldn't think.

Heres a picture of our local store which was a second new concept store done in the UK http://www.manchesterarndale.com/news-6335.htm notice the diffrence to new ones in the US.

I think that in general this is good news, but I have to admit I'm a bit concerned about a decline in product variety. There were periods last year when TDS was the only place to get Ratatouille and Enchanted merchandise, and as far as I know it's still the only place to get Oswald merchandise. I hope this change doesn't mean that from now on we'll just get offshoots of merchandise already available in the parks.

I think I'm really glad to see this!

I was a part timer at the local Disney Store when I was in college. I worked in the adult section of the store, which meant that I mainly spent my day folding, folding and refolding shirts. But it was a neat place!

Kids would come in and just be enchanted looking at Plush Mountain at the back of the store. Many a night after closing I was the one who put it all back together (and found wet, chewed on animals in the process!). When my sister was small, she would run straight to the back of the store and watch the video that was playing. It was usually a Sing-A-Long Songs kind of video, not the generic preteen mess they play now. I don't know how many times I had to go through snowglobe box after snowglobe box to find that one that didn't have an air bubble at the top. We had some kind of freaky people who were overly Disney-obsessed, but that went with the territory.

I just don't like going in now. It's so generic. My five year old son finds it, well, boring. Gone is the oversized Plush Mountain with the giant Pooh. Gone are the snowglobes, cells, video (I guess now it would be DVD) wall. Now it feels like someone thinks that if they just put a Disney something on it, it will sale in that store. Then you see it in the bargin bin in the back. Not good. Our store still looks the same, and recently, there was a "Pardon Our Dust" sign. I asked the manager at check out what was going to change. She looked at me like I was insane. Turned out, they had already finished the change. It was simply a repaint and new carpet. Our store still has the same Disney character scenes that have been there for 15 years. I was hoping for an overall update, not a store stuck in 1993.

Yes, the Disney Store was expensive, and I do like TCP coupons. And yes, I did have a man tell me that he didn't know Mickey Mouse was a crook, but he must be since he was charging so much for so little. But it was fun. I had a good time shopping there.

So, I'm hoping that new Disney ownership will breathe some life into these listless stores.

raven said:

The problem with the stores before TCP took them over was that they were too many of them. The Disney Store, like the parks, should be a destination in itself. They were good when they started but then they popped up in just about every mall across America. That killed the excitement and they were trying desparately to "entertain" their guests with other ideas (new store concepts, different merchandise, etc.) but it crashed quickly. Now they TCP has already closed about a 3rd of the current locations in America I believe Disney can revive what was once lost. We once had 7 stores alone here in Detroit but now there are 3 plus a new outlet store just openned.

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Definitely agree. during the mid to late 90s, there was an explosion of the stores and Disney waaaay outpaced their demand. What I hope is that TDS goes back to how it was before the over-expansion.

I've worked at Disney Store both under Disney and under Children's Place. While Disney sure wasn't perfect, I much preferred them to Children's Place.

This would be AWESOME!!!!!!!!

I have suggested many many many many times in here that Disney could do very well if they revamped the Disney Store Chain instead of dumping them.

I said to reduce the number of stores to about 100-150 nationally and theme each store to the local area with Disney flair.

Have the same kind of merchandise line up that they had when they first opened in the 80s.

I think they should be run now by WDPR instead of Consumer Products this way more synergy with the parks with theme park Kiosk for each store.

I think Peter Whitford ran Disney Store to the ground.I remember the ideas he had before TCP bought them with 2 different formats.
Disney Kids at Home and Disney Kids at Play that each concept would have different uniforms and yada yada yada....

Good news.:sohappy:

P.S. I do hope Disney Store is 100% ran by Disney and not some owned by Disney and some owned by CP.

This really does not surprise me.

I had a feeling that this would happen when TCP failed to live up to their contract regarding the upkeep of the stores.

I just hope that Disney puts it under the proper management.

unkadug said:

This really does not surprise me.

I had a feeling that this would happen when TCP failed to live up to their contract regarding the upkeep of the stores.

I just hope that Disney puts it under the proper management.

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OK FINE!!! If you are going to force the subject....

I will take the job if you insist!!!!

I was shocked when I got to work and found out. It's so funny because my manager kept telling us today - "It doesn't matter who owns us, we still have to show exceptional guest service." I've worked for TDS off-and-on since 2000 (I got to see the best and worst of times), and I always thought that pre-TCP optimized guest service (even when a majority of the store was plush). In the past 3-4 years, it's become more of a way to make sales rather than making a lasting impression with guests. Our regional manager comes in next Wednesday to update us personally. I hope we are one of the stores that 's gets to stay open as I wouldn't know what to w/o my daily dose of Mickey (outside this site of course). Plus, I hope Disney finds this to be an important investment once again. Fingers crossed.

I did notice the last time I was in our Disney Store a couple weeks ago that there was a nicer, new selection of adult clothing and some different artwork. Hopefully, that will continue.

I hope if/when Disney buys back the stores, they put back the little TV's that showed the Disney Park videos.
I used to just stare at those TV's, wishing I was in the parks, while my wife did all the shopping.

Well, I hope that the store by us stays, we went in there after awhile of not going, and they had no DVD's or CD's anywhere. Too much princess stuff, and not much for adults.