Disney Store Downsizing: 30% of US Locations Set To Close
After what has been a record breaking year of loss and closures, companies big and small all over the country are having to make decisions about what business will look like moving forward. The Walt Disney Company is no exception to this. On Wednesday [March 3rd 2021], the company announced its decision to downsize it’s chain of Disney Stores by 30%.
This announcement comes after what has been a difficult year for The Walt Disney Company as a whole, but also Disney Store locations around the country; most of which are located in shopping malls and plazas. The chain has been struggling over the last year and with the broader consumer shift to online shopping, it’s not difficult to imagine why this decision would have been made.
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Having spent some time over the past few months in shopping malls and Disney Store locations, I can’t say I’m surprised by this announcement in any way. Shopping malls, and the stores within, have been slowly fading into obscurity over the past decade on their own. The pandemic has only expedited the process. In most cases, the malls I’ve visited over the past few months have been ghost towns. Not only are patrons far and few in-between, but so too are the storefronts. It might be easy to wag our finger at the pandemic for this change, but it’s been something we’ve seen happening for years now with the closures of places like Macy’s and Sears.
Speaking about the Disney Store more specifically, though there’s no denying that we love it, we recognize that it’s a very particular market they’re targeting. Merchandise is expensive, selection is limited and the promotions available online aren’t always available in store. In places like Walt Disney World, where it’s vacationers shopping with money in their wallets they intend to spend and people rotating out regularly, this is something that places like the Disney Store can get away with. It’s not so much the case in those smaller, less frequented malls where the main source of revenue are the locals.
As has been the case with other areas of The Walt Disney Company, we anticipate that this shift will come with more attention to shopDisney. We’re hoping that this will include more merchandise available in a more timely manner on the website, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens over the course of the next year. The Walt Disney Company said that the downsizing will happen slowly over the remainder of the year.