With regard to some areas having multiple stores and others none, I disagree about the "easier to manage" aspect. First of all, that's what regional managers do. I have never known of a chain system where the stores themselves weren't responsible for their own management at the store level. Secondly, it makes no sense at all from a profit sense. Multiple stores pull traffic from each other if they are serving the same area. Those with no stores are not likely to drive 3+ hours just to go to a
Disney store (most people didn't do that even when the Stores were in their first youth and were still considered "destination boutiques"). I have no reason to travel to northern Indiana. I don't need to go to Chicago so, in these days of high gas prices, I'll shop online which means the kind of impulse buying that Disney has received from me in the past will be non-existent. It makes even less sense to keep the two stores in northern Indiana (which realistically can be served by the Chicago region) and will certainly pull traffic from each other and take all three out of the major city in the state. Sorry, but when the decision to keep some stores and not others was made, did anyone have the sense to use push pins in a map of the U.S. to see what the outcome actually resembled?
