Disney Store Permanently Closed 2020

[AurumPunzel]

Yeah. And so many stores has gone bankrupt.

It's more a case of online giants dominating while those trying to catch up face either too much sacrifice or certain oblivion. However, for Disney, it's all about trying to save a little bit of money while still continuing to provide a sub-par online experience that's already led to a lot of criticism. In reality, what Disney should have done was only cut the redundant stores and invest in existing ones to bring them more up to date with ravenous online-driven competition, as well as provide a USP that will set them apart from competitors selling Disney merch. Now so many markets are going to be left without Disney Stores for miles, and for as long as this continues, they'll further alienate customers who will just take their business elsewhere or simply wait until their next Disney vacation, and Disney will only have themselves to blame.

 

[BuddyBoy600alt]

It's more a case of online giants dominating while those trying to catch up face either too much sacrifice or certain oblivion. However, for Disney, it's all about trying to save a little bit of money while still continuing to provide a sub-par online experience that's already led to a lot of criticism. In reality, what Disney should have done was only cut the redundant stores and invest in existing ones to bring them more up to date with ravenous online-driven competition, as well as provide a USP that will set them apart from competitors selling Disney merch. Now so many markets are going to be left without Disney Stores for miles, and for as long as this continues, they'll further alienate customers who will just take their business elsewhere or simply wait until their next Disney vacation, and Disney will only have themselves to blame.

Yup. But the worst Disney Store closure I can think of was the World Trade Center location in Manhattan NY. Well that’s because of a disaster we will never forget. The 9/11 attack. And yes, I remember A cast member was killed when the tower collapsed. Disney World was closed for the rest of the Autumn of
2001 after the terrorist attack. I miss that location.

 

[ford91exploder]

We have a Disney outlet here in Myrtle Beach and I just checked and it's open. Just from 12 to 5 daily. Remember when Disney Stores were AMAZING? It was like a sample of all of the awesomeness that is Disney! What the heck happened? Whose big bright idea was it to turn it into the garbage that it is now? It used to have really cool lighting and looked the part of a Disney store. Now it's all kiddie junk and princess wear. I remember when they had art and all kinds of things for adults to collect as well as some kids stuff. It was an upscale store that you couldn't wait to go into. I hate that everything gets dumbed down for the masses and the almighty dollar.

I do remember when Disney stores were amazing places to visit they had things for new babies through serious collectors of Disney art, i bought a few cel’s from the Disney store near me, And as a new collector of Disney art it was reassuring that there was no question about the authenticity of the items. But it was like a weekly visit to the parks to visit the Disney store. Now its just cheap toys expensively priced cheaply made childrens clothing and princess crap.

 

[ford91exploder]

It's more a case of online giants dominating while those trying to catch up face either too much sacrifice or certain oblivion. However, for Disney, it's all about trying to save a little bit of money while still continuing to provide a sub-par online experience that's already led to a lot of criticism. In reality, what Disney should have done was only cut the redundant stores and invest in existing ones to bring them more up to date with ravenous online-driven competition, as well as provide a USP that will set them apart from competitors selling Disney merch. Now so many markets are going to be left without Disney Stores for miles, and for as long as this continues, they'll further alienate customers who will just take their business elsewhere or simply wait until their next Disney vacation, and Disney will only have themselves to blame.

Right now online sales make up only 14% of all retail sales, The real driver of the retail apocalypse is ‘Private Equity’ who bought up retail chains and is sucking the blood out of them. Sears is a prime example of this ‘Fast Eddie Lamperts’ Seritage hedge fund has sucked billions from sears.

The most common scam is the hedge fund grabs the real estate and charges huge rent to the store on land it USED to own which immediately makes store much less profitable.

Toys R US was a victim of this plus the bustout scam. The bustout scam is hedge fund borrows money against the business hedge fund keeps the cash and transfers the debt to the business. So as a business ToysRUs was actually making money but never in a million years could they pay the debt Mitt Romney’s hedge fund stuck them with.

this would be like taking out a mortgage keeping the money and transferring the debt to the house and taking your name off the mortgage.

 

[AurumPunzel]

Right now online sales make up only 14% of all retail sales, The real driver of the retail apocalypse is ‘Private Equity’ who bought up retail chains and is sucking the blood out of them. Sears is a prime example of this ‘Fast Eddie Lamperts’ Seritage hedge fund has sucked billions from sears.

The most common scam is the hedge fund grabs the real estate and charges huge rent to the store on land it USED to own which immediately makes store much less profitable.

Toys R US was a victim of this plus the bustout scam. The bustout scam is hedge fund borrows money against the business hedge fund keeps the cash and transfers the debt to the business. So as a business ToysRUs was actually making money but never in a million years could they pay the debt Mitt Romney’s hedge fund stuck them with.

this would be like taking out a mortgage keeping the money and transferring the debt to the house and taking your name off the mortgage.

In Disney's case, it's more failure to invest in their existing stores and strongarming landlords to staying, since they tend to give up on their stores the minute the landlords jack up rates, not to mention landlords engaging in rates gouging. The Walt Disney Company aren't going to go bankrupt anytime soon, so why give up on major markets and alienate guests with a subpar online experience when they actually need to better the synergy between online and physical, and rejuvenate their ageing estate? I know so many of my generation and the generation before me are going to feel attached to the ageing P&Gs (and will be sad when they all shut down), but it's also often a sign of underinvestment. In the UK, the same problem plagued British Home Stores (BHS) when it was under Sir Phillip Green's ownership. Allegedly, SPG starved BHS of much-needed funding to properly invest in their stores and ended up falling behind on the market while propping up Topshop and the others in his group (since sold to two online-only giants who have pillaged the brands purely to prop up their faceless businesses), then as they were trying to bounce back, he left the BHS ship to sink and sold it for just £1 (around $1.30) to a businessman who went bankrupt twice, and failed to turn around the business, leading to its collapse and subsequent closure in 2016, leaving thousands out of work. Many of the stores still had fascias dating back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when BHS had the branding with a ribbon 'h' in it and was part of a retail trinity that consisted of homewares retailer Habitat and maternity/childrenswear retailer Mothercare, before they each parted ways. Such stores with old fascias were becoming run down, and even the last surviving P&G Disney Stores weren't going to live longer, as much as they managed to stand the test of time. But it's The Walt Disney Company who are using the pandemic as a cop-out, and with their online experience still in dire need of addressing, who's going to want to put up with shopDisney's frustrating experience while their nearest store is closing, and being left without one for miles?

 

[ToddlerMom311]

We just spent around two hours experiencing our local Disney store one last time. It was over an hour wait to get in and then another 45 minute wait to checkout, but it was worth it. Now we will have to drive an hour or more for our little piece of magic.

 

[asgaga]

We just spent around two hours experiencing our local Disney store one last time. It was over an hour wait to get in and then another 45 minute wait to checkout, but it was worth it. Now we will have to drive an hour or more for our little piece of magic.View attachment 562397

were they having any discounts?

 

[ToddlerMom311]

were they having any discounts?

Yes! 25% off plus each adult was given a $10 off coupon.

I also learned that Disney is donating all the character decor to local Children's hospitals. Pretty cool. The cast members were as peppy as always, which is just amazing given they are clearly going to be out of a job within the next week. So sad to see these stores close!

 

[ford91exploder]

In Disney's case, it's more failure to invest in their existing stores and strongarming landlords to staying, since they tend to give up on their stores the minute the landlords jack up rates, not to mention landlords engaging in rates gouging. The Walt Disney Company aren't going to go bankrupt anytime soon, so why give up on major markets and alienate guests with a subpar online experience when they actually need to better the synergy between online and physical, and rejuvenate their ageing estate? I know so many of my generation and the generation before me are going to feel attached to the ageing P&Gs (and will be sad when they all shut down), but it's also often a sign of underinvestment. In the UK, the same problem plagued British Home Stores (BHS) when it was under Sir Phillip Green's ownership. Allegedly, SPG starved BHS of much-needed funding to properly invest in their stores and ended up falling behind on the market while propping up Topshop and the others in his group (since sold to two online-only giants who have pillaged the brands purely to prop up their faceless businesses), then as they were trying to bounce back, he left the BHS ship to sink and sold it for just £1 (around $1.30) to a businessman who went bankrupt twice, and failed to turn around the business, leading to its collapse and subsequent closure in 2016, leaving thousands out of work. Many of the stores still had fascias dating back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when BHS had the branding with a ribbon 'h' in it and was part of a retail trinity that consisted of homewares retailer Habitat and maternity/childrenswear retailer Mothercare, before they each parted ways. Such stores with old fascias were becoming run down, and even the last surviving P&G Disney Stores weren't going to live longer, as much as they managed to stand the test of time. But it's The Walt Disney Company who are using the pandemic as a cop-out, and with their online experience still in dire need of addressing, who's going to want to put up with shopDisney's frustrating experience while their nearest store is closing, and being left without one for miles?

this will be spun to wall st as ‘being willing to make tough decisions’ in reality its just another method to artificially inflate DIS stock price. Because Disney is unwilling to actually INVEST in its businesses any longer.

even Amazon yes that Amazon is building physical stores because the retail experience is important

what e-commerce has done in reality is allow the growth of small hyper specialized stores which previously would only been successful in very large cities now they have a global reach,

Im talking about stores that say only sell guitar amplifier repair parts but it has every part for every Fender amp ever made and another one which has parts for every Marshall, Or the one i just bought a new receiver module for my 15 year old ceiling fan. All they sell is ceiling fan parts from the smallest fastener to motors and lamps

 

[AurumPunzel]

this will be spun to wall st as ‘being willing to make tough decisions’ in reality its just another method to artificially inflate DIS stock price. Because Disney is unwilling to actually INVEST in its businesses any longer.

even Amazon yes that Amazon is building physical stores because the retail experience is important

what e-commerce has done in reality is allow the growth of small hyper specialized stores which previously would only been successful in very large cities now they have a global reach,

Im talking about stores that say only sell guitar amplifier repair parts but it has every part for every Fender amp ever made and another one which has parts for every Marshall, Or the one i just bought a new receiver module for my 15 year old ceiling fan. All they sell is ceiling fan parts from the smallest fastener to motors and lamps

Exactly. Disney can afford to invest in their stores, so they should be investing in them rather than letting them die, and incorporating what made Amazon great. In fact, they could use Disney+ subscriptions to create a Prime-like service on shopDisney where local fulfilment centres and even Disney Stores can enable a near-instantaneous delivery service. So the closures really don't make any sense, particularly if Disney wants to go down that route. Else they'll never be able to beat Amazon on Disney merch.

 

[ford91exploder]

Exactly. Disney can afford to invest in their stores, so they should be investing in them rather than letting them die, and incorporating what made Amazon great. In fact, they could use Disney+ subscriptions to create a Prime-like service on shopDisney where local fulfilment centres and even Disney Stores can enable a near-instantaneous delivery service. So the closures really don't make any sense, particularly if Disney wants to go down that route. Else they'll never be able to beat Amazon on Disney merch.

Precisely it was the Finance guys who closed the catalog division at sears. Sears could have been Amazon had they had the foresight to convert catalog page to web page they had the fulfillment logistics down and catalog and retail were already omnichannel.

in a prior life I helped a catalog company put their catalog online this was before secure payments on the web. Created a rudimentary shopping cart and the customer called in their payment. The short version is most of their competitors are gone and they are still thriving, But there the product people are still in charge.

 

[AurumPunzel]

Precisely it was the Finance guys who closed the catalog division at sears. Sears could have been Amazon had they had the foresight to convert catalog page to web page they had the fulfillment logistics down and catalog and retail were already omnichannel.

in a prior life I helped a catalog company put their catalog online this was before secure payments on the web. Created a rudimentary shopping cart and the customer called in their payment. The short version is most of their competitors are gone and they are still thriving, But there the product people are still in charge.

Speaking of catalogue companies, in the UK, our equivalent of Sears' historical catalogue service, Argos, managed to survive and adapt to the current conditions, having forged a partnership with eBay and various online retailers to offer a click-and-collect service in existing Argos stores and the new stores-within-stores inside corporate parent Sainsbury’s supermarkets, while also adapting their catalogue for the web age and resisted being taken over by vulture capitalists, which was helped by a decade of ownership within British American Tobacco Industries and later GUS, who also owned the credit ratings agency Experian. Sears could have easily been like Argos had it not been for what happened to the catalogue side.

 

[Lewisc]

Right now online sales make up only 14% of all retail sales, The real driver of the retail apocalypse is ‘Private Equity’ who bought up retail chains and is sucking the blood out of them. Sears is a prime example of this ‘Fast Eddie Lamperts’ Seritage hedge fund has sucked billions from sears.

The most common scam is the hedge fund grabs the real estate and charges huge rent to the store on land it USED to own which immediately makes store much less profitable.

Toys R US was a victim of this plus the bustout scam. The bustout scam is hedge fund borrows money against the business hedge fund keeps the cash and transfers the debt to the business. So as a business ToysRUs was actually making money but never in a million years could they pay the debt Mitt Romney’s hedge fund stuck them with.

this would be like taking out a mortgage keeping the money and transferring the debt to the house and taking your name off the mortgage.

Exactly Near the end Toys R Us didn't even have the money to repair holes in the roof. Some stores actually had buckets to collect rain water coming through holes in the roof.

That said retail seems to be migrating from anchor mall stores to stand alone target, COSTCO, WalMart..

 

[ford91exploder]

Exactly Near the end Toys R Us didn't even have the money to repair holes in the roof. Some stores actually had buckets to collect rain water coming through holes in the roof.

That said retail seems to be migrating from anchor mall stores to stand alone target, COSTCO, WalMart..

The reason Toys RUs could not find the money to fix the roof was that Bain capital routinely swept cash from Toys RUs operations into their accounts,

Its the bloody hedge funds which are at the root of the ‘Retail Apocalypse’ in America.

Toys R Us margin was growing at a 5.6 percent rate at the time of the bankruptcy but there was no way it could pay off the loan used to buy it and the hundreds of milions in ‘consulting fees’ Mitt Romney’s Bain capital stuck them with. Personally I think the bankruptcy court should have rejected the petition on the grounds that as the parent company sucked out all the resources from the now bankrupt subsidiary the parent was responsible and capable of recapitalization of the bankrupt subsidiary rather than dump huge liabilities onto the US taxpayers.

Yet in 2019 i was in Singapore and went to one of the big malls for dinner. And there it was A toys R us store just like i remember it as a child jam packed with kids and their parents. So there was nothing wrong with the concept, the US version was killed by the wall st cancer which is far deadlier than the cancer in biological organisms.

 

[AurumPunzel]

Exactly Near the end Toys R Us didn't even have the money to repair holes in the roof. Some stores actually had buckets to collect rain water coming through holes in the roof.

Not to mention that they had an ageing estate that wasn't fit for an internet-centric experiential future. Of all the TRUs I've been to in the UK and the US, the ones that were brand new or built since after the vulture capitalists took over had a more welcoming atmosphere than the older stores, and especially had potential to be futureproofed. The older stores had that entrance that made it feel more like you're entering some kind of secure warehouse than a toy store, and while it may have been appropriate back in the 1990s, it's certainly not appropriate now. In fact, one of my local ones (prior it it moving to a new unit before the collapse) hardly saw a refurbishment since it was first built back in the late 1980s, and apart from losing its xylophone/rainbow façade in the 2000s, it was exactly the same store as I remembered it from childhood, so it's unsurprising that TRU was going to meet its eventual demise with the amount of underinvestment that was borne from the leveraged buyout debt. It's pretty much survival of the fittest, and the pandemic is already accelerating the paradigm shift much sooner than previously predicted pre-pandemic.

 

[ford91exploder]

Not to mention that they had an ageing estate that wasn't fit for an internet-centric experiential future. Of all the TRUs I've been to in the UK and the US, the ones that were brand new or built since after the vulture capitalists took over had a more welcoming atmosphere than the older stores, and especially had potential to be futureproofed. The older stores had that entrance that made it feel more like you're entering some kind of secure warehouse than a toy store, and while it may have been appropriate back in the 1990s, it's certainly not appropriate now. In fact, one of my local ones (prior it it moving to a new unit before the collapse) hardly saw a refurbishment since it was first built back in the late 1980s, and apart from losing its xylophone/rainbow façade in the 2000s, it was exactly the same store as I remembered it from childhood, so it's unsurprising that TRU was going to meet its eventual demise with the amount of underinvestment that was borne from the leveraged buyout debt. It's pretty much survival of the fittest, and the pandemic is already accelerating the paradigm shift much sooner than pr eviously predicted pre-pandemic.

hmm we see the same behavior at WDW aging infrastructure a tiny portion of cash reinvested in the business relative to the overall revenue from the business. But Wall St is richly rewarded with stock buybacks and underinvestment in the business itself.

 

[mrsap]

As Disney Stores Close, Toys R Us Doors Will Reopen

 

[Microcell]

Toys R Us liquidated. There is no Toys RUs. Walmart will likely see the Disney Store business, or Amazon will.

 

[AurumPunzel]

Toys R Us liquidated. There is no Toys RUs. Walmart will likely see the Disney Store business, or Amazon will.

Actually, TRU was saved from liquidation, and now a huge backer has acquired a controlling stake in the company. The new owners have announced a re-expansion strategy in the markets they've lost, though it'll come in various forms, ranging from flagships to smaller stores and stores-within-stores. But it's no replacement for a Disney Store, because the one thing the Disney Stores excel at is collectibles, and given a recent push to diversify their product range, Disney should push for a better synergy while learning from Amazon.

hmm we see the same behavior at WDW aging infrastructure a tiny portion of cash reinvested in the business relative to the overall revenue from the business. But Wall St is richly rewarded with stock buybacks and underinvestment in the business itself.

The theme parks are, as Walt put it, never going to be complete, and as for new licks-of-paint and whatnot, that's a rolling strategy that's always going to take as long as it is necessary. The Stores are the ugly duckling in all this, since even before and after the TCP era, there were still large numbers of stores that have not seen any investment since they were first built, and while I do agree that they overexpanded as the Renaissance was losing its magic, they could have better handled the estate.

 

[DodgerGirl]

Another thing that could work miracles for Disney now that Disney Stores are closed everywhere is this idea. How about a Disney Shopping Channel? And it would be like an HSN and QVC for Disney merchandise and they would sell items such as Disney character toys clothing collectibles Disney antiques and more and believe me this Disney Shopping Channel would work miracles for people who don't have Disney Stores anymore or don't want to pay expensive money for theme park merchandise and if it was streamed on Disney+ or on cable it would be a success. But I feel that Disney will in time revive Disney Stores and turn them into a Big Lots type store or become like DD's Discounts selling Disney merchandise at cheap prices. But I think the mergings with JCPenney and Target caused the death of Disney Stores because even though there was one in every mall why bother having a Disney Store section in JCPenney