Disney Wants Its Stores Back

A few years ago there was a change in Disney Stores all over the country. It probably wasn’t noticeable to the common observer, but the change was there nonetheless. Disney stopped managing its own stores, licensing out the stores to Children’s Place. The most obvious difference is the stores become clothing heavy (Children’s Place is more focused on apparel) and a lot of the Disney collectables and chochkies went away. That was under the regime of Michael Eisner, however, and now Bob Iger wants a crack at getting those stores back.

The Hollywood Reporter announced that Disney has been in negotiations with Children’s Place to take back control of some of the stores it licensed to them three years ago. That’s right: “some” of the stores. Disney has its eye on 200-225 of the existing 335 Disney Stores, with Children’s Place having to take on the cost for closing the remaining 100 or so.

This doesn’t just have to do with the change of management at the top of Disney’s executive chain. In the past three years Disney has had an explosion of exploitable franchises to work with, giving them a boom of merchandise for the store chain. Hannah Montana and High School Musical alone could make the company a fortune, as evidenced by the amount of merchandise in the Disney parks. Add on top of that the reworked relationship with Pixar and success of Pirates of the Caribbean and the company has a lot of possibilities. Now it just needs the outlets back to work with.

Disney hopes to have control of The Disney Stores back in time for the Christmas holiday, so the company is working to make this deal happen quickly. Considering the stores haven’t been any more profitable for Children’s Place than they were for Disney (with a reported $107 million loss last year), I can’t imagine much will keep an agreement from happening.