Variety is reporting that Peter Whitford, the president of the Disney Stores Division, resigned on the same day that Disney went public with an effort to sell its worldwide 548-store chain.  The Mouse House has already sold off its Japanese stores and, according to Variety, is anxious to do the same with outlets in U.S. and Europe, keeping only its six stores in Hong Kong, where a new Disney theme park is scheduled to open in 2006.  Disney has already tried reducing and reconfiguring its stores (see 'Disney Rethinks Retail'), but in spite of trimming the number of its North American outlets from 522 to 387 and attempting to modernize its product line, retail has remained an unprofitable sector for the company.

Disney's decision to sell brings down the curtain on an era of 'themed retailing.'  A decade ago some pop culture retailers were afraid that a chain of Marvel stores would join the Disney and Warner retail operations and take a significant chunk of pop culture sales.  Fortunately for its sake, Marvel ran out of money before it could compound its string of bad decisions during the 1990s by investing in a retail chain.  The once mighty Warner Bros. Studio Store chain gave up the ghost in 2001 (see 'That's All Folks'), and now Disney's exit brings the whole phenomenon to an end.  While the 'themed stores' had the advantage of certain proprietary merchandise, their focus was too narrow and though successful at first, they could not adapt to the fast changing trends in the pop culture landscape.  Their affiliations, which were strong points at the beginning, became corporate millstones that gradually drowned the elephantine chains in a sea of red ink.  Now Disney is concentrating on a 'direct to retail' strategy, which involves merchandising agreements with mass merchants, the Wal-Marts and Targets, that prime examples of the deep discounters that have thrived during our recent recessionary times.