Mexico Opens a Stand-Alone Disney Store, Latin America’s First

During the pandemic, The Walt Disney Company largely wound up international operations of Disney Store retail locations. There were 200 locations in the US and Canada going into 2020, and now there’s just 20 outlets in the United States, plus a major store in New York City. England, France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark.. the list of closures went on and on.

In 2019, Target acquired the license to the Disney Store brand, and began opening shop-in-shop sections. They’ve generally underwhelmed, essentially being a sign above aisles, without the cast, decorations, or cleanliness guests expect.

In other countries, there’s been more hope, with major department store chains in South Korea, in the Phillipines, and in the Middle East. The latest was Britain’s Westfield White City mall getting a possible year-long trial location.

In 2021, Mexico’s Liverpool chain began opening shop-in-shop locations in their department stores.

 

It seems it’s been successful for the chain: Liverpool’s owners have just opened the first standalone Disney Store in Latin America, at Centro Comercial Perisur. While it’s the largest mall in the southern end of Mexico City, a metropolis of 9.2 million people, the facility is relatively average by American big city standards. It has 230 stores, amusingly still anchored by Sears, which is operated by a different company than the single digits of American locations.

The new store is 450 square metres, or a little over 4800 square feet.

Giovanna Ajas Noble, senior marketing manager for Disney Consumer Products at The Walt Disney Company told a local media outlet, Excélsior:

Mexico will have unique pieces, like a collection of spectacular princesses that you won’t be able to find at any other retailer , neither in Mexico nor in many places around the world. We are offering very complete experiences with the entire portfolio of Disney, the Princesses, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars.

The store aims for immersive experiences. A representative of Liverpool told the same outlet that “a very clear example is Andy’s room, which is at the back of the store, where children will be able to climb into the stroller, jump, and experience what it’s really like to be in Toy Story.” One presumes “stroller” is a mistranslation, but your author doesn’t know Spanish.

Not seen in the store tour videos below, the fitting rooms are themed to the different Disney princesses.

While the decoration seems a step away from truly immersive, it’s fresh and importantly seems maintainable in an active retail environment.

This sort of standalone store would be a welcome revival in the United States or Canada. Given that in all the other countries where standalones have launched, they’ve been created by the same firms that own the store-in-store format, it would be up to Target to make the leap. Given the pain that the American department store chain is facing from President Donald Trump’s tariffs, that doesn’t seem likely in the near future.

In Canada, one of the few department store chains just ended operations, 355-year-old Hudson’s Bay. It doesn’t fit the cautious expansion of Simons, and while Canadian Toys’R’Us owner Putman Investments was making big swings for a few years, they’ve recently quietly closed locations and reduced the number of in-store events. Canadian Tire owns a number of store chains, including Party City, but with its acquisition of the Hudson’s Bay brand, it’s likely to have other focuses for the near future.

At least things are going well elsewhere. A second location of Disney Store will open in The Philippines on September 6.

 

Here’s a tour of the store, auto-dubbed into English by YouTube:

A longer video showing the products in detail, also auto-dubbed: