2001 Merchandise & Miscellaneous News Archives

February 8, 2001: Warner Bros. Store Closures

With the AOL Time Warner merger officially announced, Warner Bros. has scaled back its retail business and closed eight of its U.S. studio stores at the end of January.

Analysts expect the studio to close up to one-third of its 140 specialty retail stores in total, and sources confirm that at least 50% of the company's underperforming retail operations have been targeted for potential shuttering. Warner Bros. also has temporarily shut down its online store operations as it evaluates what to do with that side of the business.

A Warner Bros. spokeswoman said the company plans to relocate its Fifth Avenue store, which opened to much fanfare in 1993, to the new America Online-Time Warner headquarters building that is under construction at Columbus Square. The building is slated for completion in 2003. She said Time Warner is continuing to review its retail operations as part of a strategy that was announced in 1999 but that it doesn't know yet how many more stores it will close.

The Warner Bros. stores slated for shuttering were in the Beverly Center in Los Angeles, the Gardens in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., the Stanford Center in Palo Alto, Calif., the Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Va., the Willow Grove Mall in Willow Grove, Pa., the Burlington Mall in Burlington, Mass., and Bridgewater Mall in Bridgewater, N.J.

For now, however, the Warner Bros. online store remains closed. The company ceased taking orders on December 21, 2000 after heavy holiday volume and is in the middle of evaluating what it will do with the operation, a spokeswoman said."

Source: Hollywood Reporter.
Author: Laura Randall.



2001 Merchandise & Miscellaneous News

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