Jimmy Torres Valades / El Paso Newspaper

Friday 12 March 2021 | 06:00

The Walt Disney Company, the entertainment giant, has announced the closure of at least 60 stores located in various cities in the country, including one in El Paso, Texas, its executives said.

The place, located in Cielo Vista Mall, was the first to establish itself in this city. Thousands of local and northern Mexican buyers have visited it. Now only The Outlet Shoppes in El Paso will remain in the Northwest District.

“Now is the time to say goodbye,” reads a sign at the store entrance confirming that you can make purchases in the online store: official.shopdisney.com.

“I feel sad to see that the popular and well-known shops in the city are disappearing,” Evangelina Ruiz said after learning of the closure. The place is offering a 30 percent off-putting discount on its purchases, as well as a gift voucher of $ 10 for anyone who visits and buys their items in the physical store.

Although the branch will remain in town, consumers have shown grief as have the employees who will be finishing their business cycle this month.

Dozens of stores, including seven located in Texas, are scheduled to close on or before March 23 this year, according to the company.

The Walt Disney Company recently announced that it is drastically reducing the size of its North American store chain by approximately 35 percent. It will also do so in other parts of the world.

For a few years now, and even more so with the Coronavirus pandemic, shoppers have chosen to purchase their goods online, which has spurred the company to focus more on e-commerce in the near future.

Another customer said with regret: “We came here years ago to buy a lot of toys from the magical world of Disney, first for our children, then for our grandchildren and now for our grandchildren, we will have to go to the other.” While waiting in line to enter.

Like her, consumers have bought her toys, monkeys stuffed with Disney characters, creative crafts, puzzles, costumes, and even DVDs of their favorite movies to enjoy at home.

The store has been crowded since the closure was announced, but the system and capacity are controlled by the employees who maintain the security protocol to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.

Seven campuses will be closed in Texas: three in San Antonio; Two in Houston, one in Laredo, and one in El Paso.

The rest of the stores that will be closed in the country are in Arizona (3); Baltimore (2), Colorado (1), California (9), Chicago (2), Indianapolis (2), Kansas (1), Miami (2), New York (2), Oregon (1), New Jersey (1) ), Missouri (1), Pittsburgh (2) and Tennessee (1).

Stephanie Young, director of Disney, told the media that during the pandemic, the company moved online, noting that the group recently had more than 300 Disney stores with major branches around the world, including Times Square in New York.

Although Disney initially did not provide any information on how many jobs it will lose due to the lockdown, the Mickey Mouse Group has already announced that it will lay off nearly 32,000 employees in the first half of fiscal year 2021.

Disney theme parks and cruise ships in particular also suffer greatly from the epidemic. That being said, before the crisis, Disney had over 100,000 employees in this division.

Newspaper data indicates that at its peak in 1999, there were approximately 800 Disney stores around the world. After more than two decades, the chain wants to drastically reduce its presence in the traditional retail sector and focus on expanding its digital commerce platform.