Discovery Process
The owner of the Discovery Channel, the cable TV station known for its “Explore Your World” motto, will be searching for a successful format in the highly competitive retailing wilds of California as it rolls out a new chain of stores.
Bethesda, Md.-based Discovery Communications launched its retail venture this month when it converted a Nature Company shop in San Diego into a Discovery Channel store.
Discovery Communications acquired Nature Company in 1996. It plans to convert the entire operation--107 mall-based stores--into Discovery Channel shops by 2000. It will convert two of the 25 California stores--one at the Century City Shopping Center in Los Angeles and another in Walnut Creek--later this month, and by the end of the year plans to switch over three more, as well as about 14 stores in other states.
This initial phase is crucial, because Discovery will decide its merchandise mix and store layout based on customer response in 1998. The company is experimenting with eight store layouts and will choose two or three of those formats for the chain, said Linda Mariano, the Berkeley-based store development chief for Discovery.
The new stores will offer videos, books, CD-ROMs and other products based on Discovery programming, which covers subjects such as paleontology, space exploration, nature and adventure. Stores will also stock products unrelated to programs--apparel, artifacts and educational kits among them.
The stores will continue to sell some Nature Company merchandise such as toys, music and decorative crystals.
“California is a great place to try new concepts--restaurants, theme parks or new stores--because Californians are pretty receptive to new ideas,” Mariano said.
California is also a retailing crucible, however--a hot but highly competitive testing ground with many entertainment-themed stores. The Disney and Warner Bros. store concepts were born in California, and both chains have a substantial presence in the state. Walt Disney last year began merchandising sports television programming when it opened the first ESPN store in Glendale.
While the ranks of California-based chains that trade on movie studio or TV fame have grown, so has the number of failed ventures. A California chain that offered items based on Hanna-Barbera cartoons failed earlier this decade. A Sesame Street chain operated by a Bay Area licensee of the public television program closed its stores in 1996.
The biggest competitive challenge for Discovery may be Store of Knowledge, a Cerritos-based company that creates partnership stores with public broadcasting stations nationwide. The company has 12 stores in California--half of them in the Southland, operating under the name KCET Store of Knowledge--and 54 stores nationwide. The company will open another 16 stores nationwide by November.
Like the Discovery stores, Store of Knowledge sells products with ties to programming, including science and children’s shows.
“Store of Knowledge will be a tough competitor because it has attractive merchandise and engaging service . . . employees who demonstrate products,” said Richard Giss, a Los Angeles-based partner in the retail services division of the Deloitte & Touche accounting firm.
Discovery executives are undaunted. They say they are encouraged by the sales results at their Washington flagship store, which opened in March.
“We might as well find out if we can make it in California’s competitive arena before taking it to other areas,” said Discovery’s Mariano. “We can always make adjustments before we expand more broadly.”
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George White can be reached via e-mail at george.white@latimes.com.
