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Discovery Rechannels Assets
Before the acceptance of online commerce, Discovery used stores like the one at Montgomery Mall to sell its merchandise.
(By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)
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In addition to DVDs of Discovery programming, the learning-themed stores sell toys, such as a radio-controlled hammerhead shark suitable for alarming pool-goers, telescopes and exercise equipment. Such items will continue to be available at Discovery's online store.
In the first quarter of this year, Discovery's revenue increased 10 percent, to $728 million, compared with the same period of 2006. The company's first-quarter operating cash flow was up 24 percent, to $180 million, compared with 2006.
Discovery has retail stores in several area locations, including the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Harborplace in Baltimore and Union Station in Washington. The company had a sizable store at Verizon Center when it opened in 1997 as MCI Center, but the store performed poorly, owing to low pedestrian traffic in the area, and closed in 2001, just before the Chinatown development started to heat up.
Zaslav said he has visited a number of the Discovery stores since he has been on the job and called the employees "a great group of people."
"They are enormously talented and those that want to stay in the brick-and-mortar space for their careers, I'm convinced their experience at Discovery will serve them well," he said.
Traffic was brisk at the Discovery story in Union Station yesterday afternoon, where staffers declined to speak to the media. Customers Jack and Bonnie Myers, visiting from New York, said they were surprised and a little saddened by the chain's closing, saying Discovery is a rare store that sells videos and toys designed to make kids smarter.
Told that the store's items would still be for sale online, both said they were unlikely to shop that way.
"We're out in the country," Bonnie Myers said. "We have dial-up. It's too slow."
Jack Myers said the stores provide something online shopping cannot.
"You lose something when you can't touch a product," he said.
