Disney
For 3 generations, Disney has been molding the lives of people all around the world, giving us animations that imprint itself in the hearts of kids and grownups alike.
With a market cap of $238.9 billion, Walt Disney—both the individual and the business—is among the most prosperous and influential entertainment companies in the world.
The company was only able to transform from a moderately successful animation studio to a complete entertainment experience with theme parks, merchandise, cruise ships, and more by continuously innovating and pushing the boundaries of both animation and business.
Like many other entrepreneurs before and after him, Walt Disney failed with many companies until he stumbled upon The Walt Disney Studio in 1923. In its early years, the Walt Disney Studio too wasn't any more successful than its earlier incarnations, but it was still operating, and flourished on the creation of a particular mouse. The creation of Mickey Mouse marks the beginning of Disney as we know it today.
To work on this new character, Walt put together a new team of animators. The third movie, "Steamboat Willie," was a huge success and was revolutionary in the way it synchronized visual and sound elements.
As the business developed cutting-edge animation techniques, being on the cutting edge of technology became standard operating procedure. Disney produced the first animated feature-length film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," over the ensuing decades, including those during the Great Depression. He also produced the first colour cartoons.
The Mickey Mouse Club was established by Disney in 1929 as a means of diversifying its assets. In the 1940s and 1950s, Disney also began working on the creation of music, television programmes, and films set during World War II.
And then Walt Disney struck with his magnum opus. Disneyland debuted in 1955 and quickly gained popularity. Walt Disney Productions acquired Disneyland over the course of the following five years by purchasing Walt's private business. In the same five years, Walt Disney Productions' gross income increased from $6 million in 1950 to $70 million, a $27 million increase.
When Michael Eisner took over as Disney's CEO in 1984, he continued to push for the company to diversify into more assets. Under Eisner's leadership, Disney expanded beyond theme parks and the entertainment sector and gathered new assets, including resorts, an NHL team, and the Disney cruise lines. He concentrated on international expansion with theme parks when the US market was almost fully saturated.
What was the outcome for Disney? When Eisner took over as Disney's CEO, the company's revenues increased from $1.6 billion to $3.49 billion in just five years. As the company started to see a much larger percentage of its revenue coming from sources like merchandising, hotels, and its international holdings, diversifying Disney's assets played a significant role in that growth.
Controversies have plagued Disney since its earliest days. Walt Disney was known to be an autocratic leader, who worked his employees down to the bone. These poor working conditions are still prevalent today. 2,000 employees at Disneyland staged a strike over their low pay, which averaged $13 per hour. Some of the strikers claimed they had been evicted from their homes or apartments. Workers broke the law for working hours three times over in a Disney product factory in China in 2010, and one of the workers also committed suicide.
Disney is also known to have issues of racism, the biggest one being the highly controversial “Song of the South”, that *pushed*(get a better word) racial connotations. The modern Disney product is even criticized for not showing enough LGBTQ+ representation.
Disney does indeed face difficulties. A downturn in the economy might lead some visitors to spend less on vacations, which would be bad for the theme parks. But Disney's long-term prospects remain very promising.
Disney officially became the world's largest media powerhouse on March 20, 2019, when it paid $71.3 billion for all of 21st Century Fox's media assets, making it the world's largest media conglomerate.
It has been able to do this so because of its smart business decisions and always being ready to adapt to the changing times. If they had not diversified their business at the right time, Disney would not be the media powerhouse it is today. Also the story of Walt's life and the founding of his company serves as a reminder that once you dream it, you must constantly re-dream and re-imagine it in order to succeed. A Disney Imagineer once said, "If you can dream it, you can do it."