12 ms·
Toys ‘R’ Us, Back from the Dead, Will Open U.S. Stores in 2019
- leowoo91 7y agoOther than the toys we grew up with, I'd imagine half of it would be something related to Raspi, Arduinos, or specialized bluetooth devices with apps.. AR/VR variety could also be fun. Edit: apparently I could have pointed drones/printers.
- tyree731 7y agoI can't read the article, but is there any reason you think that would be true?
- leowoo91 7y agoOh, I didn't mean it as news or any reference to the article. I've just wrote my expectation for it to compete for the reasons the store disappeared before (e.g. because tablets took over toys)
- TylerE 7y agoI'd expect the exact opposite - things like bikes or large swingsets that are expensive or impossible to ship via parcel carriers.
- zer0faith 7y agoI don't wanna grow up.
- VLM 7y agoGetting downvoted by kids too young to remember that gen-x era slogan from toys r us marketing materials. Which is in a way, is also a subversive commentary on the value of brands. Billions spent on advertising in the 80s is worth nothing more than a downvote on HN today, despite endless claims of the immense value of sunk cost in marketing.
- chc 7y agoPossibly also getting downvoted by people old enough to remember but who don't consider repeating an ad slogan from 25 years ago to be valuable commentary.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Retra 7y agoDo you think people should up-vote a comment simply because it repeats a slogan?
- soared 7y agoBranding requires maintenance, like anything else. Your database from 1980 doesn't work flawlessly for 40 years... neither does your branding.
- ummwhat 7y agoGen-x era? I'm a gosh darn industry murderin millennial and I remember it.
- rolltiide 7y agoI'm a Toys `R' Us corporate raider
- silversconfused 7y agoThere's a billion bucks in Toys `R' Us that I can play with!
- diminoten 7y agoIt makes sense, the brand is still worth tons of money, just needs to be managed very differently in a post-Amazon world.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> the brand is still worth tons of money What is the value in the brand? They don't manufacture anything - the product all comes from third parties and they're just a middleman dumping it on a shelf for you to come and pick up. They don't do anything else. Where's the value?
- dpeck 7y agoThey provide a curated experience in the purchasing of artifacts for the purposes of entertainment for generation alpha.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> They provide a curated experience You've got to be joking - it's was just a big cold warehouse in a cheap out-of-town location stocking whatever. It wasn't Hamleys.
- jquery 7y agoThere's no doubt that Toys 'R' Us could've been vastly improved, but it was a great idea in its time. It just got left behind as tastes and technology advanced. For many parents (such as myself) with fond memories of Toys 'R' Us, I would gladly take my child to a 2019 version of the idea.
- jmull 7y agoThe brand isn't something tangible they do. It's the cumulative effect of the marketing, public relations and other experiences people have had with it (including actual shopping). After doing it reasonably well for decades we're at the point where for millions of people, when they think to themselves "I need some toys, where should I look?", Toys R Us is one of the top answers that occurs to them. If you can follow though by delivering a decent shopping experience, that's going to lead to a lot of money.
- axaxs 7y agoGlad to see it make another go at it. With the death of Radio Shack, I'd like to see them perhaps expand into electronics, boards, drones, maker stuff, etc. I wanted to say adult toys, but that has an obvious connotation, so not sure what the proper term is.
- JDazzle 7y agoI've heard, "Toys for the Adult Collector" a bit when buying my toys :)
- autoexec 7y agoYep. It'd be odd to call many of them "adult toys" anyway because often they are really intended to sell to kids, even when these companies are aware of the adult fanbase
- skellera 7y agoElectronics hobby store? That’d be cool. It would probably only exist in high density locations and would have to have knowledgeable employees otherwise it’s not better than an online store where things could be cheaper. If you could go in and ask questions and get knowledgeable answers to technical things, it might be helpful. Like early radio shack, not like right before it died.
- kazinator 7y ago> have to have knowledgeable employees If it's a chain, it will never reliably have knowledgeable employees in all of its locations. Nobody with electronics knowledge is going to work for a dinky salary racking up capacitors on the cash register of some little store, unless they have life-long personality problems. It basically has to be a family business with a knowledgeable owner, who passed some of it on to the kids.
- jpindar 7y ago>Nobody with electronics knowledge is going to work for a dinky salary Unless they're a college student or a retiree.
- pmoriarty 7y agoWhat were the problems that sunk Toys R Us in the first place?
- neaden 7y agoA leveraged buy out and flat sales left them in debt to the vulture capitalists that bought them. It would have been doing mediocre but sustainable if that hadn't happened.
- nathancahill 7y agoInteresting discussion previously on HN: "How vulture capitalists ate Toys 'R' Us" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16904564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16904564
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- AgloeDreams 7y agoAnother notable issue in addition to the great explanation by the other comment is that they found themselves in a very bad real-estate position as well. They had large scale stores with pricy leases that didn't have a good profit to square foot ratio. Combine that with the cost of upkeep, janitorial, sufficient employee heads to run/ stock the store and you've got a recipe for failure. Their idea to open new stores in small footage locations focusing on high margin and popular products during Christmas time is great.
- Spooky23 7y agoPrivate Equity bullshit and changing market. By "changing market", I mean: - Retail is brutal business. Everyone focuses on Amazon, but on the ground, Target did a bigger number on them. Target got really good at capturing the kid product lifecycles, from baby to tween. Target does toy and gadget merchandising much better than Walmart. Amazon prices for baby stuff always suck as compared to Target. - Tablets and smartphones also really killed the toy market in general -- kids aren't playing with toys as tablets capture attention. - Toys suck. As toys consolidated into a couple of giants, the quality of everything is just garbage. I bought a board game recently where the board was so thin, it bent from humidity! There's actually a thriving resale market for 70s and 80s toys. My wife sold a Fisher-Price House and a GI Joe helicopter at a consignment sale for $75!
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/BifPA http://archive.is/BifPA
- m23khan 7y agohopefully employees who were let go can be given preference when they are hiring.
- silversconfused 7y agoYou're thinking of ex-employee's well being, I'm sure, but is retail really the best place to grind your way up the corporate ladder and make a living wage? I would hope that the old employees would have moved on to better things rather than being given back what they had as is.
- bredren 7y agoI remember walking the Nintendo video game aisle at Toys R Us as a kid, and how totally amazing it was to see all of them for sale. Iconic brand of childhood for me. Hope this works.
- jquery 7y agoSame, it was definitely a flash of brilliance to create the that aisle like they did. I spent hours and hours in that aisle.
- ganoushoreilly 7y agoRemember the paper slips you'd pull out to take to the register? I must have had a collection of dozens of those things at home.. Just in case!
- bredren 7y agoI was going to mention these slips! We only got to actually use them a very few times. It was like a winning lottery ticket! I never had a collection but I knew how they worked and got to go through the process of taking them to the counter.
- sergiotapia 7y agoGoing with the game paperslip to the seedy dark door in the back and getting my game is a nice childhood memory for me.
- hanniabu 7y agoThe Lego/Kinex isle was my personal favorite
- DevX101 7y ago> The locations will also have more experiences, like play areas This is how you compete with Amazon.
- quux 7y agoHonest question that I don't know the answer to: This is the approach Disney took with their stores, how did that work out for them?
- maneesh 7y agoAccording to this article it's going well! https://www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/2014/09/10/magical-makeover-drives-disney-store-revenue-to-760-million-in-the-uk/#6fbc4a454d1f https://www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/2014/09/10/magical-makeov...
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoIt's just a ploy to reduce inventory and fill the empty space so it doesn't look like a wasteland.
- PhasmaFelis 7y agoI mean, you have to do something besides just sell products if you're gonna compete with Amazon. That doesn't mean it's "just a ploy."
- groovybits 7y agoI don't frequent Disney stores, but the 2 or 3 I've been to did not have play areas. Is this a common thing?
- sytelus 7y agoEntertaining kids is HUGE business. People are having kids in late stage and often one or two while feeling extremely obligated to provide best of the best. Most parents are spending lot more time with kids in weekends than last generation. They constantly need new activities, camps, things to go to. I think having innovative play areas in store for small fee is brilliant idea. I have a hunch that most of the retail businesses will transition to online in next 10-20 years and all the current retail spaces, especially the malls, would be repurposed into entertainment+place to gather such as restaurants, games, private cinema booths, party places, making spaces, painting places etc. The brick-and-mortar places that stores goods for selling would be fairly odd concept in one or two generations.
- weiming 7y agoWhere do you buy well-made and most importanly safely sourced toys for your children (especially small children who may bite on them)? We are having a heck of a time trying to find stuff not made in China, primarily concerned with toxic plastic/rubber coatings and elevated amount of lead reported in some of these imports.
- noja 7y agoiirc toys aimed at young children (under 3) have to be made from food-safe plastic in Europe (because they put them in their mouths). There is a logo of some sort for it.
- colechristensen 7y agoAnd absolutely no reason to believe something purchased on Amazon didn't just slap on the logo. NYT just published an article about counterfeit books. Fake branded chargers have been an issue as well. Why not toxic toys from China?
- bradknowles 7y agoYou mean, the ones made with Melamine and given a nice white coating of lead paint?
- silversconfused 7y agoAny interest in buying toys from a home operation? I've been playing with making non-toxic housewares from fast growing alder trees. I would love to pivot into making toy cars and baby rattles for a living. :)
- ip26 7y agoThere is a market for wood toys out there. It may not be large, but it exists, and we will pay (some) extra for it.
- nlh 7y ago
- toys_r_us 7y agoI honestly don't care. Maybe I'm already dead inside, but to look at what indoor/outdoor shopping malls and strip malls are, a concrete box with trinkets inside is less compelling to me these days. Harp on about brand recognition and foot traffic if you will, but so what? It's sort of like the DMV. There's a place where civilization conducts routine tasks of a given category in a certain way, and the name doesn't matter. Call it whatever you want. I look back on memories of Toys R Us, and feel no pangs of nostalgia. With a hardened gaze of adulthood, I'd like to say that kids should be guided towards other things in life, and that Toys R Us stocked a lot of garbage on its shelves in later years. It will probably get worse with emerging technologies and trends in public sentiment. If Transformers were popular toys during the 1980's, it doesn't mean they were a great idea that needs to be carried forward into subsequent generations. If I had to take my kids into Toys R Us, or buy gifts, or do a favor and run an errand that involves getting something from such a place, a retail store front is such a joyless cookie cutter operation by now that names and brands simply don't matter. So children today, if they form an association with a trademark, what then? It's not about that at all. It doesn't really matter. Over time, what exists tomorrow will be different from today. What Toys R Us originally was became something different later on. People complain about destructive financial forces playing games toward unserendipitous ends, but in the death or Radio Shack and Toys R Us, I find that getting them back restores nothing significant. Another hole in the wall with familiar signage, and retail slaves inside parroting "do you need any help?" again and again. Big deal.
- noja 7y agoWas the old Toys ‘R’ Us freed from any liability to pensions, etc. by doing this?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jedimastert 7y agoYeah, they definitely screwed over a lot of people if this as the plan all along.
- rglover 7y agoAwesome. It was really sad to see this go having remembered all the joy and fun it brought as a kid.
- Vaslo 7y agoThis is a duplicate from the other day, not sure how the dupe process works. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20233344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20233344
- sys_64738 7y agoIs it that Toys R Us or is it another Circuit City debacle?
- enonevets 7y agoHaven’t seen anyone else comment about this but one of the reasons we stopped shopping at Toys R Us was the ridiculous pricing. Even with discounts, coupons, or sales, they were always more expensive than buying from Target, Walmart, Amazon, or just about any other stores. To the point that it wasn’t worth it because the pricing was always higher on almost every item we ever tried price checking against. If they want to survive the come back, the pricing needs to be more price competitive with other convenient solutions.
- snarf21 7y agoI think they can never win on price. Their stores create too much overhead. I read somewhere that like 80% of their sales were during the two weeks before Christmas. If I were them, I'd rent dead spaces in malls for Nov, Dec and Jan (returns, liquidation). I'd also demand that Lego or Hasbro or whomever give them several exclusive toys for the season you can only get there. Make all the money in one quarter without maintaining expensive stores the rest of the year. Anything else is folly outside of 20 stores in the 20 biggest markets.
- duderific 7y agoNot to mention the atrocious service. Locations were always understaffed, and attendants were invariably bored or irritated teenagers who could barely operate the registers.
- lern_too_spel 7y agoMost of the commenters don't seem to understand that this is a different company that bought the Toys R Us name. This new company has no responsibilities to the other company's employees, nor does it have any reason to follow the other company's business model by not having the inertia of any of its real estate, inventory, or management assets. At the same time, the new owners must understand that the value of the name they purchased has been tarnished by the past owners.
- bitxbit 7y agoI would like to see ToysRUs reinvent the retail space a bit. Something like a subscription model where you can bring kids to play with new toys and take it home. They need to make it a destination for parents because there is something about the experience of going to a toy store with your kids. Not sure why Amazon didn’t buy out some of the locations.
- dbancajas 7y agomy family and I go to B&N to play with their toys. We never buy it. Just test it. But we do eat at the mini cafe. I think there is something different in providing an experience rather than compete with amazon.
- achenatx 7y agoIf they try to be a warehouse store they will get killed by amazon (again). To compete with amazon (or walmart) they need to become a destination. Around here if you add a playground to your restaurant you will immediately get families. They should keep toys in the back and make the store one big toy playground. Playscape, track for riding bikes and electric cars, sand area, water area, walls of video games etc. Have "lands" similar to disney where those types of toys are available to play with. Have guides to help kids play with toys. Consumable toys can have a charge to use or art classes, science classes, electronics, etc. Catalogs or computer screens that let you buy the toy and someone brings it from the back. Parents will bring their kids to play and will end up buying things.
- GraffitiTim 7y agoThis seems like a good idea! Could even charge for admission.
- _ah 7y agoCharge a LOT for admission, and include the ability to play with a bunch of the best toys. Then, if you buy a new toy, ~75% of the admission price goes toward the purchase price. I bet they'd make a killing.
- Alex3917 7y agoIIRC think that is the business model of this store in NYC: https://camp.com/ https://camp.com/
- xmprt 7y agoBut Toys R Us has the name brand recognition that this doesn't. If they just reframe the idea of going there from a place to shop to a place to play (and buy your favorite toys to play back home) then they'll get back all the sales that they've lost to online shopping.
- bayareanative 7y ago
- mastrsushi 7y agoThis does not sound like an optimistic move. It's long been established that the brick and mortar concept is becoming antiquated. People love to buy as many products in one place as possible. The more people rely on retailers like Amazon and Walmart, the more our ever increasing fast paced, automated society will adjust to this new way of shopping. Do you know how many Sunday's I've wasted hopping store to store only to find out they don't even have what I was looking for? Either it was only online or it was cheaper there anyway. Dying businesses like Toys r us can't keep up with the growing demand for every specific kind of niche item. I dont believe we live in the 90s where every kid wants legos. Culture is more decentralized now, interests are diverging. Some kids want anime figures, others want some crazy my little pony costume (I dont know what kids want). I obviously dont have kids but I think there will be an increasing awareness for online shopping to buy niche toys as opposed to mass marketed barbie dolls. Maybe I come off as crazy, but this at least seems to be happening with the adult age group. Having to buy yoga stretch equipment that isn't at Dick's Sporting Goods, or parts for a 2008 Camry.