If 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.
The few times I’ve been in TRU in the last ~5 years, half the families in there were seemingly doing exactly this anyway. Kids running around with toy swords, skateboarding, and generally wreaking playful havoc, as they’re wont to do.
Charge 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.
Six Flags' and Disney gets away with charging absurd ticket prices since parents will pony up because their kids will manipulate them into it. Especially if "all the other kids" are going or there is a school field trip. Most parents these days are too busy and too soft to disappoint.
And then there's concessions (IKEA and Costco do it).
Shopping as entertainment adventure rather than pushing a shopping cart down aisles of loud marketing boxes floor-to-ceiling.
And, they need to work with apps and games publishers to have the next Cabbage Patch or Transformers not just in iPhone-like limited supply, but as a whole launch event.
But 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.
Glad 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.
Or Fry's, which definitely does carry a lot of that sort of stuff (and also price-matches online prices, including Amazon's; I saved quite a bit on my Threadripper build thanks to that).
Yep. Micro Center in Marietta (and Fry's in Duluth) saved my bacon a few times when I was running a small scale hardware startup. They have parts that you just can't get anywhere else without waiting a few days for shipping.
Really? Mouser is my go-to (DigiKey used to be, but they're feeling a little more sparse than Mouser nowadays).
Arrow is quite amazing if they have it. And for "real" hardware, McMaster-Carr can often deliver on the weekend within hours if you're willing to pay for it.
I don't RS could make a business of selling drones -- they'd become a showroom for online drone makers who would sell much cheaper than Radio Shack could afford to sell.
I'm convinced that cell phones are the only thing that's kept most Radio Shack stores afloat since there's decent margin in cell phone accessories and plans.
> I'm convinced that cell phones are the only thing that's kept most Radio Shack stores afloat since there's decent margin in cell phone accessories and plans.
They were. Source: A friend of mine worked for Radioshack between 2008 and 2012. He had no idea why his store was still in business.
The only thing he ever sold at any volume was cellphones.
Besides phones, there'd also be the occasional lunatic who would wander in, convinced that the end of the world was nigh, who wanted to buy a battery-powered off-the-grid television, while talking about his stockpile of guns, and how the country was heading towards civil war.
It was never entirely clear what kind of television broadcasts he was planning on watching after the fall of civilization.
Radio shack was able to expand - profitable - much larger than their hobbies base could support on cell phone sales. They had a reputation of being the goto place for electronics, so it worked well when phones were new and a little scary... Then phones become common and they had too many stores for the rest of their products. Their business model from 1980 probably would still work if you want to try it - but that won't get you rich.
Selling consumer electronics is a tough business to survive in, ask Circuit City... oh, you can't, they are out of business.
The hobbiest electronics business seems even harder, it's hard to sell a 4 pack of resistors for $3.99 when you can buy a 300 pack on e-bay for the same price. But they couldn't afford to stock a useful variety of parts and sell them for much less than that, a decent size metro area can support a few electronic component houses that have enough volume to have good inventor, but not 27 neighborhood Radio Shack retailers. Though even then it's hard to compete when national online retailers like Digikey have a catalog of 8 million items and can ship most of them the next day -- whether you need 1 or 10,000 components.
Make Magazine found out that that the entire Maker movement is not really enough to sustain a business.
Once the company re-established itself online, Shmoel said at the time, then they’d be able to consider a move back into the physical retail space in the form of Circuit City Express stores, and a potential store-within-a-store model
With the ongoing decline of brick-and-mortal retail in general, it seems unlikely that they'll ever have a significant physical presence.
Yes, that is why I went back to 1980 for the pre-phone model. In 1996 phones were expensive and unusual. Many people wanted one, but only the rich could afford to use them much (a typical plan was 30 minutes of voice a month and high per-minute rates after that).
By 1996, phones were already being subsidized, so you could get a “free” phone, but we got paid a commission based on the total price. The non subsidized price was around $300-$400.
I think my first phone plan had 100 minutes a month.
> I'd like to see them perhaps expand into electronics, boards, drones, maker stuff, etc.
I was thinking the same thing.
Those categories are the perfect way for brick and mortar stores to differentiate themselves from online retailers. They're accessible enough that the average consumer may be interested in them, but complex enough that you'll probably need advice from someone knowledgeable before buying.
I'm really surprised Best Buy hasn't devoted much (if any) floor space to those things. I bet they could sell truckloads of things like micro FPV drones if they just demonstrated them for customers.
Problem is, unless you're in a hurry, you can get most of this stuff much cheaper on Aliexpress. Components and boards for DIY electronics are actually one of the few things that seem to be safe to buy there - it's really hard to botch an electronic component or an Arduino board so badly for it to matter in typical maker applications, and there probably isn't much money to be made in doing so.
(I wouldn't order power supplies or flash memory from Chinese retailers, though.)
> you can get most of this stuff much cheaper on Aliexpress
You're thinking of an entirely different market.
People who shop for something like a drone in Best Buy are never going to order one directly from China. First, they don't trust Chinese websites (and I've ordered from them all, so I completely understand why). Second, they probably don't know exactly what they want, so they need to talk to someone first. Third, even if they do know what they want, 99% of the stuff you see on sites like AliExpress is actually toy-grade junk, even when the price is $100+. Finding something that's actually worth your money is like finding a needle in a haystack.
I think there's a ton of potential in selling these types of hobby electronics to consumers, but it's only possible with salespeople who can demonstrate and explain the products. Fast shipping (or pickup) and easy returns/exchanges/repairs would just be icing on the cake.
Electronics 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.
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.
Instead of knowledgeable employees, I think it would be much cooler to have free wi-fi and QR code stickers next to most products so customers can get quick access to data sheets, project suggestions, calculators (especially applications of Ohm's law), and online forums. In today's world, electronics shops can't compete on price, but they can be faster than shipping and they can provide trustworthy online knowledge.
> Grr; I know what I'm doing, and found the parts I need in three minutes. Can I pay now? Nope, some dolt is explaining some cockamamie project idea to the clerk, asking for suggestions that add up to half of the design.
This could easily be solved with the McDonald's model: Provide self-service kiosks where you can order what you want and pay and have a "pickup" register which also serves as the hub for online orders.
> Guy behind him brought a toaster and wants to ask how to get it working again. Has zero troubleshooting skills.
That one can be solved by integrating a "maker space" into the store, with either volunteers or paid staff. Even better: combine this concept with an entirely automated warehouse so that online, in-person and "maker space" orders can be served basically 24/7.
All electronic components, from tiny SMD resistors over huge electrolytic condensators to processors, are available on machine-feedable spools anyway for mass production... so it shouldn't be that hard to automate anyway with existing components!
We shouldn't need a sales person to check out anymore. Self checkout (perhaps with employee verification for expensive items) should be fine. That frees up people to talk shop and the rest of us can just scan our items and leave.
Cost isn't the only issue, time is the bigger one in my opinion. When working on a project and I need capacitors or whatever, they're like $.10/piece online. But I want them now. Would gladly pay $1/piece to be able to drive over to the store and get them today. There is nowhere like that around me, its so frustrating. I don't really care how knowledgable the employees are, maybe some do though.
A lot of people in the retail space don't seem to realize this. I know several locally that maintain only their best sellers in stock (and only hire people willing to put in hours for the lower wages), and aren't even maximally using their shelf space despite having the capital to keep that much product on hand if they thought it was worth it. If I go into a store and they neither have what I'm looking for nor can answer any questions about their products, I just don't see any reason to stay there. They'll offer to order what I'm looking for for me, but if they don't have meaningful advice to offer about exactly what I should get, I don't see why I wouldn't walk out of the store while reading online reviews for a cheaper vendor.
Maybe it really isn't worth it to keep more product in-store or pay for better qualified sales reps, I don't know. But if it's not worth it, then yeah: I don't see why I should buy from a brick & mortar store except just to keep them in business for when I do need them.
Note that auto parts stores have exactly the business model you want. Thousands of obscure parts in stock. Not too far away is a large warehouse with tens of thousands more obscure parts which they can get in just a couple hours at no cost. Most of the time the people working know their products well and can give useful advice on your problem.
I wonder if the business model is only viable because auto parts tend to be much more expensive. It's probably easier to justify shelf space for an item that's $50-$200 than using that space for several $0.03-$0.50 components.
In part. I used to work parts. They are absurdly marked up, but protected almost in a cartel like manner. New parts typically had a 100 percent markup, others much more. A rebuilt alternator, for example, cost us around three dollars. Depending on the vehicle, they sold for between 30 and 100 dollars.
I think it is viable because there is a lot of demand for parts. There are a lot of cars around and they all will need fixing at some point in their life. This large demand ensures it will be filled well.
Radio Shack used to have a similar markup: charging $.70 for a $.03 part.
From a purely selfish perspective, it's usually cheaper and easier to keep a healthy stock of components to hand. If you've made the jump to SMD, I can highly recommend these sample books.
The way to sell low-volume things like electronic parts might be to have regular scheduled deliveries of requested parts, perhaps every few hours, from warehouses to small storefronts or vending machines.
1. You order online.
2. The parts go in a delivery truck.
3. The truck drives for a few hours.
4. The parts get loaded into a vending machine.
5. You go there to get the parts.
This makes it possible to supply a small city with parts that are always available within 4 to 6 hours. You only need to drive a mile or two.
How about "advanced amusements, gadgetry, builder kits, and hobbyist supplies"?
One wouldn't want to inadvertently age-box anything by implying any particular position on the toddler-geezer age axis. Kids of sufficient skill can think of themselves as "advanced", and adults of sufficient budget won't think they're blowing it all on "toys".
Yep. 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
They should, I don't know why they stopped. They used to sell computers and electronics when I was young (yes it was a long time ago). That's actually where I bought my 1st computer, a Commodore VIC-20.
Entertaining 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.
> They constantly need new activities, camps, things to go to. I think having innovative play areas in store for small fee is brilliant idea.
Great points. As a parent of two small kids, though, I'd much prefer that the entertainment NOT be attached to a Toys-R-Us, as that would more or less obligate me to buy a toy every time I went (good luck getting out of a TRU with a little kid without buying something.)
The local mall already has a few paint/build/create spots for little kids, so I can see the transition you mention happening already.
I WANT TO BELIEVE but I seriously doubt that retail's obsession with 'experiences"' is going to cut it; it didn't work 10 years ago and it won't work now (other than a place to dump your kids for an hour while you go shop groceries or whatever).
Retail thinks that better service and experiences is enough but when it comes down to it, parents want to buy toys in a toy store and they want to buy them as cheaply as possible. Physical stores also keep ignoring that Amazon actually offers really good service with cheap (or free shipping) and fast shipping, and a great return policy.
I also rankle at the "sell experiences" trend. It pegs my bogon detector from the moment I walk in until the instant I leave. If I want a memorable experience, it's not going to have a prominent, obvious cash register in it, thanks.
Having demonstration models in the store is a normal retail thing to do for selling the product in question, and does not need to be relabeled as an experience. Real experience-sellers already have their exit through their gift shop.
The advantages [New] Toys 'R' Us will probably have to leverage over Amazon will have to include lower per-unit shipping costs (in both time and money), in-person inspection and demonstration, search/discovery of well-curated product lines, no-hassle replacements with low-hassle returns, and counterfeits/defects protection. And it's still going to need website sales and some way for kids (who may be COPPA-aged) to browse the catalog, engage, and build up a wish list.
But in all likelihood, they'll probably just try throwing more money at brand marketing, rather than actually being better toy retailers. I shall be preemptively disappointed until my dearth of faith is invalidated.
Not even mismanagement; They were a private equity purchase, that was then saddled with the debt of their purchase to pay the private equity group. In some ways this is exactly what the Private Equity company is designed to do.
Then couple that with liquidating all the valuable assets with all the profits going to the private equity group.
Meanwhile, your private equity group is also your landlord, and they charge outrageous property rental prices.
Once all value to the property has been extracted and transferred to the private equity group, and the only thing left is liabilities, you then go bankrupt and try to flog off the liabilities to the highest bidder (who is stupid enough to pay money for something that has negative value).
That's the history of Bain Capital, Blackrock, and all the other Private Equity Groups.
maybe I'm just unlucky, but the few times I've gone to best buy I looked up the price on Amazon first and then went to best buy expecting them to price match. every time they had a slightly different sku from the item on Amazon and charged significantly more money.
the sample is too small to say for sure, but I suspect they commission custom runs of things like flash drives that would be too cheap to profit off of if they were actually exposed to matching Amazon prices.
Best Bu, Target & Walmart all do lower prices online, and higher in-store prices. The former two have repeatedly refused to match their own website's prices for me.
Also, Best Buy used to have an internal website at their stores with higher prices so they could claim their in-store prices were the same as their website prices
They've always done price matching, that's how they got their name when they came out in the 90s. But they still don't have a great selection and in my experience it's rarely worth it to shop there compared to Amazon for all the reasons stated above.
They originally wouldn't match online retailers only brick and mortar competitors as I understand it. As part of the turnaround, implemented in 2012 they started matching Amazon and a few select online retailers. [0]
Worked there in college. You are correct--they definitely did not match Amazon prices when I worked there. They wouldn't even match their own online prices at first.
I 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.
I 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.
Where 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.
Any 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. :)
iirc 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.
Getting 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.
Possibly 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.
Haven’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.
I 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.
Not to mention the atrocious service. Locations were always understaffed, and attendants were invariably bored or irritated teenagers who could barely operate the registers.
This 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.
Most 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.
Toys R Us went down due to private equity shell games. I’m not sure if they could’ve survived the Amazon era, but they never got the chance.
For what it’s worth, we went to Toys/Babies R Us all the time when our daughter was born six years ago. When you’re out of diapers or the bottle breaks or you need a last-minute birthday present for a friend’s party, you need supply in 30 minutes; even same-day isn’t fast enough. The stores filled that role for my family.
Amazon has struggled to launch their own line of diapers and baby products multiple times, they shuttered the Quidsi acquisition after they couldn’t make it work, etc. I don’t think it’s foregone that Toys R Us would’ve become another one of their victims.
While this was 90% VC based, I will say that this is one of the good situations to show that competition isn't really that good for the consumer. Amazon's loss leading methods (helps) kill other companies whereas the companies killed might have filled important roles that are not directly filled by others. Another good example is tablets. Amazon pushed the tablet game down to $49.99 which created a nightmarish expectation in customers as to what the price of a tablet should be while at the same time showing customers a low quality product, thus throwing customers to neither pay for a high end product and believing that tablets are low quality, killing all competitor's sales.
There were other toy retailers, though. Kay-bee Toys comes to mind. Toys in general were hammered by the rise of discount retailers like Wal-Mart and Online
Agreed. If Toys R Us could’ve failed on its own terms, without dragging all the play debt, I imagine their downfall would’ve come from other retailers moreso than Amazon. Walmart and especially Target are really good at serving kids of all ages.
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?
The 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.
But were't these things negatives for Toys R Us? Everyone joked about how desolate the stores were, and how they had fifty checkouts but only ever one open. My memory is of grimy miserable warehouses.
Some of your opinion seems dependent on the economic or social class you lived in growing up. My memory of Toys 'R' Us is in reading the front/back of every single "Seal of Nintendo" game available. As I kid I didn't know better options existed, and indeed probably did not exist where I grew up.
It's bizarre to me that people have memories of Toys R Us related to video games as I've never thought of it as a place for such... As a kid all my game-browsing memories were in one of the big stores with an Electronics department, or most commonly the various rental stores and chains (popularly but not exclusively Blockbuster) or rental sections of grocery stores where I could not just look at them but also sometimes get to rent one. Blockbuster even had a reasonably priced deal at one point when I was older that I convinced my mom to get me where you could rent "unlimited" (limited to 2 or 3 at a time) games for a few months, that summer was great for my gaming habit.
The only thing Toys R Us has ever been to my mind is "well the electronics department and toy department of [current store] doesn't have [thing], maybe Toys R Us does?" And that could be solved with a phone call, or now, the internet. Product discovery was from ads in parents' newspapers (I suppose some of them may have been Toys R Us ads and it's possible some of my Extreme Dinosaurs figures originated there before being wrapped by Santa) and rarely from wandering the aforementioned department aisles.
Another poster made a comment about the aisles dedicated to video games. You would pull out a paper slip and bring it to some off-to-the-side area where you would get your selection fulfilled by some back of the house magic. I can't remember if that was before or after checkout and I think they were all a bit different in how they did it but I seem to recall a long conveyer belt being involved. Later on, my local store cordoned off an area called "R Zone" which, on top of additional security, had everything out in the open as well as many kiosks and demo units.
A brand is a brand; the fact that you know what it is and you know what you're getting when you walk into the store is valuable, especially for Toys R Us who aren't actually making any of those toys they sell.
Even if TRU has a bad association with the experience, no one is going to care where you got your Hot Wheels once you have them.
I think there are probably many people who don't have the same perspective as you, or at least are willing to go to a grimy miserable warehouse if it means checking off several kids on their Christmas shopping list.
Curation is valuable. Amazon is a great utility, yes, but they aren't great at curation, nor do they offer the "physicality" of objects that is especially appealing with respect to toys. Toys are, by definition, "non-functional" goods, so being able to see/touch them offers more value than being able to see/touch a purely functional item.
Curation in particular seems to be Amazon's Achilles heel. They have no problem showing you pages of knockoffs when you are seeking a specific item. Then when purchased, you get to play comingle roulette!
There'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.
- 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!
Toys indeed suck. It seems they are made for the parents to fullfill the ritual of buying toys, not actually to be fun to play with. In a reasonable market this would not work but - it seems the offerings from all toy brands except Lego are equally crappy.
My 5yo kid pretty much only plays with Legos, despite having many other toys. Everything else gets old really quick, but legos are endlessly entertaining for him.
I agree that board games have gotten cheap as the market for them has shrunk. Spinners are particularly bad.
Conventional toys are much, much better. Are you kidding? The plastic manufacturing techniques available today put 70s toys to pale. Computer modeling also makes more complicated designs possible.
In the 70s, action figures were lucky to have a blocky head with eyebrows painted on in about the right place. Modern GI Joe figures have full naso-labial folds and neck musculature. It isn't even close.
In 1985, Optimus Prime was able to transform from a blocky truck to a truck rotated vertically with a robot head and arms that kinda swung out. You had to add the fists and you lost them almost immediately.
Modern Optimus figures transform from an aerodynamic semi-truck into a fully articulated robot samurai that looks better than the one drawn in the original cartoon.
Have you compared a modern plush to one from the 80s? Take a look at the stitching. You can get plushes for $10 now that would have cost $80 in 1985 and had less facial detail.
Toys are mostly better made now. We just don't care about them as much and they fade into the generic plastic darkness.
Toys are very much hit and miss. Unless you're willing to spend > $50 for the stuff intended more for adults like the G1 transformers reissues. I haven't seen a better Optimus prime yet personally. Even at that high price point you can't always get something quality. Compare the "die cast" Voltron of today which is 90% plastic to the one from the 80s. We definitely have options for high quality stuff, but companies don't always bother. There's some great models out there, but the market is also full of funko pop which is about as low effort as you can get.
> I bought a board game recently where the board was so thin, it bent from humidity!
This is the case for just about any of the fiddlier board games and boardgame-adjacent things from back then. Often the story is some Chinese company bought the license and is churning out the same thing, but 10-20% smaller and all the plastic's 1/2 as thick at best. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em? Smaller, way thinner plastic. Hungry Hungry Hippos? Similar story. Loopin' Louie? Weaker motor. Over and over if you dig into board game nerd talk about these the advice is to find an original, because though you can buy a new one on Amazon it isn't really the same thing, and often barely works at all.
> Tablets and smartphones also really killed the toy market in general -- kids aren't playing with toys as tablets capture attention.
This is really easy to underestimate if you don't have kids. If have elementary-school age kids. They get plenty of toys at birthdays and Christmas and I'm always surprised how many of them literally sit on a bookshelf unopened. (We end up donating many of them after a while.)
They are basically interested in screen time or books and that's about it.
Do they consider their demographic to be just White kids or something? Because the number of children in the US is projected to keep growing until at least 2050.
I think the issue is they need parents with more disposable income, but it's roughly a 50% drop in household income as you go from asian/white families to hispanic/black families. There's a time series here:
Are you looking at the same table I am? It's currently rising and keeps rising until 2050, which is the end of the prediction table. Slowly--but not that much slower than average.
There was a slight dip between 2010 and 2015, but not enough to be cause smaller cohorts to be a problem nationally. We're talking about the difference of a few hundred thousand kids across a population of 70 million+. There was bigger dip in the 70s.
I haven't seen any evidence that the number of children with parents or relatives who can afford to buy toys is going down. Toys R US was never a very high end brand. And if anything a declining birthrate with more children means a higher adult to parent ratio, which seems like a good thing for them.
Another 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.
A 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.
I 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.
my 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.
You'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.
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.
Other 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.
Oh, 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)
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.
Embrace and extend, Toys R Us!
This way, they earn a steady income regardless of whether someone buys it in store or tries it in store and then buys from Amazon.
The toymakers would pay assuming that letting people try the toys in person leads to better sales, which should be the case.
And then there's concessions (IKEA and Costco do it).
Shopping as entertainment adventure rather than pushing a shopping cart down aisles of loud marketing boxes floor-to-ceiling.
And, they need to work with apps and games publishers to have the next Cabbage Patch or Transformers not just in iPhone-like limited supply, but as a whole launch event.
https://camp.com/
Arrow is quite amazing if they have it. And for "real" hardware, McMaster-Carr can often deliver on the weekend within hours if you're willing to pay for it.
Mouser is one of my go-tos as well, but not for something I need same day.
I have used McMaster-Carr, but they don't have electronics components beyond a token selection (at least they didn't last time I looked).
I'm convinced that cell phones are the only thing that's kept most Radio Shack stores afloat since there's decent margin in cell phone accessories and plans.
They were. Source: A friend of mine worked for Radioshack between 2008 and 2012. He had no idea why his store was still in business.
The only thing he ever sold at any volume was cellphones.
Besides phones, there'd also be the occasional lunatic who would wander in, convinced that the end of the world was nigh, who wanted to buy a battery-powered off-the-grid television, while talking about his stockpile of guns, and how the country was heading towards civil war.
It was never entirely clear what kind of television broadcasts he was planning on watching after the fall of civilization.
The hobbiest electronics business seems even harder, it's hard to sell a 4 pack of resistors for $3.99 when you can buy a 300 pack on e-bay for the same price. But they couldn't afford to stock a useful variety of parts and sell them for much less than that, a decent size metro area can support a few electronic component houses that have enough volume to have good inventor, but not 27 neighborhood Radio Shack retailers. Though even then it's hard to compete when national online retailers like Digikey have a catalog of 8 million items and can ship most of them the next day -- whether you need 1 or 10,000 components.
Make Magazine found out that that the entire Maker movement is not really enough to sustain a business.
Circuit City is back in business.
https://www.dealerscope.com/article/in-time-for-black-friday...
Once the company re-established itself online, Shmoel said at the time, then they’d be able to consider a move back into the physical retail space in the form of Circuit City Express stores, and a potential store-within-a-store model
With the ongoing decline of brick-and-mortal retail in general, it seems unlikely that they'll ever have a significant physical presence.
I think my first phone plan had 100 minutes a month.
This was a typical cellphone circa 1996
https://steemitimages.com/DQmaMWsMbXEaUxf4oAHVp6q5Y8r7A4QgxF...
I was thinking the same thing.
Those categories are the perfect way for brick and mortar stores to differentiate themselves from online retailers. They're accessible enough that the average consumer may be interested in them, but complex enough that you'll probably need advice from someone knowledgeable before buying.
I'm really surprised Best Buy hasn't devoted much (if any) floor space to those things. I bet they could sell truckloads of things like micro FPV drones if they just demonstrated them for customers.
(I wouldn't order power supplies or flash memory from Chinese retailers, though.)
You're thinking of an entirely different market.
People who shop for something like a drone in Best Buy are never going to order one directly from China. First, they don't trust Chinese websites (and I've ordered from them all, so I completely understand why). Second, they probably don't know exactly what they want, so they need to talk to someone first. Third, even if they do know what they want, 99% of the stuff you see on sites like AliExpress is actually toy-grade junk, even when the price is $100+. Finding something that's actually worth your money is like finding a needle in a haystack.
I think there's a ton of potential in selling these types of hobby electronics to consumers, but it's only possible with salespeople who can demonstrate and explain the products. Fast shipping (or pickup) and easy returns/exchanges/repairs would just be icing on the cake.
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.
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.
Unless they're a college student or a retiree.
Grr; I know what I'm doing, and found the parts I need in three minutes. Can I pay now?
Nope, some dolt is explaining some cockamamie project idea to the clerk, asking for suggestions that add up to half of the design.
Guy behind him brought a toaster and wants to ask how to get it working again. Has zero troubleshooting skills.
This could easily be solved with the McDonald's model: Provide self-service kiosks where you can order what you want and pay and have a "pickup" register which also serves as the hub for online orders.
> Guy behind him brought a toaster and wants to ask how to get it working again. Has zero troubleshooting skills.
That one can be solved by integrating a "maker space" into the store, with either volunteers or paid staff. Even better: combine this concept with an entirely automated warehouse so that online, in-person and "maker space" orders can be served basically 24/7.
All electronic components, from tiny SMD resistors over huge electrolytic condensators to processors, are available on machine-feedable spools anyway for mass production... so it shouldn't be that hard to automate anyway with existing components!
(Please, someone, please implement this idea!)
Maybe it really isn't worth it to keep more product in-store or pay for better qualified sales reps, I don't know. But if it's not worth it, then yeah: I don't see why I should buy from a brick & mortar store except just to keep them in business for when I do need them.
Radio Shack used to have a similar markup: charging $.70 for a $.03 part.
https://www.banggood.com/0805-SMD-Resistor-And-Capacitor-Sam...
1. You order online.
2. The parts go in a delivery truck.
3. The truck drives for a few hours.
4. The parts get loaded into a vending machine.
5. You go there to get the parts.
This makes it possible to supply a small city with parts that are always available within 4 to 6 hours. You only need to drive a mile or two.
One wouldn't want to inadvertently age-box anything by implying any particular position on the toddler-geezer age axis. Kids of sufficient skill can think of themselves as "advanced", and adults of sufficient budget won't think they're blowing it all on "toys".
This is how you compete with Amazon.
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.
Great points. As a parent of two small kids, though, I'd much prefer that the entertainment NOT be attached to a Toys-R-Us, as that would more or less obligate me to buy a toy every time I went (good luck getting out of a TRU with a little kid without buying something.)
The local mall already has a few paint/build/create spots for little kids, so I can see the transition you mention happening already.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/2014/09/10/magical-makeov...
Is this a common thing?
Retail thinks that better service and experiences is enough but when it comes down to it, parents want to buy toys in a toy store and they want to buy them as cheaply as possible. Physical stores also keep ignoring that Amazon actually offers really good service with cheap (or free shipping) and fast shipping, and a great return policy.
Having demonstration models in the store is a normal retail thing to do for selling the product in question, and does not need to be relabeled as an experience. Real experience-sellers already have their exit through their gift shop.
The advantages [New] Toys 'R' Us will probably have to leverage over Amazon will have to include lower per-unit shipping costs (in both time and money), in-person inspection and demonstration, search/discovery of well-curated product lines, no-hassle replacements with low-hassle returns, and counterfeits/defects protection. And it's still going to need website sales and some way for kids (who may be COPPA-aged) to browse the catalog, engage, and build up a wish list.
But in all likelihood, they'll probably just try throwing more money at brand marketing, rather than actually being better toy retailers. I shall be preemptively disappointed until my dearth of faith is invalidated.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/business/toys-r-us-bankru...
also see: Pretty Woman
Then couple that with liquidating all the valuable assets with all the profits going to the private equity group.
Meanwhile, your private equity group is also your landlord, and they charge outrageous property rental prices.
Once all value to the property has been extracted and transferred to the private equity group, and the only thing left is liabilities, you then go bankrupt and try to flog off the liabilities to the highest bidder (who is stupid enough to pay money for something that has negative value).
That's the history of Bain Capital, Blackrock, and all the other Private Equity Groups.
the sample is too small to say for sure, but I suspect they commission custom runs of things like flash drives that would be too cheap to profit off of if they were actually exposed to matching Amazon prices.
https://consumerist.com/2007/02/best-buys-secret-employee-on...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/business/best-buy-amazon....
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.
https://www.greentoys.com/
NYT just published an article about counterfeit books. Fake branded chargers have been an issue as well. Why not toxic toys from China?
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.
I'm a gosh darn industry murderin millennial and I remember it.
If they want to survive the come back, the pricing needs to be more price competitive with other convenient solutions.
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.
At the same time, the new owners must understand that the value of the name they purchased has been tarnished by the past owners.
For what it’s worth, we went to Toys/Babies R Us all the time when our daughter was born six years ago. When you’re out of diapers or the bottle breaks or you need a last-minute birthday present for a friend’s party, you need supply in 30 minutes; even same-day isn’t fast enough. The stores filled that role for my family.
Amazon has struggled to launch their own line of diapers and baby products multiple times, they shuttered the Quidsi acquisition after they couldn’t make it work, etc. I don’t think it’s foregone that Toys R Us would’ve become another one of their victims.
Whatever you may think of iPad quality versus the competition, you can't argue with them deciding to keep premium pricing.
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?
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.
The only thing Toys R Us has ever been to my mind is "well the electronics department and toy department of [current store] doesn't have [thing], maybe Toys R Us does?" And that could be solved with a phone call, or now, the internet. Product discovery was from ads in parents' newspapers (I suppose some of them may have been Toys R Us ads and it's possible some of my Extreme Dinosaurs figures originated there before being wrapped by Santa) and rarely from wandering the aforementioned department aisles.
Another poster made a comment about the aisles dedicated to video games. You would pull out a paper slip and bring it to some off-to-the-side area where you would get your selection fulfilled by some back of the house magic. I can't remember if that was before or after checkout and I think they were all a bit different in how they did it but I seem to recall a long conveyer belt being involved. Later on, my local store cordoned off an area called "R Zone" which, on top of additional security, had everything out in the open as well as many kiosks and demo units.
To me, Toys R Us and games go hand in hand.
Even if TRU has a bad association with the experience, no one is going to care where you got your Hot Wheels once you have them.
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.
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!
Conventional toys are much, much better. Are you kidding? The plastic manufacturing techniques available today put 70s toys to pale. Computer modeling also makes more complicated designs possible.
In the 70s, action figures were lucky to have a blocky head with eyebrows painted on in about the right place. Modern GI Joe figures have full naso-labial folds and neck musculature. It isn't even close.
In 1985, Optimus Prime was able to transform from a blocky truck to a truck rotated vertically with a robot head and arms that kinda swung out. You had to add the fists and you lost them almost immediately.
Modern Optimus figures transform from an aerodynamic semi-truck into a fully articulated robot samurai that looks better than the one drawn in the original cartoon.
Have you compared a modern plush to one from the 80s? Take a look at the stitching. You can get plushes for $10 now that would have cost $80 in 1985 and had less facial detail.
Toys are mostly better made now. We just don't care about them as much and they fade into the generic plastic darkness.
This is the case for just about any of the fiddlier board games and boardgame-adjacent things from back then. Often the story is some Chinese company bought the license and is churning out the same thing, but 10-20% smaller and all the plastic's 1/2 as thick at best. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em? Smaller, way thinner plastic. Hungry Hungry Hippos? Similar story. Loopin' Louie? Weaker motor. Over and over if you dig into board game nerd talk about these the advice is to find an original, because though you can buy a new one on Amazon it isn't really the same thing, and often barely works at all.
I'd expect TRU to have a decent, but not great holiday 2019, then pretty much fall apart after that.
This is really easy to underestimate if you don't have kids. If have elementary-school age kids. They get plenty of toys at birthdays and Christmas and I'm always surprised how many of them literally sit on a bookshelf unopened. (We end up donating many of them after a while.)
They are basically interested in screen time or books and that's about it.
- Low birth rates. The size of their target population is actually shrinking.
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...
Take a look at Table HINC-04, which identifies income for families with children under 18:
showing median/mean income:
So stores like Toys-R-us can get hammered as a result of demographic shifts even if total population of kids is increasing.https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp
There was a slight dip between 2010 and 2015, but not enough to be cause smaller cohorts to be a problem nationally. We're talking about the difference of a few hundred thousand kids across a population of 70 million+. There was bigger dip in the 70s.
This article was written before the Toys 'R Us takeover and liqudation, but prior to that Bain Capital had done the exact same thing to KB Toys.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/greed-an...
Their idea to open new stores in small footage locations focusing on high margin and popular products during Christmas time is great.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16904564
Not sure why Amazon didn’t buy out some of the locations.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20233344
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.
Edit: apparently I could have pointed drones/printers.