
Toys ‘R’ Us, Back from the Dead, Will Open U.S. Stores in 2019 - howard941
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-21/toys-r-us-back-from-the-dead-will-open-u-s-stores-in-2019
======
achenatx
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.

~~~
GraffitiTim
This seems like a good idea! Could even charge for admission.

~~~
_ah
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.

~~~
Alex3917
IIRC think that is the business model of this store in NYC:

[https://camp.com/](https://camp.com/)

~~~
xmprt
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.

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axaxs
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.

~~~
skellera
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.

~~~
somehnguy
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.

~~~
TallGuyShort
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.

~~~
bluGill
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.

~~~
autoexec
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.

~~~
axaxs
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.

------
DevX101
> The locations will also have more experiences, like play areas

This is how you compete with Amazon.

~~~
quux
Honest 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?

~~~
sytelus
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.

~~~
duderific
> 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.

~~~
jtchang
And exactly why it makes it a good business move. That kid will do more
"marketing" than any ad they buy. And surely lead to more conversions.

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bredren
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.

~~~
jquery
Same, it was definitely a flash of brilliance to create the that aisle like
they did. I spent hours and hours in that aisle.

~~~
ganoushoreilly
Remember 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
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.

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weiming
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.

~~~
silversconfused
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. :)

~~~
ip26
There is a market for wood toys out there. It may not be large, but it exists,
and we will pay (some) extra for it.

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zer0faith
I don't wanna grow up.

~~~
VLM
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.

~~~
Retra
Do you think people should up-vote a comment simply because it repeats a
slogan?

~~~
Nortey
Agreed. I'd prefer to leave those kinds of comments on reddit.

~~~
Retra
They're just as useless on reddit, no need to be smug about your choice of
social media platform.

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enonevets
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.

~~~
snarf21
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.

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noja
Was the old Toys ‘R’ Us freed from any liability to pensions, etc. by doing
this?

~~~
jedimastert
Yeah, they definitely screwed over a lot of people if this as the plan all
along.

------
mastrsushi
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.

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lern_too_spel
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.

------
diminoten
It makes sense, the brand is still worth tons of money, just needs to be
managed very differently in a post-Amazon world.

~~~
chrisseaton
> 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?

~~~
jmull
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.

~~~
chrisseaton
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.

~~~
jquery
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.

~~~
Jach
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.

~~~
awad
They were huge for me when it came to games.

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.

------
pmoriarty
What were the problems that sunk Toys R Us in the first place?

~~~
Spooky23
Private 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!

~~~
fsloth
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.

~~~
duderific
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.

------
bitxbit
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.

~~~
dbancajas
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.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/BifPA](http://archive.is/BifPA)

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rglover
Awesome. It was really sad to see this go having remembered all the joy and
fun it brought as a kid.

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m23khan
hopefully employees who were let go can be given preference when they are
hiring.

~~~
silversconfused
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.

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sys_64738
Is it _that_ Toys R Us or is it another Circuit City debacle?

------
Vaslo
This 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)

------
leowoo91
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.

~~~
tyree731
I can't read the article, but is there any reason you think that would be
true?

~~~
leowoo91
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)

