Not anymore. Customers just use them as a free showroom and then buy it cheaper off Amazon.
Edit oh and they are pulled out of the store if they don't behave, so there's that too.
https://www.shopify.com/retail/why-retailers-should-embrace-...
It does cut into their margins, they can't be way more expensive than online.
You also overestimate the delta between the Amazon price (if the product is carried by Amazon) and that of the brick & mortar price. Often the brick & mortar price is identical after shipping costs.
The competitive advantage of a good mom & pop toy store is a specialized, curated selection of unique merchandise.
Perhaps Etsy can compete in this category, but I am in doubt that Amazon is there yet.
I think their main advantage is not the curation but the availability. You can plan a trip to the toy shop, agree to a budget, go and play with toys, choose something in budget, and go home with a toy. This is a way better parent-child bonding experience than scrolling through pages of licensed junk together & then waiting 2-3 days.
Re curation: most good toy stores have the same sort of stuff. Most 'boutique' 'niche' ones have expensive crap for idiots with money. Protip: your kids will play with toys until they break, don't buy that miniature replica Miele vacuum cleaner toy for $200 unless you don't mind throwing it away in 3 months.
Museum shops seem to follow the 'specialized, curated selection of unique merchandise' of children's toys.
When we are looking at the generic market, nowadays people go to a store, look at something and then go on their phone to see if they'll find it cheaper anywhere else, as local stores tend to overprice stuff to make up their marginal costs.
On a tangential matter, I disagree with avoiding opportunities for teaching children delayed gratification in such a high impact way.
Think about it this way: every time you rightfully don't give your child something they want due to their bad behavior, you're giving them an effective lesson and improving their future life.
It's cruel to intentionally create situations that trigger a child; it should happen organically. It doesn't take long for children to adapt to understanding they won't get their way and start adopting appropriate self control.
Especially with modern research showing the damaging effects of corporal punishment, parents should take opportunities when they arise to discipline their children in a way that is meaningful to the child: withholding a toy they desire or another form of leverage.
My comment on 2-3 days? That’s too long for a child to make the connection between behaviour and outcome. I love delayed gratification and would ask that we wait to play with the new toy until after we get home, eat, tidy up, etc. I hope that they make the link between waiting, being praised for doing a good job with something else, then playing.
Did you know? The 2-year-old will tantrum regardless where you are, and buying online means you don't have a quick out on hand (either getting the toy almost immediately after calming down and ensuring enough separation between the tantrum and getting the toy, or some stopgap alternative toy that's a tenth of the price).
If they have any kind of success and are visible - the chinese will have copies flooding the market within weeks. Small shops play a game to sell - but don't become too big.
And that free showroom is now gone.
All the best buying something on Amazon, and realizing that you didn't like it after it was delivered at your home. The cost of treating it as a free showroom will now cost customers buying a lot of products they don't like.
Meanwhile, it's not like you can really test a toy in a store, and returning it means another trip.
Of course, this means that customers always choose that option, and FBA sellers get harmful demerits on their account every time that happens. This is such a popular way to hurt FBA sellers that people have a habit of ordering items from competitors just to return them as counterfeit and/or defective, in the hope that doing this a few times will get a competitor removed from the seller pool.
Just conjecture at this point as I don't think any non-Amazon employee could know exactly all the details around when Amazon decides to charge a return handling fee, etc. I guess this may be in the fine print somewhere, but I would rather expect the fine print just to say "We can charge you a return handling fee if we want".
My experience is that I tried to return something last year, and Amazon was going to dock 12 dollars of my 14 dollar refund for return shipping if I clicked anything other than "defective". The product wasn't defective so I just decided to keep it, not worth the hassle for a $2 refund.
Did you order from a third-party FBA seller? If you did, they will often tell unsatisfied customers to keep the product and issue a refund anyway, because they'd rather be out one unit than have a return against them.
If most users start doing returns, they won't be free or even possible, given how much logistical nightmare that will be.
Beyond all this, that turn around time to buy a single product will be high.
Stores offer a good middle ground, and you can get a good hold of things before you actually make a purchase. I'm not saying toy purchase or any other purchase online will go down, but there will be a lot of buying will be waste.
Would this nightmare be worse than unlimited 1-day shipping? Amazon seems to have worked that one out already.
Most places would allow you to print a label and leave the item at a designated collection point. In the UK there's heaps of companies handling this (CollectPlus, MyHermes, ParcelPoint, even Post Offices).
I doubt this is true for anywhere but North America.
Sometimes they even let you keep the item. I barely buy anything from them, but I had that happen earlier this month with an item worth ~30€, despite choosing the option that indicated it was my fault.
You generally pay 3,90€ for returning the item via DHL/Hermes (unless you declare the reason for return as e.g. not working). Certain categories (clothing) have free returns. This is only the case if the order was placed through FBA or Amazon itself. Marketplace sellers with their own fulfillment usually charge you for returns or don't provide a shipping-label at all.
(source: selling on AZ)