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Comment by pandapunchpower | Hacker News Reader

There is some scope for a brick and mortar toy store provided they are willing to be double as a pseudo-playcenter.

Toy aisles and toy stores are frequently populated by exhausted parents standing around while their children entertain themselves checking out the toys. The kids are happy enough. The parents are content just to have a few minutes to themselves. Toy retailers typically try and dissuade this behavior.

Meanwhile indoor playgrounds/play centers are a huge and growing business. They are happy for parents to unleash their children while they make their money from entry charges, selling cups of coffee to the parents and snacks for the kids.

Despite having a huge inventory of toys play centers never actually sell toys that I have seen. Tearful children have to leave their new favorite ride on racing car (or whatever) behind when they leave.

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>Meanwhile indoor playgrounds/play centers are a huge and growing business. They are happy for parents to unleash their children while they make their money from entry charges, selling cups of coffee to the parents and snacks for the kids.

There's a mom and pop place like this near me. They rented an old dead big box store (I remember shopping there when it was a Circuit City) and filled it with bounce houses and arcade games.

They charge $10/kid admission. Adults are not allowed in the bounce houses, and they've got an area set up with tables and free WiFi for the parents. They'll charge you $3.79 for a soda, so overpriced for sure but not quite movie theater or ballpark pricing.

My son begged to have his birthday party there this year. The parties have to be the big revenue driver, as it was $300 for twelve kids' worth of Domino's Pizza and use of a party room for an hour.

So Discovery Zone?

That business model appeared not to work in the 90s, because they all closed down, I wonder why. Unsustainable business model? Good business model but taking on too much debt? Kids get bored after a couple visits and don't come back? Rising rents? Admission prices too high?

Around me there was a Discovery Zone and there was two more independent ones that opened up around the same time as Discovery Zone and closed a little after too. From what I could gather, seems like the business model just didn't work, at least not at the time.

For those of you outside the US or too young to remember: https://youtu.be/33QpqR-fN0c

I wonder if the real estate issue was the thing.

The DZ locations, at least where I lived, were in prime spots, and it was a time when they couldn't build strip malls fast enough to keep up with demand.

Now you've got an oversupply of dead big box stores and not enough ideas of what to do with them.

I wonder what kind of liability insurance, regulatory compliance, etc. is required for a business like this (in the US, where any injury to a child seems culturally likely to lead to a lawsuit). Mom-and-pop day cares exist in my area, so clearly it's possible to have a child-centered business without the backing of corporate lawyers -- but how big of a risk are they taking should something happen?

I think there's a pretty good opportunity here for a large format combined playspace/toystore. Build out the toy area around some hands-on demo spaces, and include the normal playspace items nearby with climbing structures and coffee/alcohol for the parents. The key is: charge admission, then credit back the admission price toward the purchase of any new toy.

People are terrible calculating sunk cost, and I'm pretty sure that the pre-paid $15 admission credit makes a $29 toy look like a "steal", even if you could buy it on Amazon for $24. In fact, I'll bet most parents would be hard-pressed to leave the experience without buying something for every child.

That’s not even really a sunk cost if the experience is worth a bit by itself.

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