Toys ‘R’ Us, Back from the Dead, Will Open U.S. Stores in 2019

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.

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.

(I wouldn't order power supplies or flash memory from Chinese retailers, though.)

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.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/2014/09/10/magical-makeov...

Is this a common thing?

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.

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.

NYT just published an article about counterfeit books. Fake branded chargers have been an issue as well. Why not toxic toys from China?

I'm a gosh darn industry murderin millennial and I remember it.

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.

I'd expect TRU to have a decent, but not great holiday 2019, then pretty much fall apart after that.

- Low birth rates. The size of their target population is actually shrinking.

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.

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.

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.