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Comment by DevX101 | Hacker News Reader

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

This is how you compete with Amazon.

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?

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.

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.

According to this article it's going well!

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

It's just a ploy to reduce inventory and fill the empty space so it doesn't look like a wasteland.

I mean, you have to do something besides just sell products if you're gonna compete with Amazon. That doesn't mean it's "just a ploy."

I don't frequent Disney stores, but the 2 or 3 I've been to did not have play areas.

Is this a common thing?

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.

My understanding was that the main thing that killed Toys'R'Us was mismanagement, not online competition.

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/business/toys-r-us-bankru...

also see: Pretty Woman

It's called a "Leveraged Buyout".

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.

Malicious management, then.

Best Buy made a come back by offering price matching.

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

https://consumerist.com/2007/02/best-buys-secret-employee-on...

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]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/business/best-buy-amazon....

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.

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