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)
You're absolutely right. The result usually is though that the kid finds a toy they like then puts in on their Birthday/Christmas wishlist from where the Santa buys from Amazon. I like to think I never do this, but if the price is much higher even I have a limit.
I think that manufacturers should sell to physical toy stores at a lower price, and actively make sure online price is the same or higher than instore. but I dont how easy this is to police or even if is legal in some countries.
These days, many brick & mortar stores are a market inefficiency. It's simply cheaper to store & ship out of centralized warehouses (as it goes when you order online) than to ship merchandise to individual stores, which themselves have limited floor space and storage space (resulting in less variety of products) as well as a smaller potential customer-base (only those who live nearby). I don't see why manufacturers should be punished by selling at a lower price in order to sustain outdated business practices.
Stores that provide additional value, having unique goods that can't be found online or have cool atmosphere or such, will be fine.
Well, it's also that when you walk in there looking for a present for the kids birthday party you are about to take your child to attend, you end up buying something there, and possibly even paying them to wrap it for you. I'm not sure I've ever ordered a present online for a friend of one of my kids. I have enough trouble remember the party is that day and getting there on time, much less ordering ahead of time.
Now when it comes to channel cost, physical stores are already taking more margin out of retail price and for manufacturers, there is simply rarely large enough incentive to sell to physical toy stores at a lower price.
When your largest reseller is even 1-2% under MAP you you really can't do anything about it. Especially if they are over half your income - it's a game of chicken that isn't worth playing.
MAP really only works when your resellers are fairly diverse and fairly even-sized. But if that were the case, we wouldn't have online behemoths undercutting everyone else in the first place.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price_agreement
Arguably "big box" toy stores work against cultural value in toys.
Really? You rationalize going to a brick and mortar international franchise simply because it is physical, instead of going to an online international franchise?
Thats the biggest stretch of "buy local" that I've ever been exposed to.
If you consume this and then buy on Amazon, Amazon is effectively unloading the marginal costs of running show floors to the brick-and-mortar stores.
Perhaps the only thing missing is a way to sort results on Amazon by locale.
I live about 2 miles from both amazon and jet warehouses, and that doesn't make it feel any more like a local business.
There is a physical constraint aspect to local businesses that create an inherent diversity. Being next to a huge store curated by one entity is much different.
Would you rather live next to a Wal-Mart or a thriving strip/block with a dozen or so various options? It depends on your needs and desires I suppose.
Then the $10 is rebated off anything they buy in-store.
The only big problem with this approach is showrooming.
Toys r us or best buy carry bad products and are staffed by the lowest bidder. They offer no value over Amazon, so Amazon makes them worthless.
>You go to Home Depot for expertise as much as for parts
Has not been my experience. Ace hardware is a little better, but not much.
I suppose sometimes they get lucky and a knowledgeable retiree is willing to work for those wages.
A friend recently told me about a time he sent his wife in to Home Depot with a list of things to get, and she came home with a different set of things that an employee recommended. My friend went back there to raise a stink about being sold the wrong things, found out the employee was a out of work plumber, and that "sharkbite" is great stuff.
"That's funny" I told my friend, "Literally yesterday I was talking with my plumber and he pointed out that I had sharkbite running to my sprinkler system. I told him I didn't know what his opinion of it was, but I didn't love sharkbite, he said he didn't love it either."
Mostly I go to my local hardware store because it's 2 minutes away rather than 15. Lowes is another 5+ minutes further, but it seems to have a lot more choice in some things, and I've had a bad experience with a couple Home Depot employees that I just can't let go of.
Home Depot does seem to have a weird set of things they do stock and don't. Like all their thinset mortar didn't seem to be labeled as modified or unmodified last weekend...
And yeah, I used sharkbite to book my dishwasher up, but it's definitely on the list of "get that replaced next time a plumber is in the house".
I suck at plumbing. For people like me who do the occasional repair around the house, Sharkbite is a godsend.
(clarification: Unrelated to sharkbite, but I appreciate the damage water can cause)
We used to have a really good Ace chain around here, with a proper hardware section and quality tools. They now only stock super common hardware, not the stuff I'd go to a specialty store for, and a lot of really garbage tools.
And they certainly don't have any experts anymore. you're lucky if somebody's working who knows how to run the key machine (which also no longer requires any skill)
Can you offer any further insight?
Perhaps the demise of this particular store (chain) is orthogonal to their cooperative status but you're assuming a causality?
So in the example of REI, it's a cooperative but there is still a central control and consistency between stores.
Between Ace chains, the only thing common is the word "Ace" and some fraction of Ace-branded products in the store. Some chains have tons of them, some have very little. The "Ace cooperative" exerts very little control over the stores. The cooperative is mostly about branding, not about products or quality.
I don't really have any loyalty to Home Depot vs. Lowe's vs. a local mom and pop, just have what I need when I need it.
> Has not been my experience. Ace hardware is a little better, but not much.
Most Home Depot employees at my local store were very knowledgeable for a while, but the construction market is so crazy here (Colorado) that anyone with that knowledge can make at least double what Home Depot will offer.
That said, my local store still does have a few knowledgeable people, but they tend to work morning shifts. I've learned to drop in before work if I have any DIY-type questions.
I may be in the minority for now, but I doubt they can live off that kind of 15m "consultations" when people are willing to do it for free online.
I would think that instant gratification is of high value when shopping for toys with a child.
It changes periodically, Giant, Specialized and Trek are big enough that they are doing their own stores and performance shops and not relying on small dealers as much. It's also different from many other things in that a misassembled bike can result in death. The industry as a whole supports bike shops though
Walmart shoppers look for commodity items, full stop. There is nothing wrong with that, by the way; toilet paper and cleaning supplies are used by everyone but are barely distinguishable.
The town I grew up in has a great independent toy store, and I make it a point to shop there every time we're in town. Every time I find something unique that I would have never looked for on Amazon, and often I'm hooked by the tactile act of playing with something that couldn't be fully replicated online.
As an interesting aside, this particular store[1] fought for its right to keep their mural (which was awesome but violated city codes) all the way to the supreme court[2]. They lost, but you've got to admire the chutzpa of someone willing to do that.
[1] http://www.inlandoctopus.com/
[2] http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/city-paints-over-wa...