from Hacker News

Amazon Has Considered Buying Some Toys ‘R’ Us Stores

by TwoFactor on 3/20/18, 2:50 PM with 107 comments

• by vinhboy on 3/20/18, 3:37 PM

  I think Amazon should do it.

  I personally believe Toys R Us just missed an opportunity to run a proper business. They have a ton of retail space, but every time I've been there, it's run like Walmart. Shit everywhere, no one to help you find anything, etc...

  There's nothing suburban parents like me want more than an indoor play space for my kid (for extremely hot or cold days). If they properly utilized their store and made it more like a play space, I would bring my kid there every weekend.

  Right now I am paying money to go to those "kids museum". Why didn't Toys R Us think to capitalize on that market?

  Also, if they had people to playfully demo the toys to my kid, I am pretty sure we would buy way more toys instead of just leaving frustrated because we can't find what we wanted.

• by jgh on 3/20/18, 3:29 PM

  On the topic of toy stores / toy store innovation, that American Girl doll store is insane. My wife and I went there to buy a doll for our friend's daughter for Christmas and holy hell is that place busy / kinda weird. It's like a Bloomingdale's or something for dolls. Kids can even sign up for "doll spas" and bring their dolls in to have their hair and nails done and stuff. Obviously I don't really get it because I'm not an 8 year old girl, nor do I have any kids but that place must be making a ton of money.

• by bob_theslob646 on 3/20/18, 4:36 PM

  People are not getting it.

  If they are going to get into the business ( acquiring retail space) it will be one that fits into their equation for their last mile problem and be at fire sale prices.

  If they choose to purchase retail real estate, it will most likely be a combination of retail/grocery/banking all in one, sort of like a Walmart, but way better experience.

  This most likely will be their approach to get baby boomers to shop and to learn how to shop online.

  As everyone knows, Amazon loves getting things cheaply and will do so if they can.

  > Webvan was an online grocery business that went bankrupt in 2001 after 3 years of operation and was later folded into Amazon.com.

  > CNET named Webvan one of the largest dot-com flops in history

  > Webvan placed a $1 billion order with engineering company Bechtel Corporation to build its warehouses, and bought a fleet of delivery trucks.

  > In 2000, Webvan bought HomeGrocer, a competitor that was also losing money, for $1.2 billion in stock.[11][12] At its peak in 2000, Webvan had $178.5 million in sales but it also had $525.4 million in expenses.

  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan)

• by DanCarvajal on 3/20/18, 3:17 PM

  I mean there has to be an non-dilapidated Toy 'R' Us location somewhere right?

• by empath75 on 3/20/18, 3:30 PM

  > Additional stores would give Amazon space to showcase its popular Echo line of devices, which run on the Alexa voice-activated platform.

  I'm pretty sure they're not going to buy a big box retailer to jam a bunch of echos into it.

• by anigbrowl on 3/20/18, 5:17 PM

  They should buy all of them, use them as display space for a wide variety of Stuff, and continue shipping normally except for small items that can be sold at point of sale and stored at low overhead.

• by lph on 3/20/18, 4:38 PM

  As a parent of young kids, I've been in to Toys R Us twice in the past few years. The first time it was really depressing: prime-time hours for retail and the store was practically empty. The second time was last weekend, and it was bustling with people hoping for fire sale prices. Probably the best weekend that store has had in years.