Toys R Us Will Open Up Stores in Every Single Macy's

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
ClownLoach
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Re: Toys R Us Will Open Up Stores in Every Single Macy's

Post by ClownLoach »

Alpha8472 wrote: January 8th, 2023, 8:33 pm I visited one of the Macy's at the very busy Vintage Faire Mall in Modesto, California and saw a Toys R Us shop. It was on the first floor. It was near the Juniors clothing. It was a decent size with a moderate selection of toys. The toys seemed to be more higher end than Walmart. There were more toys geared towards young girls than for boys. There was only a small selection of action figures and they were for the the new Black Panther movie. There were Discovery Channel items such as crystal growing kits, fossil digs, and some anatomy toys. You can take apart a dinosaur and learn about its anatomy or take apart a human.

Is this Toys R Us shop a permanent shop? It seems like there is no other place to get toys at a mall. I did see an abandoned Toys R Us store not too far from the mall. It was very well preserved with the sign up and everything looking frozen in time.

I walked through the Temecula, CA Macy's "Toys R Us" setup the week it opened as well as December 26th. From what I can tell they sold every last unit of Lego merchandise as they had four fixtures and a wall of it when they first set up, and not a single item left Dec. 26. All of the Lego area was flexed with other products. I do wonder if they lost a lot to shrink, the Lego wall was right next to a side exit door. Past that it was all higher end product and it didn't look like much sold down. The failure of the Toys setup was pricing. No shelf labels. I would estimate 75% of the product lacked price labels. The nearest price checker was on the other side of the store and Wi-Fi coverage was poor so you couldn't use their app. The basics make a difference in retail sales - if it doesn't have a price it doesn't sell. Overall I think they are on the right track but have to improve the execution immediately, there is no excuse for the lack of pricing.
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Re: Toys R Us Will Open Up Stores in Every Single Macy's

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: January 10th, 2023, 1:16 pm

I walked through the Temecula, CA Macy's "Toys R Us" setup the week it opened as well as December 26th. From what I can tell they sold every last unit of Lego merchandise as they had four fixtures and a wall of it when they first set up, and not a single item left Dec. 26. All of the Lego area was flexed with other products. I do wonder if they lost a lot to shrink, the Lego wall was right next to a side exit door. Past that it was all higher end product and it didn't look like much sold down. The failure of the Toys setup was pricing. No shelf labels. I would estimate 75% of the product lacked price labels. The nearest price checker was on the other side of the store and Wi-Fi coverage was poor so you couldn't use their app. The basics make a difference in retail sales - if it doesn't have a price it doesn't sell. Overall I think they are on the right track but have to improve the execution immediately, there is no excuse for the lack of pricing.
Lego sold out at many stores. I encountered 10-20% in-stock at multiple Wal Mart and Target units on Lego in the weeks prior to Christmas and it hasn't gotten any better. Some of these Wal Marts have the entire aisle locked up now.

The toy set up at the Reno Macy's took even more space from kid's clothing (they should just exit kid's clothing) and bleeds into Backstage, Kids, Last Act, and Women's Coats. It was in a high traffic spot and quite overstocked at the beginning of the season. A day or two before Christmas it was still very well stocked and I did not think they had sold much. Price labeling was also poor at this location and it was very interesting as I saw many families walk in and out of the Backstage area nobody (not even the kids) stopped to look at these toys. I am wondering if the current group of kids at this age no longer knows what Toys R Us is anymore and the brand is no longer relevant. When Toys R Us was an actual chain every kid knew about Toys R Us because they heard about it from other kids.

I think it would have been more effective to put the Toys R Us pop-up outside Macy's somewhere in the mall. Also Macy's has largely given up on the Christmas decor line and put a tiny space beside an escalator upstairs in the men's store out in Reno, like 5% of the mix they had say 12 years ago when this was still Macy's West and they rented a 5k empty tenant space in the mall for their holiday decor area and would have 4 cashiers working with lines for weeks.
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Re: Toys R Us Will Open Up Stores in Every Single Macy's

Post by ClownLoach »

storewanderer wrote: January 10th, 2023, 6:08 pm
ClownLoach wrote: January 10th, 2023, 1:16 pm

I walked through the Temecula, CA Macy's "Toys R Us" setup the week it opened as well as December 26th. From what I can tell they sold every last unit of Lego merchandise as they had four fixtures and a wall of it when they first set up, and not a single item left Dec. 26. All of the Lego area was flexed with other products. I do wonder if they lost a lot to shrink, the Lego wall was right next to a side exit door. Past that it was all higher end product and it didn't look like much sold down. The failure of the Toys setup was pricing. No shelf labels. I would estimate 75% of the product lacked price labels. The nearest price checker was on the other side of the store and Wi-Fi coverage was poor so you couldn't use their app. The basics make a difference in retail sales - if it doesn't have a price it doesn't sell. Overall I think they are on the right track but have to improve the execution immediately, there is no excuse for the lack of pricing.
Lego sold out at many stores. I encountered 10-20% in-stock at multiple Wal Mart and Target units on Lego in the weeks prior to Christmas and it hasn't gotten any better. Some of these Wal Marts have the entire aisle locked up now.

The toy set up at the Reno Macy's took even more space from kid's clothing (they should just exit kid's clothing) and bleeds into Backstage, Kids, Last Act, and Women's Coats. It was in a high traffic spot and quite overstocked at the beginning of the season. A day or two before Christmas it was still very well stocked and I did not think they had sold much. Price labeling was also poor at this location and it was very interesting as I saw many families walk in and out of the Backstage area nobody (not even the kids) stopped to look at these toys. I am wondering if the current group of kids at this age no longer knows what Toys R Us is anymore and the brand is no longer relevant.

I think it would have been more effective to put the Toys R Us pop-up outside Macy's somewhere in the mall.
Lego has a calendar strategy where more than 60% of their models are replaced on January 1st. Lego stores will have long lines hours before opening New Year's Day, hundreds of people waiting to get the new releases. And about 30% of their product is only sold direct to customer through their own stores. So the expectation is by Christmas the shelves are pretty bare outside of Lego's own stores. The question is if Macy's sold out much earlier and it was my impression that they did, so they didn't buy enough. I also wonder how much of that product was shipped out as e-commerce vs sold in store.

I do not think that the Macy's assortment "felt like" Toys R Us. It seemed to be most of the same toys Macy's always carried around Christmas, such as Melissa & Doug and Discovery science. But Toys R Us was all mainstream and trendy toys. I don't think any of the toys you would see on Saturday morning TV commercials were at this licensed Toys R Us. I suspect that many families looked at it once if they had a reason to visit Macy's and that was it. The fact that they can't execute simple pricing is another strike against them. If they don't improve quickly this weird version of Toys R Us is going to make the brand irrelevant almost immediately in the US. They need to consider exterior signage to promote the brand, dedicated entrance to make a real "store within a store," fix the pricing issue, and go visit the existing stores in Canada which are thriving then clone them.
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Re: Toys R Us Will Open Up Stores in Every Single Macy's

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: January 11th, 2023, 12:19 pm
Lego has a calendar strategy where more than 60% of their models are replaced on January 1st. Lego stores will have long lines hours before opening New Year's Day, hundreds of people waiting to get the new releases. And about 30% of their product is only sold direct to customer through their own stores. So the expectation is by Christmas the shelves are pretty bare outside of Lego's own stores. The question is if Macy's sold out much earlier and it was my impression that they did, so they didn't buy enough. I also wonder how much of that product was shipped out as e-commerce vs sold in store.

I do not think that the Macy's assortment "felt like" Toys R Us. It seemed to be most of the same toys Macy's always carried around Christmas, such as Melissa & Doug and Discovery science. But Toys R Us was all mainstream and trendy toys. I don't think any of the toys you would see on Saturday morning TV commercials were at this licensed Toys R Us. I suspect that many families looked at it once if they had a reason to visit Macy's and that was it. The fact that they can't execute simple pricing is another strike against them. If they don't improve quickly this weird version of Toys R Us is going to make the brand irrelevant almost immediately in the US. They need to consider exterior signage to promote the brand, dedicated entrance to make a real "store within a store," fix the pricing issue, and go visit the existing stores in Canada which are thriving then clone them.
It doesn't feel like Toys R Us at all. They took displays meant for housewares and threw them in random space with random flooring/lighting and slapped out some toys and hung up some signs that said Toys R Us. Once you found something to buy there was no register there so you had to go into some other department to find a register; in Reno the closest registers were in the Backstage, Last Act, Kids, or Lingerie and usually only 2 of those 4 were staffed.

I think the brand is already irrelevant. It became irrelevant when they were unable to reopen the full size stores in the US within a year or two of the chain shutting down. Even using the brand on 5k square foot stores in the mall itself (whether run by Macys or whoever else) would not be the same. The brand Toys R Us in my perception as a kid always stood for- the place with the MOST toys. Period. This just isn't it. Nor would a 5k square foot version be. So why buy from this current Toys R Us? Wal Mart/Target have way more toys. Some CVS units even had more toys. This is basically a joke.
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