KB-Toys is coming back from the dead. The toy retailer that went bankrupt in 2009 is going to stage a comeback to try to pick up some of the business dropped by the closing of Toys R Us (TRU). According to one article, they will likely have a bunch of pop-ups this fall and more permanent locations by next year.

My expectation is that they won’t pick up as much of the toy industry as they think.

When TRU closed they were still doing billions of dollars in sales. They still had over 100 million customers. They actually showed a profit last year. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to pay the massive debt they had acquired.

While a lot of uneducated pundits and many comments on several articles about Toys R Us closing want to blame Walmart and Amazon for their demise, those two companies had already taken their sizable bites out of TRU’s hide. People who wanted to shop purely on price or convenience were already going to Walmart and buying toys with their groceries. People who knew exactly what they wanted and didn’t want to leave the house to get it were already shopping on Amazon.

The customers still shopping at Toys R Us (over 100 million times, mind you) were going there for one of two things …

• The Experience
• The Selection

As an independent toy store owner who offered events, demos, and a fun, friendly environment for shopping, I can rightfully roll my eyes when someone mentions the “experience” of going to a Toys R Us. In fact, most of your independent toy stores will be able to offer a consistently better “experience” than going to TRU. But the customers going there weren’t comparing it to an indie toy store. They were comparing it to Walmart or Target.

You never heard a young kid pleading, “Please, take me to Walmart, puhleeeeezzzze!”

The Selection crowd was going to Toys R Us to browse the aisles. Amazon, as incredible as it is, isn’t built for browsing. Oh sure, you can search stuff on Amazon. As of last September Amazon was closing in on Google as the primary place people go to search for products. But Amazon searching is not the same as browsing. You still need a starting point.

If you want to walk aisles, touch and feel products, and get inspired, you have to go to a brick & mortar store to do that. Outside of a handful of my friends in the independent, specialty toy industry, no one had a larger selection of toys to browse than TRU. Customers went there because it was a better selection and an easier browse than the cramped, too narrow, too tall, too messy aisles of a typical Walmart or Target store.

When KB-Toys opens their pop-ups this fall they won’t have either The Experience or The Selection to truly catch the ball dropped by TRU. Sure, they will make sales. The pop-up model has been proven to be effective to an extent. Whether it will be enough to jump back into the toy market full fledged, however, time will tell. My guess is it won’t be enough and KB will become a perennial pop-up along the lines of Halloween USA. (At least that is what I would advise them to do if they were to ask me.)

The lesson here for specialty retailers like you is to recognize the different types of customers and why they shop at the different competitors you face.

Walmart is all about price and convenience. The cheaper the better. Amazon is for when you know (roughly) what you want, and you don’t want to go out to get it. Your category killers (JoAnn’s, Michael’s Toys R Us, Cabela’s, Barnes & Noble, PetSmart, et al) are more about Experience and Selection. Of the three, the one who most closely shares your customers is the category killer. Your growth is dependent on how many of those customers you can peel away. You already know you can beat them on Experience. Tomorrow we’ll talk about how you can beat them on Selection, too.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The toy industry, with the closing of Toys R Us, offers a lot of opportunity for different stores to pick up the slack. There will be a lot of disenfranchised customers. Most everyone in the channel from the big box stores to Amazon to the indie stores stand to gain from their disappearance. The biggest winners will be those who have the most compelling message to the former TRU customers. Knowing why they were still choosing TRU over Walmart and Amazon gives you the heads up on what to say to get them to notice you.