Toys R Us Canada appears to be doing just fine and some people are maybe looking to buy it. Hopefully this doesn't go down like the Blockbuster situation where the american version took the Canadian version down with it despite the Canadian stores being profitable.
This in general matches with my experience, which sound nothing like the americans talking about Toys R Us. Here it's no more expensive then anywhere else and places like Amazon.ca are way way way less useful for picking up stuff because neither the selection nor the prices are good enough to be retail destroying. The closest competition would be Walmart and on that front the two are pretty similar, with Toys R Us generally having a better baby section and having the benefit of not being Walmart. Babies R Us is very useful. That's a competitive store on both prices and selection.
Also at least young kids (preschoolers and the like) play with toys all the time, so that market seems fine overall.
This just reads like "Amazon Canada is lagging behind". This isn't a description of a healthy market - its a description of a place where the Eye of Bezos has not yet cast it's gaze. It's crazy to me to hear someone say that Amazon's selection is less than "somewhere between exhaustive and encyclopedic". From my experiences trying to ship items we've purchased in the US up to our Canadian offices, import duties are also helping a lot as it's quite expensive to just get across the border. Likewise, as soon as something enters Canada delivery seems to slow down by 1-2 days (not to mention the 2-5 days sitting at the border) over expected delivery times to a similar distance in the USA.
I guess what I'm saying is that the reason TRU Canada is competitive has little to do with TRU and a lot to do with artificial, external conditions that are preventing competitors from destroying them.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
For consumers its clearly a bad thing.
Is it?
because at no point in the time I've spent living in the better part of the american continent has the lack of an amazon monopoly come close to being a "bad thing".
This statement doesn't parse because there is no Amazon monopoly anywhere, and yet Amazon's entrance and subsequent domination of the market place in the USA has been a clear and obvious net benefit for consumers.
Except that Amazon keeps killing the businesses that give the consumers money while expressly finding every way to not have to hire them to expand their own business. Short term gains, long term fucked.
amazon is going to be the biggest monopoly we've ever seen, but we effectively don't have a government to regulate things anymore, so we're in for hard times employment wise
Amazon will outcompete business like walmart and sears, sure.
But it won't be the death of brick and mortar for a good long time. Millennials do love amazon, but they also love shopping experiences too.
Amazon will replace large-area and outlet stores like Sears, TRU, Wallmart, and so on. Their entire business plan is giving customers a large selection and cheap prices, and Amazon has a much larger selection at much cheaper prices.
What Amazon will not replace is smaller specialized stores, where you can get specialized products, expert advice, and experience. Specialized products are harder to find online (especially without getting slammed by shipping fees), and not everyone can understand spec sheets or find reliable sources online. And live experience always wins out over sitting in front of a computer screen.
Game stores are already adapting. Board games are the best example: board game cafés give you access to a range of obscure games you won't find at Walmart and TRU, experts who've played them and can guide you to the good games in your favourite genre, and the café portion allows you to sit down and play the game before you buy it while sipping a beer with friends (along with experts to explain the rules to you). Amazon's got nothing on that.
Except that after you are done playing the game at the cafe you go home order the game on Amazon and you don't go back to the cafe until you are looking for a new game.
You go home?
You buy it on your phone for $15 less right there at the table, and if you're lucky you just tell them to drop it off at your doorstep while you have one more drink. Then you go home and play around 2 at your house.
This is not a common feeling in the US, yet.
I live in a decent sized city that literally was built around being a transport hub (3 different interstates and another handful of state and US routes all meet), and we don't get Prime Now or anything like this. We're only now starting to get pickup/delivery on groceries, mostly thanks to Wal-Mart and Hyvee and a few other companies. Despite there being multiple distribution centers in Illinois, there's still a 2 day lag to get anything here (less than a couple hours away). Now extend that for people in rural areas...
Now, on the larger discussion, board games aren't a good analogue anyways because they are a social event. You need to experience the games with someone else, on some level, be it online or in person. Game shops cater to this. Books are generally not a social experience, beyond conspicuous consumption. But toys? Toys is something I feel fits in the middle, where people need to see what they are buying (and make sure it is appropriate) and then they can impulse buy. IF we ever get nation-wide doorstep delivery, then I can see that being the death knell of brick and mortar for the toy industry. But again - the bigger problem was the leveraged buyout hurting the experience and feel (and raising prices), not necessarily the arrival of Amazon... yet.
My version of this looks like four different companies competing to bring me groceries to my house, within 2 hours, for about $4 more than it would cost me to spend 2 hours getting them myself.
Prime now is transformative, and I absolutely, unquestionably welcome it. Big box stores are environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse, and their business model is built around a combination of inertia and ignorance.
I have a deep sense of nostalgia for Toys R Us, and they were truly a part of my childhood. The store occupies A Place In My Memory. Itwas the first place I saw an intellivision. It had an entire aisle dedicated to just to video games. It had every action figure in every set I wanted! It was magical and I'm glad it existed when I was a child.
Nowadays like most things that existed when I was a child - rotary dialing, Long distance charges, broadcast television, Ozarks related fads - I'm not really upset that they're gone and I am excited to see the acceleration of brick-and-mortar closures.
We love you, goodbye. Don't come back.
I wouldn't say Amazon is a fabulous replacement in these regards. Its essentially Walmart of the internet, and it treats its employees pretty shittily as far as I've ever heard. You know outside the tech sector portions of it, which are only like marginally bad. That kinda bad the way all super aggressive tech firms are.
Amazon's brand offerings extend from bottom end wal-mart competitor right up to the top of the line. Its employees are tread better than your usual factory workers, for what that's worth, and the tech side is better compensated than elsewhere.
But even if it's the upstart nozama.com and 12 other online retailers instead of Big Evil Amazon or whatever, it's still a net benefit over brick and mortar. Stores are waste, pure and simple. The less often you go in them, the better off you and the planet both are.
amazon is going to be the biggest monopoly we've ever seen, but we effectively don't have a government to regulate things anymore, so we're in for hard times employment wise
Amazon will outcompete business like walmart and sears, sure.
But it won't be the death of brick and mortar for a good long time. Millennials do love amazon, but they also love shopping experiences too.
Amazon will replace large-area and outlet stores like Sears, TRU, Wallmart, and so on. Their entire business plan is giving customers a large selection and cheap prices, and Amazon has a much larger selection at much cheaper prices.
What Amazon will not replace is smaller specialized stores, where you can get specialized products, expert advice, and experience. Specialized products are harder to find online (especially without getting slammed by shipping fees), and not everyone can understand spec sheets or find reliable sources online. And live experience always wins out over sitting in front of a computer screen.
Game stores are already adapting. Board games are the best example: board game cafés give you access to a range of obscure games you won't find at Walmart and TRU, experts who've played them and can guide you to the good games in your favourite genre, and the café portion allows you to sit down and play the game before you buy it while sipping a beer with friends (along with experts to explain the rules to you). Amazon's got nothing on that.
Except that after you are done playing the game at the cafe you go home order the game on Amazon and you don't go back to the cafe until you are looking for a new game.
You go home?
You buy it on your phone for $15 less right there at the table, and if you're lucky you just tell them to drop it off at your doorstep while you have one more drink. Then you go home and play around 2 at your house.
This is not a common feeling in the US, yet.
I live in a decent sized city that literally was built around being a transport hub (3 different interstates and another handful of state and US routes all meet), and we don't get Prime Now or anything like this. We're only now starting to get pickup/delivery on groceries, mostly thanks to Wal-Mart and Hyvee and a few other companies. Despite there being multiple distribution centers in Illinois, there's still a 2 day lag to get anything here (less than a couple hours away). Now extend that for people in rural areas...
Now, on the larger discussion, board games aren't a good analogue anyways because they are a social event. You need to experience the games with someone else, on some level, be it online or in person. Game shops cater to this. Books are generally not a social experience, beyond conspicuous consumption. But toys? Toys is something I feel fits in the middle, where people need to see what they are buying (and make sure it is appropriate) and then they can impulse buy. IF we ever get nation-wide doorstep delivery, then I can see that being the death knell of brick and mortar for the toy industry. But again - the bigger problem was the leveraged buyout hurting the experience and feel (and raising prices), not necessarily the arrival of Amazon... yet.
My version of this looks like four different companies competing to bring me groceries to my house, within 2 hours, for about $4 more than it would cost me to spend 2 hours getting them myself.
Prime now is transformative, and I absolutely, unquestionably welcome it. Big box stores are environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse, and their business model is built around a combination of inertia and ignorance.
I have a deep sense of nostalgia for Toys R Us, and they were truly a part of my childhood. The store occupies A Place In My Memory. Itwas the first place I saw an intellivision. It had an entire aisle dedicated to just to video games. It had every action figure in every set I wanted! It was magical and I'm glad it existed when I was a child.
Nowadays like most things that existed when I was a child - rotary dialing, Long distance charges, broadcast television, Ozarks related fads - I'm not really upset that they're gone and I am excited to see the acceleration of brick-and-mortar closures.
We love you, goodbye. Don't come back.
I wouldn't say Amazon is a fabulous replacement in these regards. Its essentially Walmart of the internet, and it treats its employees pretty shittily as far as I've ever heard. You know outside the tech sector portions of it, which are only like marginally bad. That kinda bad the way all super aggressive tech firms are.
Not to mention their tax dodging is fucking shameless even by corporate standards
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Mx. QuillI now prefer "Myr. Quill", actually...{They/Them}Registered Userregular
I can't believe Babies'r'Us is going down with them. The one near me always seems busy, and I got most of my baby stuff there.. But I guess baby registries are going online now, too.
I did all of mine on Amazon, they offer a lot of perks and it's easy for friends/relatives to use.
For all that they say online shopping is not a big factor... I think it is. At least, it weakens the big box stores enough that hostile buyouts etc mean they can't recover.
I'm waiting for the death of Barnes and Noble - my daughter adores toy shopping there and they have a really large toy section, as well as a huge kids book section. Prices aren't noticeably worse than Amazon either. But I still buy stuff from Amazon when I want something specific, as opposed to having her choose.
B&N has been on a downward slope due to poor management for years but they're in a death spiral now. Fired nearly all of their full time employees earlier this year. I'd be surprised if they make it to 2019.
Shit, really? Dammit.
I worked at B&N a few years ago and that's not surprising to hear. They put a lot of stock into the Nook and that didn't take off like they wanted. Plus they still don't price match and their prices are ludicrous compared to basically anywhere else.
Yeah, they were still charging something like $45 for the entire set of Legend of Korra, whereas Amazon sells it for $15 less.
Which is a shame, because I really like physical book stores simply because physical books are the one form of physical media I still prefer over digital.
amazon is going to be the biggest monopoly we've ever seen, but we effectively don't have a government to regulate things anymore, so we're in for hard times employment wise
Amazon will outcompete business like walmart and sears, sure.
But it won't be the death of brick and mortar for a good long time. Millennials do love amazon, but they also love shopping experiences too.
Amazon will replace large-area and outlet stores like Sears, TRU, Wallmart, and so on. Their entire business plan is giving customers a large selection and cheap prices, and Amazon has a much larger selection at much cheaper prices.
What Amazon will not replace is smaller specialized stores, where you can get specialized products, expert advice, and experience. Specialized products are harder to find online (especially without getting slammed by shipping fees), and not everyone can understand spec sheets or find reliable sources online. And live experience always wins out over sitting in front of a computer screen.
Game stores are already adapting. Board games are the best example: board game cafés give you access to a range of obscure games you won't find at Walmart and TRU, experts who've played them and can guide you to the good games in your favourite genre, and the café portion allows you to sit down and play the game before you buy it while sipping a beer with friends (along with experts to explain the rules to you). Amazon's got nothing on that.
Except that after you are done playing the game at the cafe you go home order the game on Amazon and you don't go back to the cafe until you are looking for a new game.
You go home?
You buy it on your phone for $15 less right there at the table, and if you're lucky you just tell them to drop it off at your doorstep while you have one more drink. Then you go home and play around 2 at your house.
This is not a common feeling in the US, yet.
I live in a decent sized city that literally was built around being a transport hub (3 different interstates and another handful of state and US routes all meet), and we don't get Prime Now or anything like this. We're only now starting to get pickup/delivery on groceries, mostly thanks to Wal-Mart and Hyvee and a few other companies. Despite there being multiple distribution centers in Illinois, there's still a 2 day lag to get anything here (less than a couple hours away). Now extend that for people in rural areas...
Now, on the larger discussion, board games aren't a good analogue anyways because they are a social event. You need to experience the games with someone else, on some level, be it online or in person. Game shops cater to this. Books are generally not a social experience, beyond conspicuous consumption. But toys? Toys is something I feel fits in the middle, where people need to see what they are buying (and make sure it is appropriate) and then they can impulse buy. IF we ever get nation-wide doorstep delivery, then I can see that being the death knell of brick and mortar for the toy industry. But again - the bigger problem was the leveraged buyout hurting the experience and feel (and raising prices), not necessarily the arrival of Amazon... yet.
My version of this looks like four different companies competing to bring me groceries to my house, within 2 hours, for about $4 more than it would cost me to spend 2 hours getting them myself.
Prime now is transformative, and I absolutely, unquestionably welcome it. Big box stores are environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse, and their business model is built around a combination of inertia and ignorance.
I have a deep sense of nostalgia for Toys R Us, and they were truly a part of my childhood. The store occupies A Place In My Memory. Itwas the first place I saw an intellivision. It had an entire aisle dedicated to just to video games. It had every action figure in every set I wanted! It was magical and I'm glad it existed when I was a child.
Nowadays like most things that existed when I was a child - rotary dialing, Long distance charges, broadcast television, Ozarks related fads - I'm not really upset that they're gone and I am excited to see the acceleration of brick-and-mortar closures.
We love you, goodbye. Don't come back.
I think you could fairly describe Amazon warehouses as "...environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse..."
Toys R Us Canada appears to be doing just fine and some people are maybe looking to buy it. Hopefully this doesn't go down like the Blockbuster situation where the american version took the Canadian version down with it despite the Canadian stores being profitable.
This in general matches with my experience, which sound nothing like the americans talking about Toys R Us. Here it's no more expensive then anywhere else and places like Amazon.ca are way way way less useful for picking up stuff because neither the selection nor the prices are good enough to be retail destroying. The closest competition would be Walmart and on that front the two are pretty similar, with Toys R Us generally having a better baby section and having the benefit of not being Walmart. Babies R Us is very useful. That's a competitive store on both prices and selection.
Also at least young kids (preschoolers and the like) play with toys all the time, so that market seems fine overall.
This just reads like "Amazon Canada is lagging behind". This isn't a description of a healthy market - its a description of a place where the Eye of Bezos has not yet cast it's gaze. It's crazy to me to hear someone say that Amazon's selection is less than "somewhere between exhaustive and encyclopedic". From my experiences trying to ship items we've purchased in the US up to our Canadian offices, import duties are also helping a lot as it's quite expensive to just get across the border. Likewise, as soon as something enters Canada delivery seems to slow down by 1-2 days (not to mention the 2-5 days sitting at the border) over expected delivery times to a similar distance in the USA.
I guess what I'm saying is that the reason TRU Canada is competitive has little to do with TRU and a lot to do with artificial, external conditions that are preventing competitors from destroying them.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
For consumers its clearly a bad thing.
Is it?
because at no point in the time I've spent living in the better part of the american continent has the lack of an amazon monopoly come close to being a "bad thing".
This statement doesn't parse because there is no Amazon monopoly anywhere, and yet Amazon's entrance and subsequent domination of the market place in the USA has been a clear and obvious net benefit for consumers.
Except that Amazon keeps killing the businesses that give the consumers money while expressly finding every way to not have to hire them to expand their own business. Short term gains, long term fucked.
Corporations in general are working their way there thanks to increasing outsorcing, buyouts and automatization. The economy is basically slowly killing itself because the companies that DONT resort to these practicies cant compete effectively and fail one by one. The end result will be mass unemployment with a bunch of super rich people at the top selling their goods to the developing world instead.
I can't believe Babies'r'Us is going down with them. The one near me always seems busy, and I got most of my baby stuff there.. But I guess baby registries are going online now, too.
I did all of mine on Amazon, they offer a lot of perks and it's easy for friends/relatives to use.
For all that they say online shopping is not a big factor... I think it is. At least, it weakens the big box stores enough that hostile buyouts etc mean they can't recover.
I'm waiting for the death of Barnes and Noble - my daughter adores toy shopping there and they have a really large toy section, as well as a huge kids book section. Prices aren't noticeably worse than Amazon either. But I still buy stuff from Amazon when I want something specific, as opposed to having her choose.
I also prefer online shopping over retail, I've never enjoyed shopping as an experience.
I vastly prefer online shopping over B&M when I know exactly what I want.
But when I just want to browse and wander the aisles looking at stuff until something catches my eye? When I want to pick up a book and feel it's heft and skip to the middle to read a page or two... You can't do that on Amazon.
This is one of the reasons I will be sad when B&N dies out. Sometimes I just want to roam around and see if something catches my fancy for a book. If I know exactly what I want amazon is fine but I have found a lot of books I did not know I wanted roaming my local bookstores.
I've seen too many toy stores die over the years this side of the pond. Taylor & McKenna, Beatties, the independent store my dad started that didn't last a year (long time ago, that was), the model shop in the city nearest to me that closed I think it was last year, and now TRU... it sometimes feels like that whole sector is cursed, and not just because of the rise of internet sales or vulture capital firms like Bain.
It’s hard when the competition doesn’t need to devote shelf space to displaying merch, or pay for clerks to be there even when there’s no business, or pay rent on store fronts. Also hard to stay competitive when the competition’s not just undercutting your prices, but delivering things directly to the customer’s door. Lot of retail places needed to adapt or die in the last several years and a lot of them chose Death (not necessarily because the wanted to mind you)
Won’t lay all the blame at TRU’s feet, but they not entirely victims either.
No, I'm pretty sure the problem was the multi-billion dollar boat anchor Bain put around TRU's neck.
Can someone explain what the benefit is to the people who buy the company in these scenarios?
Like, I get the idea, you use a smaller amount of money and the rest is loans, and the loans go on the companies books (which is insane)
but then the company goes...bankrupt so...what are you getting out of it?
I've seen too many toy stores die over the years this side of the pond. Taylor & McKenna, Beatties, the independent store my dad started that didn't last a year (long time ago, that was), the model shop in the city nearest to me that closed I think it was last year, and now TRU... it sometimes feels like that whole sector is cursed, and not just because of the rise of internet sales or vulture capital firms like Bain.
It’s hard when the competition doesn’t need to devote shelf space to displaying merch, or pay for clerks to be there even when there’s no business, or pay rent on store fronts. Also hard to stay competitive when the competition’s not just undercutting your prices, but delivering things directly to the customer’s door. Lot of retail places needed to adapt or die in the last several years and a lot of them chose Death (not necessarily because the wanted to mind you)
Won’t lay all the blame at TRU’s feet, but they not entirely victims either.
No, I'm pretty sure the problem was the multi-billion dollar boat anchor Bain put around TRU's neck.
Can someone explain what the benefit is to the people who buy the company in these scenarios?
Like, I get the idea, you use a smaller amount of money and the rest is loans, and the loans go on the companies books (which is insane)
but then the company goes...bankrupt so...what are you getting out of it?
you're basically betting that the company was gonna die anyway so why not ride it on the way down extracting all the profits, then use its final sale price to cover the loan
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I've seen too many toy stores die over the years this side of the pond. Taylor & McKenna, Beatties, the independent store my dad started that didn't last a year (long time ago, that was), the model shop in the city nearest to me that closed I think it was last year, and now TRU... it sometimes feels like that whole sector is cursed, and not just because of the rise of internet sales or vulture capital firms like Bain.
It’s hard when the competition doesn’t need to devote shelf space to displaying merch, or pay for clerks to be there even when there’s no business, or pay rent on store fronts. Also hard to stay competitive when the competition’s not just undercutting your prices, but delivering things directly to the customer’s door. Lot of retail places needed to adapt or die in the last several years and a lot of them chose Death (not necessarily because the wanted to mind you)
Won’t lay all the blame at TRU’s feet, but they not entirely victims either.
No, I'm pretty sure the problem was the multi-billion dollar boat anchor Bain put around TRU's neck.
Can someone explain what the benefit is to the people who buy the company in these scenarios?
Like, I get the idea, you use a smaller amount of money and the rest is loans, and the loans go on the companies books (which is insane)
but then the company goes...bankrupt so...what are you getting out of it?
You loot the company for salaries and bonuses while you part it out, bankrupt the corporation so you only pay a marginal amount on the debt racked up to buy the company, and then continue to loot the flaming hulk as you crash it into the earth. That's my basic understanding of the practice.
I've seen too many toy stores die over the years this side of the pond. Taylor & McKenna, Beatties, the independent store my dad started that didn't last a year (long time ago, that was), the model shop in the city nearest to me that closed I think it was last year, and now TRU... it sometimes feels like that whole sector is cursed, and not just because of the rise of internet sales or vulture capital firms like Bain.
It’s hard when the competition doesn’t need to devote shelf space to displaying merch, or pay for clerks to be there even when there’s no business, or pay rent on store fronts. Also hard to stay competitive when the competition’s not just undercutting your prices, but delivering things directly to the customer’s door. Lot of retail places needed to adapt or die in the last several years and a lot of them chose Death (not necessarily because the wanted to mind you)
Won’t lay all the blame at TRU’s feet, but they not entirely victims either.
No, I'm pretty sure the problem was the multi-billion dollar boat anchor Bain put around TRU's neck.
Can someone explain what the benefit is to the people who buy the company in these scenarios?
Like, I get the idea, you use a smaller amount of money and the rest is loans, and the loans go on the companies books (which is insane)
but then the company goes...bankrupt so...what are you getting out of it?
You loot the company for salaries and bonuses while you part it out, bankrupt the corporation so you only pay a marginal amount on the debt racked up to buy the company, and then continue to loot the flaming hulk as you crash it into the earth. That's my basic understanding of the practice.
So rent seeking via abuse of corporate finance and bankruptcy law
The stated idea of Bain Capital was to buy inefficient businesses and the apply Bain Consulting techniques to turn them around
Presumably those techniques are bare staffing levels, horrible and outdated facilities and customer experience that can be described as “I feel really bad and dirty when shopping/eating here.”
amazon is going to be the biggest monopoly we've ever seen, but we effectively don't have a government to regulate things anymore, so we're in for hard times employment wise
Amazon will outcompete business like walmart and sears, sure.
But it won't be the death of brick and mortar for a good long time. Millennials do love amazon, but they also love shopping experiences too.
Amazon will replace large-area and outlet stores like Sears, TRU, Wallmart, and so on. Their entire business plan is giving customers a large selection and cheap prices, and Amazon has a much larger selection at much cheaper prices.
What Amazon will not replace is smaller specialized stores, where you can get specialized products, expert advice, and experience. Specialized products are harder to find online (especially without getting slammed by shipping fees), and not everyone can understand spec sheets or find reliable sources online. And live experience always wins out over sitting in front of a computer screen.
Game stores are already adapting. Board games are the best example: board game cafés give you access to a range of obscure games you won't find at Walmart and TRU, experts who've played them and can guide you to the good games in your favourite genre, and the café portion allows you to sit down and play the game before you buy it while sipping a beer with friends (along with experts to explain the rules to you). Amazon's got nothing on that.
Except that after you are done playing the game at the cafe you go home order the game on Amazon and you don't go back to the cafe until you are looking for a new game.
You go home?
You buy it on your phone for $15 less right there at the table, and if you're lucky you just tell them to drop it off at your doorstep while you have one more drink. Then you go home and play around 2 at your house.
This is not a common feeling in the US, yet.
I live in a decent sized city that literally was built around being a transport hub (3 different interstates and another handful of state and US routes all meet), and we don't get Prime Now or anything like this. We're only now starting to get pickup/delivery on groceries, mostly thanks to Wal-Mart and Hyvee and a few other companies. Despite there being multiple distribution centers in Illinois, there's still a 2 day lag to get anything here (less than a couple hours away). Now extend that for people in rural areas...
Now, on the larger discussion, board games aren't a good analogue anyways because they are a social event. You need to experience the games with someone else, on some level, be it online or in person. Game shops cater to this. Books are generally not a social experience, beyond conspicuous consumption. But toys? Toys is something I feel fits in the middle, where people need to see what they are buying (and make sure it is appropriate) and then they can impulse buy. IF we ever get nation-wide doorstep delivery, then I can see that being the death knell of brick and mortar for the toy industry. But again - the bigger problem was the leveraged buyout hurting the experience and feel (and raising prices), not necessarily the arrival of Amazon... yet.
My version of this looks like four different companies competing to bring me groceries to my house, within 2 hours, for about $4 more than it would cost me to spend 2 hours getting them myself.
Prime now is transformative, and I absolutely, unquestionably welcome it. Big box stores are environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse, and their business model is built around a combination of inertia and ignorance.
I have a deep sense of nostalgia for Toys R Us, and they were truly a part of my childhood. The store occupies A Place In My Memory. Itwas the first place I saw an intellivision. It had an entire aisle dedicated to just to video games. It had every action figure in every set I wanted! It was magical and I'm glad it existed when I was a child.
Nowadays like most things that existed when I was a child - rotary dialing, Long distance charges, broadcast television, Ozarks related fads - I'm not really upset that they're gone and I am excited to see the acceleration of brick-and-mortar closures.
We love you, goodbye. Don't come back.
I think you could fairly describe Amazon warehouses as "...environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse..."
Of course, we can more easily ignore their ecological footprint, because it weighs heaviest on poorer communities which are near their distribution hubs.
Toys R Us Canada appears to be doing just fine and some people are maybe looking to buy it. Hopefully this doesn't go down like the Blockbuster situation where the american version took the Canadian version down with it despite the Canadian stores being profitable.
This in general matches with my experience, which sound nothing like the americans talking about Toys R Us. Here it's no more expensive then anywhere else and places like Amazon.ca are way way way less useful for picking up stuff because neither the selection nor the prices are good enough to be retail destroying. The closest competition would be Walmart and on that front the two are pretty similar, with Toys R Us generally having a better baby section and having the benefit of not being Walmart. Babies R Us is very useful. That's a competitive store on both prices and selection.
Also at least young kids (preschoolers and the like) play with toys all the time, so that market seems fine overall.
This just reads like "Amazon Canada is lagging behind". This isn't a description of a healthy market - its a description of a place where the Eye of Bezos has not yet cast it's gaze. It's crazy to me to hear someone say that Amazon's selection is less than "somewhere between exhaustive and encyclopedic". From my experiences trying to ship items we've purchased in the US up to our Canadian offices, import duties are also helping a lot as it's quite expensive to just get across the border. Likewise, as soon as something enters Canada delivery seems to slow down by 1-2 days (not to mention the 2-5 days sitting at the border) over expected delivery times to a similar distance in the USA.
I guess what I'm saying is that the reason TRU Canada is competitive has little to do with TRU and a lot to do with artificial, external conditions that are preventing competitors from destroying them.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
For consumers its clearly a bad thing.
Is it?
because at no point in the time I've spent living in the better part of the american continent has the lack of an amazon monopoly come close to being a "bad thing".
This statement doesn't parse because there is no Amazon monopoly anywhere, and yet Amazon's entrance and subsequent domination of the market place in the USA has been a clear and obvious net benefit for consumers.
Except that Amazon keeps killing the businesses that give the consumers money while expressly finding every way to not have to hire them to expand their own business. Short term gains, long term fucked.
This also doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not being sarcastic - I cannot understand what you mean.
My guess is that you mean it's an even more massive wal-mart effect? Long-term, we have to solve this problem different ways because we simply don't need or want 33,000 people employed in an industry with a primary reason for existence that amounts to "employee 33,000 people doing something".
Meanwhile the gains are huge for consumers and retailers who are prepared to work in the new market.
I've seen too many toy stores die over the years this side of the pond. Taylor & McKenna, Beatties, the independent store my dad started that didn't last a year (long time ago, that was), the model shop in the city nearest to me that closed I think it was last year, and now TRU... it sometimes feels like that whole sector is cursed, and not just because of the rise of internet sales or vulture capital firms like Bain.
It’s hard when the competition doesn’t need to devote shelf space to displaying merch, or pay for clerks to be there even when there’s no business, or pay rent on store fronts. Also hard to stay competitive when the competition’s not just undercutting your prices, but delivering things directly to the customer’s door. Lot of retail places needed to adapt or die in the last several years and a lot of them chose Death (not necessarily because the wanted to mind you)
Won’t lay all the blame at TRU’s feet, but they not entirely victims either.
No, I'm pretty sure the problem was the multi-billion dollar boat anchor Bain put around TRU's neck.
Can someone explain what the benefit is to the people who buy the company in these scenarios?
Like, I get the idea, you use a smaller amount of money and the rest is loans, and the loans go on the companies books (which is insane)
but then the company goes...bankrupt so...what are you getting out of it?
Money. There's a reason why I described it as a "legalized bustout". And if you're wondering what a bustout is...
I mean sure, our techno-utopia mega Corp is bad to work at but it's not any worse than some Dickensian meat factory.
Yeah, they hardly ever need to whip us, what with the punishment bracelets we have to wear.
They have ambulances on hand in case you work yourself to death.
Point is, the system works.
Reminds me of the Dilbert animated series episode where Dilbert tried to unionize the workers of Elbonia, and the only work benefit they had was "if you die, you get time off to attend your funeral".
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Toys R Us Canada president has just released a statement declaring that it's still business-as-usual for them north of the border.
Since I have a register at Babies R Us (and it is by far the most affordable, accessible, and complete baby-supply store in my vicinity), I have received the statement by email from them. Given our on-going chat here about TRU, I will confess that I did a double-take when I saw an email from TRU at the top of my in-box :P
Toys R Us Canada appears to be doing just fine and some people are maybe looking to buy it. Hopefully this doesn't go down like the Blockbuster situation where the american version took the Canadian version down with it despite the Canadian stores being profitable.
This in general matches with my experience, which sound nothing like the americans talking about Toys R Us. Here it's no more expensive then anywhere else and places like Amazon.ca are way way way less useful for picking up stuff because neither the selection nor the prices are good enough to be retail destroying. The closest competition would be Walmart and on that front the two are pretty similar, with Toys R Us generally having a better baby section and having the benefit of not being Walmart. Babies R Us is very useful. That's a competitive store on both prices and selection.
Also at least young kids (preschoolers and the like) play with toys all the time, so that market seems fine overall.
This just reads like "Amazon Canada is lagging behind". This isn't a description of a healthy market - its a description of a place where the Eye of Bezos has not yet cast it's gaze. It's crazy to me to hear someone say that Amazon's selection is less than "somewhere between exhaustive and encyclopedic". From my experiences trying to ship items we've purchased in the US up to our Canadian offices, import duties are also helping a lot as it's quite expensive to just get across the border. Likewise, as soon as something enters Canada delivery seems to slow down by 1-2 days (not to mention the 2-5 days sitting at the border) over expected delivery times to a similar distance in the USA.
I guess what I'm saying is that the reason TRU Canada is competitive has little to do with TRU and a lot to do with artificial, external conditions that are preventing competitors from destroying them.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
For consumers its clearly a bad thing.
Is it?
because at no point in the time I've spent living in the better part of the american continent has the lack of an amazon monopoly come close to being a "bad thing".
This statement doesn't parse because there is no Amazon monopoly anywhere, and yet Amazon's entrance and subsequent domination of the market place in the USA has been a clear and obvious net benefit for consumers.
Except that Amazon keeps killing the businesses that give the consumers money while expressly finding every way to not have to hire them to expand their own business. Short term gains, long term fucked.
This also doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not being sarcastic - I cannot understand what you mean.
My guess is that you mean it's an even more massive wal-mart effect? Long-term, we have to solve this problem different ways because we simply don't need or want 33,000 people employed in an industry with a primary reason for existence that amounts to "employee 33,000 people doing something".
Meanwhile the gains are huge for consumers and retailers who are prepared to work in the new market.
amazon is going to be the biggest monopoly we've ever seen, but we effectively don't have a government to regulate things anymore, so we're in for hard times employment wise
Amazon will outcompete business like walmart and sears, sure.
But it won't be the death of brick and mortar for a good long time. Millennials do love amazon, but they also love shopping experiences too.
Amazon will replace large-area and outlet stores like Sears, TRU, Wallmart, and so on. Their entire business plan is giving customers a large selection and cheap prices, and Amazon has a much larger selection at much cheaper prices.
What Amazon will not replace is smaller specialized stores, where you can get specialized products, expert advice, and experience. Specialized products are harder to find online (especially without getting slammed by shipping fees), and not everyone can understand spec sheets or find reliable sources online. And live experience always wins out over sitting in front of a computer screen.
Game stores are already adapting. Board games are the best example: board game cafés give you access to a range of obscure games you won't find at Walmart and TRU, experts who've played them and can guide you to the good games in your favourite genre, and the café portion allows you to sit down and play the game before you buy it while sipping a beer with friends (along with experts to explain the rules to you). Amazon's got nothing on that.
Except that after you are done playing the game at the cafe you go home order the game on Amazon and you don't go back to the cafe until you are looking for a new game.
You go home?
You buy it on your phone for $15 less right there at the table, and if you're lucky you just tell them to drop it off at your doorstep while you have one more drink. Then you go home and play around 2 at your house.
This is not a common feeling in the US, yet.
I live in a decent sized city that literally was built around being a transport hub (3 different interstates and another handful of state and US routes all meet), and we don't get Prime Now or anything like this. We're only now starting to get pickup/delivery on groceries, mostly thanks to Wal-Mart and Hyvee and a few other companies. Despite there being multiple distribution centers in Illinois, there's still a 2 day lag to get anything here (less than a couple hours away). Now extend that for people in rural areas...
Now, on the larger discussion, board games aren't a good analogue anyways because they are a social event. You need to experience the games with someone else, on some level, be it online or in person. Game shops cater to this. Books are generally not a social experience, beyond conspicuous consumption. But toys? Toys is something I feel fits in the middle, where people need to see what they are buying (and make sure it is appropriate) and then they can impulse buy. IF we ever get nation-wide doorstep delivery, then I can see that being the death knell of brick and mortar for the toy industry. But again - the bigger problem was the leveraged buyout hurting the experience and feel (and raising prices), not necessarily the arrival of Amazon... yet.
My version of this looks like four different companies competing to bring me groceries to my house, within 2 hours, for about $4 more than it would cost me to spend 2 hours getting them myself.
Prime now is transformative, and I absolutely, unquestionably welcome it. Big box stores are environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse, and their business model is built around a combination of inertia and ignorance.
I have a deep sense of nostalgia for Toys R Us, and they were truly a part of my childhood. The store occupies A Place In My Memory. Itwas the first place I saw an intellivision. It had an entire aisle dedicated to just to video games. It had every action figure in every set I wanted! It was magical and I'm glad it existed when I was a child.
Nowadays like most things that existed when I was a child - rotary dialing, Long distance charges, broadcast television, Ozarks related fads - I'm not really upset that they're gone and I am excited to see the acceleration of brick-and-mortar closures.
We love you, goodbye. Don't come back.
I think you could fairly describe Amazon warehouses as "...environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse..."
Firstly I don't think you could describe them as any of those things. Secondly, how many amazon warehouses are there? Just in terms of pure footprint, the environmental impact of the square footage of TRU is bad for the planet and we would be better off had the stores themselves never been built.
Online retail is clearly better than physical retail in terms of environmental impact. Delivery model vs individual travel, lack of physical resource consumption, efficiency gains... stores suck all around.
Toys R Us Canada appears to be doing just fine and some people are maybe looking to buy it. Hopefully this doesn't go down like the Blockbuster situation where the american version took the Canadian version down with it despite the Canadian stores being profitable.
This in general matches with my experience, which sound nothing like the americans talking about Toys R Us. Here it's no more expensive then anywhere else and places like Amazon.ca are way way way less useful for picking up stuff because neither the selection nor the prices are good enough to be retail destroying. The closest competition would be Walmart and on that front the two are pretty similar, with Toys R Us generally having a better baby section and having the benefit of not being Walmart. Babies R Us is very useful. That's a competitive store on both prices and selection.
Also at least young kids (preschoolers and the like) play with toys all the time, so that market seems fine overall.
This just reads like "Amazon Canada is lagging behind". This isn't a description of a healthy market - its a description of a place where the Eye of Bezos has not yet cast it's gaze. It's crazy to me to hear someone say that Amazon's selection is less than "somewhere between exhaustive and encyclopedic". From my experiences trying to ship items we've purchased in the US up to our Canadian offices, import duties are also helping a lot as it's quite expensive to just get across the border. Likewise, as soon as something enters Canada delivery seems to slow down by 1-2 days (not to mention the 2-5 days sitting at the border) over expected delivery times to a similar distance in the USA.
I guess what I'm saying is that the reason TRU Canada is competitive has little to do with TRU and a lot to do with artificial, external conditions that are preventing competitors from destroying them.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
For consumers its clearly a bad thing.
Is it?
because at no point in the time I've spent living in the better part of the american continent has the lack of an amazon monopoly come close to being a "bad thing".
This statement doesn't parse because there is no Amazon monopoly anywhere, and yet Amazon's entrance and subsequent domination of the market place in the USA has been a clear and obvious net benefit for consumers.
Except that Amazon keeps killing the businesses that give the consumers money while expressly finding every way to not have to hire them to expand their own business. Short term gains, long term fucked.
This also doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not being sarcastic - I cannot understand what you mean.
My guess is that you mean it's an even more massive wal-mart effect? Long-term, we have to solve this problem different ways because we simply don't need or want 33,000 people employed in an industry with a primary reason for existence that amounts to "employee 33,000 people doing something".
Meanwhile the gains are huge for consumers and retailers who are prepared to work in the new market.
What new market? Amazon is taking over the whole thing. It'll ALL be Amazon eventually!
Toys R Us Canada appears to be doing just fine and some people are maybe looking to buy it. Hopefully this doesn't go down like the Blockbuster situation where the american version took the Canadian version down with it despite the Canadian stores being profitable.
This in general matches with my experience, which sound nothing like the americans talking about Toys R Us. Here it's no more expensive then anywhere else and places like Amazon.ca are way way way less useful for picking up stuff because neither the selection nor the prices are good enough to be retail destroying. The closest competition would be Walmart and on that front the two are pretty similar, with Toys R Us generally having a better baby section and having the benefit of not being Walmart. Babies R Us is very useful. That's a competitive store on both prices and selection.
Also at least young kids (preschoolers and the like) play with toys all the time, so that market seems fine overall.
This just reads like "Amazon Canada is lagging behind". This isn't a description of a healthy market - its a description of a place where the Eye of Bezos has not yet cast it's gaze. It's crazy to me to hear someone say that Amazon's selection is less than "somewhere between exhaustive and encyclopedic". From my experiences trying to ship items we've purchased in the US up to our Canadian offices, import duties are also helping a lot as it's quite expensive to just get across the border. Likewise, as soon as something enters Canada delivery seems to slow down by 1-2 days (not to mention the 2-5 days sitting at the border) over expected delivery times to a similar distance in the USA.
I guess what I'm saying is that the reason TRU Canada is competitive has little to do with TRU and a lot to do with artificial, external conditions that are preventing competitors from destroying them.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
For consumers its clearly a bad thing.
Is it?
because at no point in the time I've spent living in the better part of the american continent has the lack of an amazon monopoly come close to being a "bad thing".
This statement doesn't parse because there is no Amazon monopoly anywhere, and yet Amazon's entrance and subsequent domination of the market place in the USA has been a clear and obvious net benefit for consumers.
Except that Amazon keeps killing the businesses that give the consumers money while expressly finding every way to not have to hire them to expand their own business. Short term gains, long term fucked.
This also doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not being sarcastic - I cannot understand what you mean.
My guess is that you mean it's an even more massive wal-mart effect? Long-term, we have to solve this problem different ways because we simply don't need or want 33,000 people employed in an industry with a primary reason for existence that amounts to "employee 33,000 people doing something".
Meanwhile the gains are huge for consumers and retailers who are prepared to work in the new market.
Except we aren't going to do any of those other solutions, people are just going to get worse off in the long run.
Like in the end it fucks 33,000 people that aren't going to get saved, no one's going to do shit to help them. All they can do is move onto the next retail chain till Amazon either sends that out of business as well or buys it outright.
Long term those consumers are more fucked than helped.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Toys R Us Canada appears to be doing just fine and some people are maybe looking to buy it. Hopefully this doesn't go down like the Blockbuster situation where the american version took the Canadian version down with it despite the Canadian stores being profitable.
This in general matches with my experience, which sound nothing like the americans talking about Toys R Us. Here it's no more expensive then anywhere else and places like Amazon.ca are way way way less useful for picking up stuff because neither the selection nor the prices are good enough to be retail destroying. The closest competition would be Walmart and on that front the two are pretty similar, with Toys R Us generally having a better baby section and having the benefit of not being Walmart. Babies R Us is very useful. That's a competitive store on both prices and selection.
Also at least young kids (preschoolers and the like) play with toys all the time, so that market seems fine overall.
This just reads like "Amazon Canada is lagging behind". This isn't a description of a healthy market - its a description of a place where the Eye of Bezos has not yet cast it's gaze. It's crazy to me to hear someone say that Amazon's selection is less than "somewhere between exhaustive and encyclopedic". From my experiences trying to ship items we've purchased in the US up to our Canadian offices, import duties are also helping a lot as it's quite expensive to just get across the border. Likewise, as soon as something enters Canada delivery seems to slow down by 1-2 days (not to mention the 2-5 days sitting at the border) over expected delivery times to a similar distance in the USA.
I guess what I'm saying is that the reason TRU Canada is competitive has little to do with TRU and a lot to do with artificial, external conditions that are preventing competitors from destroying them.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
For consumers its clearly a bad thing.
Is it?
because at no point in the time I've spent living in the better part of the american continent has the lack of an amazon monopoly come close to being a "bad thing".
This statement doesn't parse because there is no Amazon monopoly anywhere, and yet Amazon's entrance and subsequent domination of the market place in the USA has been a clear and obvious net benefit for consumers.
Except that Amazon keeps killing the businesses that give the consumers money while expressly finding every way to not have to hire them to expand their own business. Short term gains, long term fucked.
This also doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not being sarcastic - I cannot understand what you mean.
My guess is that you mean it's an even more massive wal-mart effect? Long-term, we have to solve this problem different ways because we simply don't need or want 33,000 people employed in an industry with a primary reason for existence that amounts to "employee 33,000 people doing something".
Meanwhile the gains are huge for consumers and retailers who are prepared to work in the new market.
So how would you accomodate the 33,000?
That's the essential question since we started industrializing, isn't it? I don't think we have a great answer yet.
That a theoretical model dominated by online shopping would better requires me to endorse Amazon like support for a strong Eurozone requires I endorse the Third Reich.
Toys R Us Canada appears to be doing just fine and some people are maybe looking to buy it. Hopefully this doesn't go down like the Blockbuster situation where the american version took the Canadian version down with it despite the Canadian stores being profitable.
This in general matches with my experience, which sound nothing like the americans talking about Toys R Us. Here it's no more expensive then anywhere else and places like Amazon.ca are way way way less useful for picking up stuff because neither the selection nor the prices are good enough to be retail destroying. The closest competition would be Walmart and on that front the two are pretty similar, with Toys R Us generally having a better baby section and having the benefit of not being Walmart. Babies R Us is very useful. That's a competitive store on both prices and selection.
Also at least young kids (preschoolers and the like) play with toys all the time, so that market seems fine overall.
This just reads like "Amazon Canada is lagging behind". This isn't a description of a healthy market - its a description of a place where the Eye of Bezos has not yet cast it's gaze. It's crazy to me to hear someone say that Amazon's selection is less than "somewhere between exhaustive and encyclopedic". From my experiences trying to ship items we've purchased in the US up to our Canadian offices, import duties are also helping a lot as it's quite expensive to just get across the border. Likewise, as soon as something enters Canada delivery seems to slow down by 1-2 days (not to mention the 2-5 days sitting at the border) over expected delivery times to a similar distance in the USA.
I guess what I'm saying is that the reason TRU Canada is competitive has little to do with TRU and a lot to do with artificial, external conditions that are preventing competitors from destroying them.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
For consumers its clearly a bad thing.
Is it?
because at no point in the time I've spent living in the better part of the american continent has the lack of an amazon monopoly come close to being a "bad thing".
This statement doesn't parse because there is no Amazon monopoly anywhere, and yet Amazon's entrance and subsequent domination of the market place in the USA has been a clear and obvious net benefit for consumers.
Except that Amazon keeps killing the businesses that give the consumers money while expressly finding every way to not have to hire them to expand their own business. Short term gains, long term fucked.
This also doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not being sarcastic - I cannot understand what you mean.
My guess is that you mean it's an even more massive wal-mart effect? Long-term, we have to solve this problem different ways because we simply don't need or want 33,000 people employed in an industry with a primary reason for existence that amounts to "employee 33,000 people doing something".
Meanwhile the gains are huge for consumers and retailers who are prepared to work in the new market.
So how would you accomodate the 33,000?
That's the essential question since we started industrializing, isn't it? I don't think we have a great answer yet.
Well, according to our corporate overlords, we should "work harder". Which mostly translates to "lie down in the gutter and die, plebs"
Toys R Us Canada appears to be doing just fine and some people are maybe looking to buy it. Hopefully this doesn't go down like the Blockbuster situation where the american version took the Canadian version down with it despite the Canadian stores being profitable.
This in general matches with my experience, which sound nothing like the americans talking about Toys R Us. Here it's no more expensive then anywhere else and places like Amazon.ca are way way way less useful for picking up stuff because neither the selection nor the prices are good enough to be retail destroying. The closest competition would be Walmart and on that front the two are pretty similar, with Toys R Us generally having a better baby section and having the benefit of not being Walmart. Babies R Us is very useful. That's a competitive store on both prices and selection.
Also at least young kids (preschoolers and the like) play with toys all the time, so that market seems fine overall.
This just reads like "Amazon Canada is lagging behind". This isn't a description of a healthy market - its a description of a place where the Eye of Bezos has not yet cast it's gaze. It's crazy to me to hear someone say that Amazon's selection is less than "somewhere between exhaustive and encyclopedic". From my experiences trying to ship items we've purchased in the US up to our Canadian offices, import duties are also helping a lot as it's quite expensive to just get across the border. Likewise, as soon as something enters Canada delivery seems to slow down by 1-2 days (not to mention the 2-5 days sitting at the border) over expected delivery times to a similar distance in the USA.
I guess what I'm saying is that the reason TRU Canada is competitive has little to do with TRU and a lot to do with artificial, external conditions that are preventing competitors from destroying them.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
For consumers its clearly a bad thing.
Is it?
because at no point in the time I've spent living in the better part of the american continent has the lack of an amazon monopoly come close to being a "bad thing".
This statement doesn't parse because there is no Amazon monopoly anywhere, and yet Amazon's entrance and subsequent domination of the market place in the USA has been a clear and obvious net benefit for consumers.
Except that Amazon keeps killing the businesses that give the consumers money while expressly finding every way to not have to hire them to expand their own business. Short term gains, long term fucked.
This also doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not being sarcastic - I cannot understand what you mean.
My guess is that you mean it's an even more massive wal-mart effect? Long-term, we have to solve this problem different ways because we simply don't need or want 33,000 people employed in an industry with a primary reason for existence that amounts to "employee 33,000 people doing something".
Meanwhile the gains are huge for consumers and retailers who are prepared to work in the new market.
So how would you accomodate the 33,000?
That's the essential question since we started industrializing, isn't it? I don't think we have a great answer yet.
Because people keep trying to find market solutions for political problems
Meanwhile the gains are huge for consumers and retailers who are prepared to work in the new market.
There isn't a new market.
Tell that to the Chuck Tingle.
There isn't a new market, man. From today to a week ago nothing has changed except another brick and mortar retailer went under.
Nothing is going to replace it because it's getting replaced with automation.
Good! Nothing should replace big-box toy stores!
Also y'all young parents who want to go to a store to buy baby stuff are blowing my mind. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was take the infant anyplace. If I could have had all the essentials delivered to us when they were small I can't even guess how much nicer our lives would have been.
A lot of these problems with amazon are literally problems with big box stores too.
You might as well just proclaim "yo why are corporations under capitalism such garbage?"
We had a problem with it when it was the other big stores too, but Amazon is the biggest issue right now. What are we supposed to do, burn down any retailer that gets above a certain quota of stores? Because planned economies havent worked out so great either.
amazon is going to be the biggest monopoly we've ever seen, but we effectively don't have a government to regulate things anymore, so we're in for hard times employment wise
Amazon will outcompete business like walmart and sears, sure.
But it won't be the death of brick and mortar for a good long time. Millennials do love amazon, but they also love shopping experiences too.
Amazon will replace large-area and outlet stores like Sears, TRU, Wallmart, and so on. Their entire business plan is giving customers a large selection and cheap prices, and Amazon has a much larger selection at much cheaper prices.
What Amazon will not replace is smaller specialized stores, where you can get specialized products, expert advice, and experience. Specialized products are harder to find online (especially without getting slammed by shipping fees), and not everyone can understand spec sheets or find reliable sources online. And live experience always wins out over sitting in front of a computer screen.
Game stores are already adapting. Board games are the best example: board game cafés give you access to a range of obscure games you won't find at Walmart and TRU, experts who've played them and can guide you to the good games in your favourite genre, and the café portion allows you to sit down and play the game before you buy it while sipping a beer with friends (along with experts to explain the rules to you). Amazon's got nothing on that.
Except that after you are done playing the game at the cafe you go home order the game on Amazon and you don't go back to the cafe until you are looking for a new game.
You go home?
You buy it on your phone for $15 less right there at the table, and if you're lucky you just tell them to drop it off at your doorstep while you have one more drink. Then you go home and play around 2 at your house.
This is not a common feeling in the US, yet.
I live in a decent sized city that literally was built around being a transport hub (3 different interstates and another handful of state and US routes all meet), and we don't get Prime Now or anything like this. We're only now starting to get pickup/delivery on groceries, mostly thanks to Wal-Mart and Hyvee and a few other companies. Despite there being multiple distribution centers in Illinois, there's still a 2 day lag to get anything here (less than a couple hours away). Now extend that for people in rural areas...
Now, on the larger discussion, board games aren't a good analogue anyways because they are a social event. You need to experience the games with someone else, on some level, be it online or in person. Game shops cater to this. Books are generally not a social experience, beyond conspicuous consumption. But toys? Toys is something I feel fits in the middle, where people need to see what they are buying (and make sure it is appropriate) and then they can impulse buy. IF we ever get nation-wide doorstep delivery, then I can see that being the death knell of brick and mortar for the toy industry. But again - the bigger problem was the leveraged buyout hurting the experience and feel (and raising prices), not necessarily the arrival of Amazon... yet.
My version of this looks like four different companies competing to bring me groceries to my house, within 2 hours, for about $4 more than it would cost me to spend 2 hours getting them myself.
Prime now is transformative, and I absolutely, unquestionably welcome it. Big box stores are environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse, and their business model is built around a combination of inertia and ignorance.
I have a deep sense of nostalgia for Toys R Us, and they were truly a part of my childhood. The store occupies A Place In My Memory. Itwas the first place I saw an intellivision. It had an entire aisle dedicated to just to video games. It had every action figure in every set I wanted! It was magical and I'm glad it existed when I was a child.
Nowadays like most things that existed when I was a child - rotary dialing, Long distance charges, broadcast television, Ozarks related fads - I'm not really upset that they're gone and I am excited to see the acceleration of brick-and-mortar closures.
We love you, goodbye. Don't come back.
I think you could fairly describe Amazon warehouses as "...environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse..."
Firstly I don't think you could describe them as any of those things. Secondly, how many amazon warehouses are there? Just in terms of pure footprint, the environmental impact of the square footage of TRU is bad for the planet and we would be better off had the stores themselves never been built.
Online retail is clearly better than physical retail in terms of environmental impact. Delivery model vs individual travel, lack of physical resource consumption, efficiency gains... stores suck all around.
How can you claim on one hand that the footprint of TRU is worse than Amazon if you don't even know what the footprint of Amazon is? What makes the footprint of TRU environmentally "worse" than Amazon?
Is online retail clearly better than physical retail in terms of environmental impact? Is it more efficient if I make one trip to a store to buy six things, or have UPS make six different deliveries to my house? How much additional packaging is Amazon adding to each item I purchase, packaging that will go into a landfill?
And what about your other complaints about TRU? That they "deceive customers" or "soak wealth out of the economy". Amazon does those things. Look at their price fixing on books, which has been specifically done to force out competition and monopolize the market.
Or what about the way they pay and treat their employees? TRU doesn't require employees to go through a half hour screening prior to and after each shift to ensure no stock was stolen. TRU doesn't fire employees for falling behind on very aggressive shipment schedules. Neither TRU nor Amazon pay exceptionally well.
I've been a Prime member since the program rolled out, and I don't think Amazon is the paragon you make them out to be.
A lot of these problems with amazon are literally problems with big box stores too.
You might as well just proclaim "yo why are corporations under capitalism such garbage?"
We had a problem with it when it was the other big stores too, but Amazon is the biggest issue right now. What are we supposed to do, burn down any retailer that gets above a certain quota of stores? Because planned economies havent worked out so great either.
A lot of these problems with amazon are literally problems with big box stores too.
You might as well just proclaim "yo why are corporations under capitalism such garbage?"
We had a problem with it when it was the other big stores too, but Amazon is the biggest issue right now. What are we supposed to do, burn down any retailer that gets above a certain quota of stores? Because planned economies havent worked out so great either.
It's not really an issue with amazon but an issue with capitalism in general.
Every company outside of mom and pop companies with 5 people do this kind of min-max bullshit, there's really not much you can do without burning down the whole system, yes.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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Except that Amazon keeps killing the businesses that give the consumers money while expressly finding every way to not have to hire them to expand their own business. Short term gains, long term fucked.
Amazon's brand offerings extend from bottom end wal-mart competitor right up to the top of the line. Its employees are tread better than your usual factory workers, for what that's worth, and the tech side is better compensated than elsewhere.
But even if it's the upstart nozama.com and 12 other online retailers instead of Big Evil Amazon or whatever, it's still a net benefit over brick and mortar. Stores are waste, pure and simple. The less often you go in them, the better off you and the planet both are.
Not to mention their tax dodging is fucking shameless even by corporate standards
Yeah, they were still charging something like $45 for the entire set of Legend of Korra, whereas Amazon sells it for $15 less.
Which is a shame, because I really like physical book stores simply because physical books are the one form of physical media I still prefer over digital.
I think you could fairly describe Amazon warehouses as "...environmentally harmful, promote waste, deceive customers, and soak wealth out of the economy. They pay their employees terribly, treat them worse..."
Corporations in general are working their way there thanks to increasing outsorcing, buyouts and automatization. The economy is basically slowly killing itself because the companies that DONT resort to these practicies cant compete effectively and fail one by one. The end result will be mass unemployment with a bunch of super rich people at the top selling their goods to the developing world instead.
This is one of the reasons I will be sad when B&N dies out. Sometimes I just want to roam around and see if something catches my fancy for a book. If I know exactly what I want amazon is fine but I have found a lot of books I did not know I wanted roaming my local bookstores.
Can someone explain what the benefit is to the people who buy the company in these scenarios?
Like, I get the idea, you use a smaller amount of money and the rest is loans, and the loans go on the companies books (which is insane)
but then the company goes...bankrupt so...what are you getting out of it?
Yeah, they hardly ever need to whip us, what with the punishment bracelets we have to wear.
you're basically betting that the company was gonna die anyway so why not ride it on the way down extracting all the profits, then use its final sale price to cover the loan
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
You loot the company for salaries and bonuses while you part it out, bankrupt the corporation so you only pay a marginal amount on the debt racked up to buy the company, and then continue to loot the flaming hulk as you crash it into the earth. That's my basic understanding of the practice.
They have ambulances on hand in case you work yourself to death.
Point is, the system works.
So rent seeking via abuse of corporate finance and bankruptcy law
The stated idea of Bain Capital was to buy inefficient businesses and the apply Bain Consulting techniques to turn them around
Presumably those techniques are bare staffing levels, horrible and outdated facilities and customer experience that can be described as “I feel really bad and dirty when shopping/eating here.”
Of course, we can more easily ignore their ecological footprint, because it weighs heaviest on poorer communities which are near their distribution hubs.
This also doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not being sarcastic - I cannot understand what you mean.
My guess is that you mean it's an even more massive wal-mart effect? Long-term, we have to solve this problem different ways because we simply don't need or want 33,000 people employed in an industry with a primary reason for existence that amounts to "employee 33,000 people doing something".
Meanwhile the gains are huge for consumers and retailers who are prepared to work in the new market.
Money. There's a reason why I described it as a "legalized bustout". And if you're wondering what a bustout is...
Reminds me of the Dilbert animated series episode where Dilbert tried to unionize the workers of Elbonia, and the only work benefit they had was "if you die, you get time off to attend your funeral".
There isn't a new market.
Since I have a register at Babies R Us (and it is by far the most affordable, accessible, and complete baby-supply store in my vicinity), I have received the statement by email from them. Given our on-going chat here about TRU, I will confess that I did a double-take when I saw an email from TRU at the top of my in-box :P
So how would you accomodate the 33,000?
Firstly I don't think you could describe them as any of those things. Secondly, how many amazon warehouses are there? Just in terms of pure footprint, the environmental impact of the square footage of TRU is bad for the planet and we would be better off had the stores themselves never been built.
Online retail is clearly better than physical retail in terms of environmental impact. Delivery model vs individual travel, lack of physical resource consumption, efficiency gains... stores suck all around.
What new market? Amazon is taking over the whole thing. It'll ALL be Amazon eventually!
Tell that to the Chuck Tingle.
Except we aren't going to do any of those other solutions, people are just going to get worse off in the long run.
Like in the end it fucks 33,000 people that aren't going to get saved, no one's going to do shit to help them. All they can do is move onto the next retail chain till Amazon either sends that out of business as well or buys it outright.
Long term those consumers are more fucked than helped.
There isn't a new market, man. From today to a week ago nothing has changed except another brick and mortar retailer went under.
Nothing is going to replace it because it's getting replaced with automation.
That's the essential question since we started industrializing, isn't it? I don't think we have a great answer yet.
*checks*
...evryone should start writing bizarre gay erotica?
Well, according to our corporate overlords, we should "work harder". Which mostly translates to "lie down in the gutter and die, plebs"
Because people keep trying to find market solutions for political problems
Good! Nothing should replace big-box toy stores!
Also y'all young parents who want to go to a store to buy baby stuff are blowing my mind. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was take the infant anyplace. If I could have had all the essentials delivered to us when they were small I can't even guess how much nicer our lives would have been.
You might as well just proclaim "yo why are corporations under capitalism such garbage?"
We had a problem with it when it was the other big stores too, but Amazon is the biggest issue right now. What are we supposed to do, burn down any retailer that gets above a certain quota of stores? Because planned economies havent worked out so great either.
How can you claim on one hand that the footprint of TRU is worse than Amazon if you don't even know what the footprint of Amazon is? What makes the footprint of TRU environmentally "worse" than Amazon?
Is online retail clearly better than physical retail in terms of environmental impact? Is it more efficient if I make one trip to a store to buy six things, or have UPS make six different deliveries to my house? How much additional packaging is Amazon adding to each item I purchase, packaging that will go into a landfill?
And what about your other complaints about TRU? That they "deceive customers" or "soak wealth out of the economy". Amazon does those things. Look at their price fixing on books, which has been specifically done to force out competition and monopolize the market.
Or what about the way they pay and treat their employees? TRU doesn't require employees to go through a half hour screening prior to and after each shift to ensure no stock was stolen. TRU doesn't fire employees for falling behind on very aggressive shipment schedules. Neither TRU nor Amazon pay exceptionally well.
I've been a Prime member since the program rolled out, and I don't think Amazon is the paragon you make them out to be.
Antitrust laws, on the other hand, have.
If you want to have an argument about Amazon itself, not this thread.
It's not really an issue with amazon but an issue with capitalism in general.
Every company outside of mom and pop companies with 5 people do this kind of min-max bullshit, there's really not much you can do without burning down the whole system, yes.