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Amazon Considers Buying Some Toys R Us Stores (bloomberg.com)
According to Bloomberg, Amazon has looked at the possibility of expanding its retail footprint by acquiring some locations from bankrupt Toys R Us. "The online giant isn't interested in maintaining the Toys R Us brand, but has considered using the soon-to-be-vacant spaces for its own purposes," reports Bloomberg. From the report: Such a move would let Amazon quickly expand its brick-and-mortar presence, coming on the heels of buying Whole Foods and its more than 450 locations last year. The Seattle-based company also has opened its own line of bookstores and a convenience-store concept. Additional stores would give Amazon space to showcase its popular Echo line of devices, which run on the Alexa voice-activated platform. Amazon sees voice as the next interface for people to access technology -- supplanting computer mouses and touch screens -- and the benefits may be easier to demonstrate in a real-world setting. A bigger network of stores would put inventory closer to where shoppers live, potentially enabling quick delivery to e-commerce customers. The space could also serve as a staging ground for grocery delivery from Whole Foods stores. Amazon is already planning to roll out free two-hour service to Whole Foods customers in four cities, including Dallas and Cincinnati.
After all having all those brick and mortar stores has done wonders for Barnes and Nobles and Waldenbooks.
If they are going to make into stores they would need to compete with Target and Walmart and from what I remember of the Toy R Us stories they were not big enough.
...the shops ALREADY come stocked with drones you can tie packages to for delivery!!!
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Even when they surpass Apple in 2019 as the biggest company in the world, they won't stop there!
Why settle for being #1 when there's a number even higher: Number Zero.
Amazon Zero: coming soon!
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I'm an Amazon kid
Besides the educational ones I mean (and maybe some stuff like this). Somebody was talking about bringing the KB Toys brand back to life. I could see that if there was no competition left.
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The floor space maybe suitable for a warehouse, but the surrounds infrastructure might not be. Semis and truck in and out multiple times per day and all that.
These places were built with retail traffic in mind.
Amazon will purchase the buildings from Toys 'R' Us, but leave them empty. Then, whenever Bezos feels the need to have his power reaffirmed, he can just go to one of these locations and wander around the empty store telling himself "I DID THIS".
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Buying up all the Oregon stores would make sense; people from surrounding states can drive down and buy things from Amazon without paying sales tax. Since Amazon has a physical presence in every state, all shipped purchases are subject to sales tax. Yes, I can see the irony of the company that drove all the brick & mortar stores out of business now building out it's own chain of brick & mortar stores, but they might be used mostly for store pickups and returns of online orders.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"The Seattle-based company also has opened its own line of bookstores...A bigger network of stores would put inventory closer to where shoppers live, potentially enabling quick delivery..."
So, Amazon defines progress as essentially converting themselves back into the very brick and mortar model they decimated? Putting inventory "where shoppers live"? Don't make that bullshit sound like it's some 21st century cutting edge concept; it's how the world did business for the last few thousand years.
The one thing I won't buy online; I need to try them on first. There are still a few products people need to actually touch before they buy.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And people worry about Walmart LOL, Amazon is just as bad.
You would think that with all the data big stores collect, they would know their customers better.
Target in Canada didn't fail because of competition. It failed because it didn't secure it's supply chain and didn't have the products people wanted.
Best Buy is failing for not understanding their customers, even though they are quite vocally being told they don't appreciate being treated like criminals. Also they are failing in Canada because they are not providing the products people want, where they want them. This dispite buying out FutureShop, including the data of exactly what stores were thriving and what they were selling.
We can also see Indigo failing because while Chapters was more convenient than Amazon, Indigo removed transfers from other stores and made the online experience painful.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Amazon has been surviving on borrowed money since Amazon was a book seller. TRS declined in the 1990s vs Walmart and Target. In 1998 Walmart sold more toys than Toys R Us did. By 2005 Moody's rated TRS bonds as "extremely speculative" and "substantial risk" - indicating it was already likely TRS was headed for bankruptcy.
Investors including Bain Capital thought there was still value in the brand, and with better management they might be able to turn the company around, so they bought it (cheap). After analyzing what was happening, Bain and the new management invested in store upgrades and were able to improve sales and profits, with the new approach yielding a 55% profit increase in 2010. That still wasn't enough to support all the high-speed interest debt TRS has been surviving on for the last 20 years, though.
TRS has long been like a guy making $100K who is making minimum payments to float $200,000 in credit card debt. You can survive a long time doing that, but you know it's headed for bankruptcy unless they get lucky somehow.
> Target in Canada didn't fail because of competition. It failed because it
> didn't secure it's supply chain and didn't have the products people wanted.
Let's start at the beginning...
* Walmart buys bunch of Woolworth/Woolco stores in Canada http://articles.latimes.com/19...
* ***KEEPS STORES OPEN***
* this maintains the supply chain and customer base
* renovates a store one section at a time, keeping 3/4 of the individual store open at all times
* when the "rolling renovation" of the store was finished, a sign company came out, and replaced the "Woolco" sign with a "Walmart", and the store never skipped a beat in the process
* Target buys a bunch of Zellers leases
* ***THE IDIOTS SHUT DOWN ALL THE STORES FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR***
* chase away former customers, who now get used to shopping elsewhere
* former suppliers either go out of business, or find business customers elsewhere
* after an entire year of gutting the old stores, they re-open
* now they have to beg all the former customers to come back (didn't work)
* and they try to ramp up supply chain for an entire store chain all at once (didn't work)
If you ever want to write a "How *NOT* to expand into another country" book, Target is the obvious case study.
I'm not repeating myself
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The Toys R Us locations make sense. Now let's take their data tracking / customer profiling to the next level and create a store much like what was Service Merchandise. Order darn near anything in advance and they'll ship it that day to the store for you to pick it up. Shop there and they have the common items / trends ready to sold. Product that doesn't sell / needed elsewhere returns to the warehouse on the trucks making the deliveries and shifted to other locations as needed.
I keep saying that Amazon's long term strategy is to drive the 20th century brick-and-mortar stores out of business and then buy up their real estate at fire sale prices. Then they open Amazon stores.