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As infrequently as the Walmarts around here restock, they've pretty much become 24 hour grocery stores at this point.
The good old days of buying Star Wars at retail in the late 70s to mid 80s.
Star Wars at retail today is a half dozen beat up, torn and dusty Phantom Menace 3D figures. Still at full price too even after two years.You are a bold and courageous person, afraid of nothing. High on a hill top near your home, there stands a dilapidated old mansion. Some say the place is haunted, but you don't believe in such myths. One dark and stormy night, a light appears in the topmost window in the tower of the old house. You decide to investigate... and you never return...Comment
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The local Walmart doesn't even have Star Wars figures any more. It's a couple of lightsabers and that's it. They carry a few wrestling figures some Turtles figures and whatever movie has figures out at the time. The only boys toys they carry any more are Legos and Hot Wheels.Comment
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yep! pretty much.....though as a collector,the best toys to buy are online anyways.Toy stores today just flat out suck and will never be like those days of the 80's.
Retailers do order less product these days which is why the shelves are light or usually empty.TRU is the biggest example of this.Retailers don't want to be stuck with much inventory which does hurt them in the end.Comment
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A lot of people are not sure of the inner workings of a retail store and what p and l reports are or bottom line contribution, so it's easy to blame poorly stocked, dirty and unorganized stores but you have to keep everything in prespective that it all comes down to profit. I'll try to break this down as best I can. Let's say Greg's Superstore of Fun has sales of 100,000 dollars in a particular month. That's pretty good for a smaller, family owned fun store and looks good on a ledger until you start breaking down the expenses. Let's say his profit margin is 35 percent (pretty decent for fun products). After cost of sales that leaves 35,000 dollars. Then the following is deducted:
Payroll
Theft of merchandise
Insurance
Credit card charges (EVERY time you swipe a card at your local store costs around 50 cents)
Depreciation of inventory
Maintenance and repairs
Advertising
Utilities
Bad debt(cash shortage, counterfiet bills, fraudulent checks and cards)
Janitorial
Shipping and receiving
Telephone
Internet connections
Rent (this is HUGE)
There are others but the above is fine for illustrative purposes. An ideal bottom line contribution for any store is 17-20 percent. Realistic, for a local store is 10-12 percent. This is what's left after you pay all of the above from your gross profit. In this case, a hundred thousand dollars in sales equates to a total profit of 4200 dollars. That would then be used to purchase future inventory. Smaller stores will have payroll and rent eat up most of the profits, but you can see how retailers have to mark up stuff to maintain profit just to keep heads above water. The above is very simplified from what I have to reconcile each month but is fairly accurate.I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she dumped me before we met.
If anyone here believes in psychokinesis, please raise my hand.Comment
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TRU grew too big to support itself. It's a specialty/niche store, but it's the size of a large department store. They aren't considered successful unless they keep growing and opening more stores, but you reach a point where there isn't any more room to grow. TRU has many problems, but most are self created. The malls around here seem to do well, some stores come and go while others find a balance which can be sustainable.Comment
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Right but one of the main reasons for your now poor selection at stores is the use of just buying it online without leaving the house. Why would a store carry a huge selection of stock when the buyer can now just have it via one click and not leave home--So it is a catch 22 really--. If you want to see stores really have a nice selection again, get rid of the internet and most manufacturers will then be doing what they can to get as many of their items in the stores for people to see as possible- and this creates your selection and helps the psychical store out considerably bringing everything back to square one"What motivated him to throw a puppy at the Hells Angels is currently unclear,"
Starroid Raiders Dagon wrote "No Dime Store Monster left behind"Comment
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I have to respectfully disagree. People are always looking for someone or something to blame and the internet is an easy scapegoat for the problems of retail. But, in my opinion, retails problems are their own fault.
I used to love to shop at stores. I have loads of fond memories of shopping at independent mall boutique stores with my Mom as a child. Plus going to Kaybee, Toys R Us, Children's Palace, etc. But those days were already long gone way before the rise of internet shopping. In my experience Malls and retail shopping has been in steady decline since the mid 90s. I agree with the previous comments of ridiculous rent for store space. The local mall here did that and drove out all the smaller store chains that couldn't afford it. To compensate for the loss of revenue from the abandoned stores they raised the rates even higher for the few remaining ones. To save money there were even days they turned off the air conditioning. Yeah, I want to shop in an empty hot mall.
I used to love Kaybee toys. Kaybee was not brought down, by the internet, Toys R Us or even Walmart. It was destroyed from with in by willfully horrendous mismanagement. The Kmarts in my area were already dumps in the early age of AOL dial up hell. Walmart lost focus when they decided to become a grocery chain.
The missteps of retail led to the rise of internet shopping. Refusing to keep stores clean, orderly and stocked is only going to further drive people to shop online.You are a bold and courageous person, afraid of nothing. High on a hill top near your home, there stands a dilapidated old mansion. Some say the place is haunted, but you don't believe in such myths. One dark and stormy night, a light appears in the topmost window in the tower of the old house. You decide to investigate... and you never return...Comment
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yup! but there was more to it besides that.KB struggled sales wise,but that had alot to do with inventory carried and them turning themselves in a clearance closeout store and carrying older toys.Some of the buying decisions made at corporate level was always questionable and when you don't carry a product the customer wants and asks for then they go some place else.I don't know how many times I have turned customers away because we didn't have what they were looking for.Comment
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we shall agree to disagree- from my view point once I saw the rise of the internet from the 90's I started seeing the decline in stores. You made valid points so I am not knocking any of that stuff, but it also seems too much of a coincidence to not say it is responsible to a greater degree than a lesser one. If you take it in a sort of related note- the internet killed record and video stores- period. Same rules are now applying to retail/dept stores- most people just prefer to shop online and not in the stores, most can find things cheaper and a greater variety online than they can in stores- which in turn brings everything back to some form of "the online internet world"- but we will leave it at that then
that comment might also be regional based because in my area and the surrounding ones, Walmart hasn't wiped out anything in terms of other business's hereLast edited by mazinz; Jan 28, '14, 9:30 PM."What motivated him to throw a puppy at the Hells Angels is currently unclear,"
Starroid Raiders Dagon wrote "No Dime Store Monster left behind"Comment
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That's cool. I respect your opinion even if we disagree.
From my perspective, I saw the failures and decline of retail lead to the rise of internet shopping.from my view point once I saw the rise of the internet from the 90's I started seeing the decline in stores.
In the early days of internet shopping selection was abysmal and shipping was very slow. No amazon prime in those days. Why pick through a tiny selection of items and wait a couple of weeks for the stuff and pay shipping when I can be at a Walmart in 20 minutes and get what ever I want? Retails continual missteps gave e-tailers like amazon the foothold they needed to compete. Had retailers upped their game, managed their stores better, stocked their stores and had well trained helpful employees. They'd still be king. People are impatient (I know I am) and getting my stuff in 20 minutes is still better than two days.
Amazon did not cause my local Kmarts to not clean their store or stock their shelves or fix light fixtures or have people man the registers so I could check out if I actually found something. Nor did amazon kill Kaybee. They did it to themselves.
Edit: I forgot to mention Children's Palace/Child's World which was a favorite of mine as a child. They went out of business years before amazon or internet shopping even existed. They, like may others, were killed by their own mismanagement.Last edited by Werewolf; Jan 28, '14, 10:27 PM.You are a bold and courageous person, afraid of nothing. High on a hill top near your home, there stands a dilapidated old mansion. Some say the place is haunted, but you don't believe in such myths. One dark and stormy night, a light appears in the topmost window in the tower of the old house. You decide to investigate... and you never return...Comment
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By me the one area that did protest and succeed in them not building there was New Paltz. New Paltz though was a bit different than most areas since they had no real major retail outlets there of any kind to begin with. It was all smaller and mostly indie owned shops (with the exception of Shop rite). In my own town Walmart moved in when most of the others were already on the way out to begin with (for whatever reasons they were closing- which is more or less Middletown and Poughkeepsie NY offering much better shopping). I think most of the hooplah of the time was just how fast and how many Walmarts were spreading through the areas, almost virus like in the speed in which they would build and move in
A lot of older and more established stores were def on their way out in the 1990's. No questioning about that. But in terms of business, as always other stores will then rise up to take their place or close to it. However once internet shopping really started to come into it's own by the late 1990's/early 2000's and the convenience it created along with the variety (and then soon after being able to shop via a phone)- even if retailers stepped up their game it still would loose out to the internet. And yet (in a sort of irony) at the same time because of the internet and most of every retailer now online as well as "in store" it saved a great deal of them from going under as well.That's cool. I respect your opinion even if we disagree.
From my perspective, I saw the failures and decline of retail lead to the rise of internet shopping.
In the early days of internet shopping selection was abysmal and shipping was very slow. No amazon prime in those days. Why pick through a tiny selection of items and wait a couple of weeks for the stuff and pay shipping when I can be at a Walmart in 20 minutes and get what ever I want? Retails continual missteps gave e-tailers like amazon the foothold they needed to compete. Had retailers upped their game, managed their stores better, stocked their stores and had well trained helpful employees. They'd still be king. People are impatient (I know I am) and getting my stuff in 20 minutes is still better than two days.
Amazon did not cause my local Kmarts to not clean their store or stock their shelves or fix light fixtures or have people man the registers so I could check out if I actually found something. Nor did amazon kill Kaybee. They did it to themselves.
Edit: I forgot to mention Children's Palace/Child's World which was a favorite of mine as a child. They went out of business years before amazon or internet shopping even existed. They, like may others, were killed by their own mismanagement.Last edited by mazinz; Feb 1, '14, 6:15 PM."What motivated him to throw a puppy at the Hells Angels is currently unclear,"
Starroid Raiders Dagon wrote "No Dime Store Monster left behind"Comment
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One aspect of the internet that has completely wiped out my old purchasing habits is CDS. I use to buy CDS for one song or a handful of songs. Now if I'm in the mood for an old song, I just go to Youtube and listen to it while I work. So where I use to have a ravenous appetite for CDS all the time, I almost never buy one these days unless it's a soundtrack of just one of the few bands left from the 70's that still pumps out product occasionally. And those are a dying breed too. But as a big time consumer of CDs, the internet definitely took me off the market.Comment
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