There is going to be some changes this year to how black Friday and most stores work….
*Not as many temporary stores as previous years*
Toys R us often opens “pop-up” temporary stores for holiday season shopping. These are stores that are only around for the holidays. In 2010 they opened 600 of these stores. They have yet to confirm how many will be opened this year but did say it will be more then 90. They also stated that they are “working to ensure ample stock of all the season’s hot toys” and will not be cutting back on the amount of people they hire.
*TRU Exclusive toys*
Every year TRU offers their “EXCLUSIVE toys which means you can only find it at their stores. This year they are planning to “dramatically” increase the number of the toys that are only offered at TRU. These toys normally include store brand toys, some made by Mattel, Hasbro, and some international toy makers. The CEO- Jerry Storch said “Price Matters, but kids want the right toy”.
*New ways to shop online*
Recently TRU started letting people to put another person down as the “pick up person”. So when you place an order online you can have your sister,mother, brother, father, ect. pick up your order with out having to make time to do it! Also you can buy something for friends/family in another state and they can go straight to the store and pick it up!
Next month they are going to start to offer a “Ship from store” program. This program will allow you to use the stores inventory. Have you ever been in TRU and they were out of stock of an awesome sale/clearance item that they will not be getting any more stock of and they have non in a warehouse but a store an hour away has TONS of them. Well if they allow clearance to be included in this could mean GREAT things for us, and that we can get those hot items we cant seem to find!
*What this means for us*
In my opinion the fewer the stores the more people you have to fight for the “toy of the year”. Chances are they will not have enough for people to get the items they want. And I personally think they are expanding their “Exclusives” to drown out the price matching that Walmart and Target offer…
I am hoping clearance items will be offered into their “ship from store” program but I guess we will know all the details soon enough!
What are your thoughts on these changes??
