Amazon.ca bringing toy action to canada
online giant takes on big box giants Recession-proof category
When it entered Canada to do battle with Indigo Books & Music Inc. over books, Amazon.ca was decried as a threat to our country’s cultural heritage and smaller book retailers.
But as the Internet giant now moves into toys — one of its stronger categories in the U.S. — after slowly introducing entertainment, electronics, tools and beauty items here over the years, it stands to become a potent force in Canada’s slow-to-blossom online commerce business.
“Customers in Canada showed us that they wanted and were looking for toys on Amazon.ca,” said Andrea Leigh, head of toys and games at Amazon.ca, adding Canadians are looking for a wide selection and want convenient shipping options.
The new Canadian toys and games division will offer one of the largest selections of toys in the country, Amazon said, including many it says are not available at retail stores. It features 300,000 toys for kids from infancy to teenage-hood, and incudes board games, ac- tion figures, dolls and doll houses and learning and education toys. It also carries large items such as outdoor swing sets.
“We want Amazon.ca to be the destination where customers can discover and purchase toys of all kinds,” she said.
More critically, perhaps, Amazon.ca’s entry into toys means the online retail giant now will be competing far beyond the boundaries of Indigo, which itself has added toys and a growing assortment of non-book categories at its stores as online and digital book buying gains momentum with its customers.
While Amazon.ca initially entered Canada in 2002 as Indigo’s chief rival, the unit of the world’s largest online retailer has gradually incorporated many of the categories it carries in the U.S., putting it into competition with a diverse a base of bricksand-mortar retailers here including as Toys R Us, Shoppers Drug Mart, Best Buy and Home Depot Canada, as well as their Web divisions.
This year alone, Amazon Canada has entered the categories of beauty and household goods, pet care, lawn and garden, and luggage. It has yet to add streaming video, grocery and automotive to its Canadian category roster.
“Amazon is changing the face of retail,” said David Ian Gray, retail consultant at Vancouver-based DIG360 Consulting Ltd.
“Sometimes people really need the inspiration of the store, but at some point in the future we are going to be so comfortable buying online, [many consumers will] shift,” Mr. Gray said. “Every retailer knows it is coming. Will it be five years? Will it be 10? It is hard to tell.”
Toys, he added, are a largely recession-proof item and Amazon’s cost structure makes the retailer well-positioned to go head-to-head on discounts against big-box giants such as Walmart and Toys R Us.
The online retail business has grown slowly in Canada in comparison with other countries, with sales expected to hit $34-billion, or 5.3%, of the overall retail market in Canada by 2016, according to a report last year from Boston Consulting Group for Google Inc. Online sales currently account for 8% of retail in the United States, 13% in the U.K. and a G20 average of 6%.