Lack of hot holiday toy is least of concerns at Toys ‘R’ Us Canada
It should have happened by now. There should have been chattering online, fuelling repeated requests from children and parents stalking parking lots, waiting for toy stores to open. But this year, there is no hot toy for the holiday shopping season, says Toys “R” Us Canada president Melanie Teed-Murch.
Last year, it was Fingerlings, she said. People knocked on store doors, asking whether Toys “R” Us had received a new shipment.
“Don’t have the same knocks happening this year,” Teed-Murch said. “That Tickle Me Elmo doesn’t exist in 2018 holiday right now.”
While Teed-Murch doesn’t see the absence of a home run gift in itself as a long-term problem for the company, it does mean consumers have “the luxury of time” — another potential reason for them not to drive to a big-box toy store.
“Traffic is down everywhere,” she said. “Getting customers in their car in an age of digital is something we work hard on.”
Getting people inside stores has become a major focus for Toys “R” Us Canada, as it continues its push to remind people in Canada that it is not dead.
Since Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., purchased the more successful Canadian arm of Toys “R” Us — rescuing it from creditor protection proceedings and sparing it the same demise as its former American parent company — Teed-Murch has spent significant portions of her interviews emphasizing and re-emphasizing that her 82 stores are still open, despite what you hear about Toys “R” Us closing in the U.S.
Last month, Toys “R” Us Canada even added a red maple leaf to its logo to hammer home the point. But still, Teed-Murch guessed nearly a third of Canadian shoppers remain confused. She said she was expecting a surge in holiday shopping to clear things up, for people to drive from mall to mall and realize, Hey, look, Toys “R” Us is still open.
“Our dark days, they are over,” she said, sitting on a glowing red block in front 12 metre by 11 metre Scrabble board spread out over the former trading room at the old Toronto Stock Exchange. Bay Street firms were playing against each other, part of a fundraiser for Childhood Cancer Canada.
It was the kind of event, under the old American Toys “R” Us parent company, that would have been weighed down by extra layers of approval, everything running through the U.S. head office’s marketing department in New Jersey, Teed-Murch said.
“Unshackle is the word you used,” she told me of the transition to Fairfax, “but empower is the word I like.”
She talks about that period — “the dark time” after Toys “R” Us filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S. — like a near-death experience.
“There were days that I would come home in tears,” she said. “There was no certainty for this brand. The U.S. is gone. The U.K. closed. Australia closed.”
“There were days that I didn’t know how this was going to go. This brand in Canada could have gone away.”
Since the Fairfax purchase, the company has been upgrading half its stores, adding seating areas and pulling down the typical, tall shelves in favour of smaller shelves that put product in reach of children. The other half of the 82 stores are due for the same upgrades next year. The new stores also feature rooms for birthday parties and community spaces for events like lactation expert talks and car seat safety demonstrations to continue to attract traffic into the store.
Birthday parties, to be offered in most major markets in 2019, will include a parade around the store with mascot Geoffrey The Giraffe, Teed-Murch said. Those kinds of events, she said, couldn’t happen under the constraints of the old regime, where capital was funnelled into repairing roofs and parking lots at aging stores.
In the coming years, TeedMurch said she hopes to move away from the big-box model, with stores less than 20,000 square feet rather than their current 45,000 square-foot average.
“I think the future for us as a retailer is definitely smaller venues,” she said. “Smaller venues for sure. I’d love to see some 10,000s and I’d like to see some 5,000 showroom stores in the future. Maybe not tomorrow. We’re probably not ready for it tomorrow.”
The company is already experimenting with smaller stores, opening its first Toys “R” Us Toy Box, at 10,000 square feet, in Guelph, Ont., on Saturday.
“It’s a curated assortment for that market. It doesn’t have everything,” Teed-Murch said, adding that they are looking at three other potential locations for Toy Box stores.