Word: toy
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Pretty Angelica picked by the yellow-capped pickers, packed by the blue-hatted packers and loaded by the gray-brimmed loaders at this 100,000-sq.-ft. eToys warehouse in Commerce, Calif., as another round fired in the retail-vs.-e-tail battle. Christmas is always war in the toy industry, and nowhere more so this year than online, where pure e-tailers like eToys are for the first time fighting on several fronts...
...Toys "R" Us was at first regarded as an industry joke, its website plagued by overcrowding and inadequate order fulfillment. KBkids.com didn't even exist last year. The space belonged to eToys, the first online retailer to design a truly kid-friendly toy site. Kids could create electronic wish lists, gifts came wrapped, batteries came included. "I saw immediately that here was a channel that could revolutionize how you serve the toy market," says eToys CEO Toby Lenk...
...line toy retailers, that kind of problem solving was intimidating enough to keep them on the sidelines during the holiday season, caroling that the Web was just a passing phase. As late as last year, Robert Nakasone, then Toys "R" Us CEO, was more eager to talk about store redesign than Web strategy. Toys "R" Us has had problems with its stores...
...last Christmas, eToys proved you could sell Barbies and Brio trains on the Web, doing $20 million in sales and capturing more than 50% of the online toy biz. So this year off-line players had no choice but to go cyber and--surprise, surprise--they've been up to the task. Toys "R" Us, the bumbling, old-economy slow mover, has in the past two quarters come on like light sabers in the toy space, setting up a subsidiary, Toysrus.com and prepping that company to go public sometime next year...
...Mart's website so crummy? Product selection has improved recently, but it's still puny. The design is underwhelming; search and navigation tools are weak. And don't try returning something bought online to a store. "It's the biggest toy seller in the country, and its toy site is terrible," says Forrester Research analyst David Cooperstein...