Toys-R-Us 2010 Black Friday Plans

'Tis the season to be discounting!

All the Black Friday circular ads for the major retailers are leaking out onto shopper websites all over the 'net. TRU's BF ad leaked overnight and reveals a bold and aggressive new plan of attack for the last giant toy store in the world. In a first for just about any retailer, Toys-R-Us will open its doors to the masses on Thanksgiving night at 10pm.

While every year it seems more retailers are opening earlier the day after Thanksgiving than the year before, a few at midnight, several now at 3 and 4am this year, TRU breaks tradition and will be open for a limited time until 1am, then reopen at 5am Friday.

Not exactly a fun weekend of the year to be working inside any retailer. If you have ever seen firsthand how that Black Friday shopping crowd tears apart the aisles of any store, you then have to realize how long it would take to clean the place back up, re-stock and be ready to open fresh again in just a few hours. I doubt any of those TRU managers will even leave the stores between 1am and 5am.

The deals in TRU's Black Friday ad are very good this year. Check out the scans here!

While the majority of these deals are a draw for the average Holiday toy shopper, there are several great deals for the toy collector as well that include:
Transformers Voyager or Power Bots series $9.99. Reg is $24.99 at TRU
Transformer, Iron Man & GI Joe action figures half off reg retail.
Last year's GI Joe giant PITT vehicle will be only $49.99 or half off.

We've seen the Target BF ad and now TRU's. So far TRU has the best overall toy deals by a mile. Wal-Mart's ad will likely leak by next week and you can bet the team at Amazon.com is happily taking notes on all these ads and will be setting up their own deals to match much of the competition over the course of those few days.

Next to the post Holiday clearance, this is the best time of the year get out and spend money like you actually have it!

Iron Man 2 $15 Blu-ray Deal

Welcome to the official kick off of Retailer Price Wars for the fall of 2010!

Wal-mart is firing the first salvo of the season with an irresistible deal of only $15 when you preorder the upcoming Iron Man 2 Blu-ray. That's $10 less than everyone else in the game as of this date. Target.com and Amazon.com will have no choice but to follow shortly.

Each retailer has internal policies that maintain they must price match the major competitor. Amazon will react shortly but it takes Target longer as the arguments have to take place internally between buyers/marketing/upper management and the studio. Target will want to try to make the studio cough up some sort of payout to minimize the markdown damage. They won't. This means an ugly Monday for that division of Target. It means more deep discounting damage has to be planned for on high profile media products (movies, video games, books) and it all starts much eariler than expected. Last year the deep discounting didn't really begin until early to mid October.

Love it. Going to be another great shopping season of deals for the consumer.

Amazon.com rules the online world of retail

Amazon's 4th Q of 2009 (Christmas shopping time for you laymen) was up an eye popping 71% over the previous year! Most retailers are celebrating positive returns in the single digits.

Nice try spending tens of millions on your new online revamp Target...too little and far too late.

Also very happy to report that is looks like Amazon is back to deeply discounting Blu-Ray titles once more! Fuck Yeah!

Newest deal that fanboys will love...pre-order Planet Hulk on BR (Feb 2nd) for only $17.99!

Best Toy Retailer of 2009 - TRU

Toys-R-Us has good reason to celebrate the 2009 Holiday shopping season. The company released their December 2009 financials today and despite difficult economic challenges in the marketplace, they had a very positive December.

WAYNE, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--January 07, 2010-- Today, Toys"R"Us, Inc., the world's leading dedicated toy and baby products retailer, announced its comparable store sales for the month of December and the 2009 holiday selling season.

For the month of December, the Toys"R"Us, Inc. Domestic division reported a comparable store sales increase of 4.6%, while the International division reported a comparable store sales increase of 1.1%.

"We are very pleased with our December results, which reflect the successful execution of our overall strategy for the holiday selling period," said Jerry Storch, Chairman and CEO, Toys"R"Us, Inc. "This strategy focused on our breadth of product assortment, including the hottest toys, a commitment to quality products, providing good value, and offering expert service. Our toy authority position was clear, as consumers turned to us in increasing numbers for their toy buying needs this holiday season."

We watched the marketing of the major retailers closely over the 2009 shopping season and could tell TRU had finally put a very solid game plan together to compete against the likes of Wal-Mart and Target. They had it all covered.

* Competitive pricing out of the gates starting in October linked with strong marketing that never let up with compelling circular and television ads.

* Strong inventory control, finally! This is where TRU had the most difficulty over its history and just had too much of everything. This year, they planned ahead by backing off on lines that are lower in demand while pumping up the sure fire brands such as Lego. TRU was the only major retailer left with decent Lego selection still on shelf late in December. Both Target and Wal-Mart were completely wiped out by then.

* Their buyers displayed insight early when they were the only major retailer that bought into the Zhu Zhu Pets toy line. They then artfully capitalized on it all season with free press as it turned into 2009's hottest toy of the Holiday season. All other retailers played "follow the leader" on this one.

* Video Games, Video Games, Video Games. This is the gift leader that puts traffic in your store in November and December and TRU had some of the best video game deals every single week of the season. Practically every kid out there has some sort of game console (or wants one) and develops a game or accessory want list for Christmas. This is one retailer that knows how to capitalize on this need.

* TRU took a risk and aggressively expanded by opening roughly 80 temporary pop-up holiday stores in shopping malls and about 260 temporary toy stores within Babies-R-Us locations nationwide.

As a hardcore toy guy, I'm very happy for TRU and extremely pleased to see they pulled it off. This is a retailer that has struggled from time to time over the years and made very bad decisions that nearly closed its doors at one point. They have made quite a strong comeback over the past two years. Thanks in part to the leadership of Jerry Storch (A former Target leader).

Of course they still have some work to do with managing their inventory and the buyers need to be better at recognizing when to bail out of poorly selling licenses (Star Trek and Hulk come to mind). But it's absolutely vital to the health and diversity of the toy industry that the world's largest toy retailer remain strong and can compete against the big two. You can imagine how bad it would be for an entire industry if it had to shrink down its offerings to fit into a handful of aisles at a Wal-Mart, Target or even a K-Mart.

We can imagine some serious celebrating going on in Wayne NJ this week. Much deserved.

Holiday Price Wars off to a blazing start...thanks to Amazon.com

You just knew all the major retailers were primed to battle it out this Holiday season for the shrinking budgets of the almighty American consumer. Especially after the majority of these peddlers took it on the chin in the Holiday bloodbath of 2008. The really savvy retailer knows you have to make a big splash early in the game. As soon as Halloween ends, the kid gloves come off. In the past week alone I think our household has received at least a dozen different shopping catalogs each packed with promises of deep discounts and free shipping.

Last year while nearly every retailer suffered shocking losses in the make or break fourth quarter, only Amazon.com saw not only an increase in year to year sales but profits as well. So while it's no surprise to see very good bargains on Amazon early here in November, it's absolutely jaw-dropping to see them pre-selling many of this year's summer blockbuster films IN THE BLU-RAY format well under $20. It's always a good deal when you find new releases on DVD around or just under $20 but up until this year it's just been unheard of in the Blu-Ray format.

Examples as of November 4th:

Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince: List Price is $35.99, Amazon preorder price is $16.99!

Terminator Salvation Director's Cut: List Price is $35.99, Amazon preorder price is $16.99!

Even a Disney/Pixar title like UP! that originally listed at $45.99 is currently $19.99. For a FOUR DISK Combo set. No way Target or Best Buy will beat deals like this in their circulars.

If anyone has been on the fence about Blu-Ray because of cost, this is clearly the Holiday season that excuse will end. Already, Wal-Mart is advertising they are about to offer reliable brand Blu-Ray players for under $150.

Even if you are not interested in purchasing any Blu-Ray product the point is that these offerings are indicative as to how crazy the price wars are about to become and Amazon.com is determined to lead the way. Amazon and Wal-Mart are both clearly ready for the war. Target, Best Buy and the rest better have learned from last year's mistakes and have some tricks up their sleeves.

It's going to be a fun year to shop and even more fun to watch. Best deals of the season are always offered in November when they need YOU. By the second week of December, YOU need them as the final shopping days for Christmas count down.