Dear Customers,
Please note that we have moved to a new location! Same town and same phone numbers.
Toy Wonders, Inc.
135 W. Commercial Ave.
Moonachie, NJ 07074
tel: 201-229-1700
fax: 201-229-1711
A few shipments arrived this week. If you log into your account at www.toywonders.com, before clicking on any of the links below, approved wholesale accounts will see wholesale pricing.
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DIECAST Collectible Model Cars And More
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Image |
Item# |
Description |
Stock Status |
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12936 |
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New |
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12937 |
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New |
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86305 |
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New |
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32040/48 |
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New |
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Thank
you
Lu
Toy Wonders, Inc.
www.toywonders.com
201-229-1700
God and the Art of Toy and Diecast
Marketing
Box Crazed
By L. S. Su
We Americans are infatuated with
boxes. We're born in a box shaped facility. We live in something
the shape of a box. When you are hungry you go to your kitchen
and open a boxed shaped container and most likely pull out another
smaller box. When most of us go to work we enter another box
like facility. When we need to urinate we enter a room that
can be described as a small box. When we die, they'll put our
bodies into an even smaller box. We are a box crazed culture.
Though it's difficult to perceive
from my picture, I've actually been around long enough to see
the big shift on how we Americans consume stuff and how it relates
to boxes. After speaking to a few factory owners in China who
supply their product throughout the world, I've come to the
conclusion that us Americans have one of the largest appetites
in the world. They should know. They make stuff and stuff them
into boxes (aka containers) and they are shipped throughout the
world. But with the factories I work with, most of them come
to America. As our American appetites grow, this has fueled
the box crazed culture and now we need bigger boxes
Just one generation ago, consumers
went to their local Main Street in town and entered a small
box store to get the majority of the products they needed for
their home and business. But now for most of America, the ones
that still have them, Main Streets are no longer the place you
go to purchase goods, but rather a place you consume a consume
a service (e.g. deposit a check, hair cut, nails painted, fill
your stomach).
I explained to my kids that at
one time there was a local toy store in pretty much every town.
We didn't go to some big box store to buy a toy. They gave me
the same incredulous look; It was the same look when I showed
them an electric typewriter that I pulled out of my basement.
The concept of creating a document with this contraption was
totally new to them. One of my son's high school teacher starting
this year allowing kids to use their laptops or iPads (if they
want) to take notes in class. My wife suggested that he should
take this relic in with a long extension cord. I wish I could
have one of those spy cams to see the expression on the teacher
and fellow students faces as my son clatterers away on the typewriter
during the lecture.
As our American appetites grow,
it's fueling the construction of bigger boxes. So smaller boxed
Main street toy stores were replaced with a bigger boxed store
like Toys R Us. The basic strategy of a Big Box store is to
open nearby in a less expensive location, but offer a larger
selection and take away at least 70% of the best selling items
from smaller boxed store. The Big Box store mentality is not
just localized to toys. Same thing happened (or is happening)
to hardware stores, stationary/office supply stores, gift/greeting
card stores, TV/electronic stores, community banks, and the
list goes on. But "big" is relative term. What I find
interesting is that even bigger boxed stores have sprung up
over the last decade, adopted the same strategy, and has caused
the formerly big box store Toys R Us store to now operated in
the red.
To the best of my knowledge, there
is not a single profitable toy store in Manhattan, Bronx, Queens
and Brooklyn. That's pretty amazing, when you consider how many
people live there. Why is that? There is many ways you can answer
this question, but the short answer is that larger boxed operations
elsewhere causes smaller boxes in these urban or Main Streets
locations to be unable to cover expenses. But this big box craze
event isn't just localized to locations with high rents..
After operating since 1924, DePiero's
Country farm is called it quits last week. DePiero's represented
the last 200+ acre operating farm in Northern NJ. This continually
operated farm made it through the US Depression, two world wars,
and kick boxing ("The sport of the 90's" -John Cusack).
But it can neither survive the big box craze nor the 2016 Presidential
elections.
The couple who currently owned
DePiero's realized decades ago that selling produce alone couldn't
keep their operation afloat. So they kept expanding to include
more products and services. On top of their 40,000 sq. ft. offering
of fresh produce, they offer a deli, soup & salad bar, bakery,
butcher, a fish market, specialty hard to get grocery items
from around the world, plants, garden supplies, a location that
offers crafts, gifts, cards, and house wares. In addition to
these offerings, they offered on weekends hay rides, face painting,
and a bouncy castle. The days of DePiero's taking bus loads
of kids in from New York City and surrounding towns to provide
them a "farm" experience is gone.
In an interview with one of the
DePiero farm owners last week, he said something to the effect
that the profitability on selling fresh produce doesn't even
come close to paying the $20,000+/month electric bills. A local
town reporter noted tears in the owner's eyes as this week as
everything was auctioned off. Bakery equipment that they paid
$35K for, sold for around $6K. Farm tractors also at a fraction
of their original costs. DePiero's farm was sold to a developer
who is going to tear down their 100,000+ square foot facility
and put a even bigger boxed facility on what use to be the family
farm. In less than a year what you see above will be transformed
into a gigantic strip mall in the shape of a box and anchored
by two big box stores. Just what we Americans need. We need
our boxes (malls and strip malls) to look identical. This will
then make it less confusing for us as we feed our voracious
appetites..
Toy R Us was once considered a
big box store, until it got dwarfed by bigger boxed stores like
Costco, Walmart, and Target. But "big" is relative
right? The internet and our appetites have help fuel the construction
of even bigger boxes that make a 200,000 square foot big box
stores small in comparison.
But the Big Box store mentality
isn't localized to just to products and services. The same Big
Box strategy has carried over into where Americans go to worship.
For Americans that still attend church, many are now opting
for bigger box facility. Like big box stores that offer more
choices, many Americans also go to bigger boxed worship facilities
to take advantage of their larger offerings of services. After
all, worship is all about me right?
Just in the past where there once
as a local toy store in every town, there are/were multiple
churches in a given town. In some towns there is/was a church
every few blocks. But the same box craze mentality has help
put the smaller boxed worship facilities out of business. According
to a recent study, every year 4000 churches will close its doors
while only 1000 new churches will open. 4000 church closures
per year translates to 76 church closings per week! This disheartening
statistic and this stat includes the four weekends from Black
Friday to Christmas.
So let's all do our part in feeding
our box crazed culture. Let's order more stuff together. . I'll
bet what we order will come in a box.
references:
http://www.churchleadership.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=42346&columnid=4545
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