Play Co. Toys & Entertainment Corp. Announces Launch of Unique Selling
Proposition for Toys on the Internet
-- 'WWW.ToysWhyPayRetail.Com' to Serve as First of Two Play Co.
E-Commerce Offerings -- Announcement Follows 1998 Record 9 Month
December 31st Results -- Kiosk Programs to Leverage 4 Million Physical
Play Co. Customers
SAN MARCOS, Calif., March 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Richard Brady, President of
Play Co. Toys & Entertainment (OTC Bulletin Board: PLCO - news, PLCOP -
news, PLCOW - news) today announced the online launch of the Company's
first dedicated e-commerce toy site. This site,
www.ToysWhyPayRetail.Com, was designed from the ground up and represents
a new trade name for the company. Toys Why Pay Retail.Com presents
overstocks, special buys and overruns on mostly name brand toys bought
out of season at special prices, and now selling to the consumer at near
wholesale prices. The site features free shipping and handling on all
orders over fifty dollars, and for a limited time also offers an
additional 10% off on each item.
This web site is now online on the world wide web, and can also be found
and is available through America On-Line (NYSE: AOL - news). Special
additional buys are being added weekly. Play Co. Toys is planning to
bring the Toys Why Pay Retail.Com web site up to 1000 featured items and
will add new items and delete old items as they sell out. The 'deals of
the day' will feature new items as they come online; all at or near
wholesale prices.
Play Co. Toys President Richard Brady stated ''We are very excited about
being able to bring the uniqueness of this web site to the consumer
where such great values will be able to be passed along to the customers
through the Internet.''
The second unique site that is planned to go online in April 1999, will
be the Play Co. Toys web site. This site will focus on collectible and
imported specialty merchandise, such as die-cast cars, dolls, plush,
trains and collectible action figures. These products will be presented
to a more upscale market. The collectible and import specialty line side
of this site will be items that cannot be found in traditional
mass-merchandise stores (Wal-Mart, Toys R Us). This type of product is
usually associated with smaller specialty retailers, which can be hard
to find in many geographical areas. Offering such products on the
Internet will make them available to consumers who cannot find them in
their local community. The collectible and import specialty product
lines generally tend to be very profitable, due to higher gross margins
associated with these products. The site is expected to grow in size up
to 5000 SKU's at some point. Additionally, free gifts and similar online
promotions will be used to build traffic to the site.
In conjunction with this second web site the company is planning to open
computer kiosks in its own high traffic retail locations, and
additionally offer thousands of children books, videos, collector dolls,
LGB trains and other high end collectibles to customers, many more than
can be profitably stocked in a standard retail environment. The company
believes that this approach will enable it to take advantage of the 4
million plus potential customers that visit its stores annually. The
number of customers will increase as the Company adds stores and
continues to grow. The total number of potential customers that visit
Play Co. stores is expected to reach 7 to 8 million by the end of the
year 2000.
Play Co. customers will be able to browse an online catalog of
children's books, videos, collector dolls, LGB trains and other high end
collectibles, and then select any product they wish to purchase. In most
cases special distributors will drop-ship the product directly to the
customer's home. One advantage to this approach for the Company is that
minimal inventory needs to be purchased; the only significant investment
for the Company is in the hardware and software needed to operate the
computer kiosks. The square footage required in each retail location
would be minimal in relation to the revenue that such a kiosk strategy
could generate.
Play Co. Toys currently has in place the entire infrastructure for
handling and shipping Internet orders. Having recently been in the mail
order business, all the needed pick, pack, shipping infrastructure and
software systems are currently in place at the Company warehouse -- at
no additional cost. Also, all the buying staff and inventory is also
shared by Play Co.'s retail stores and Internet E-Tailing, making for
very low cost entry into Internet selling.
Play Co. Toys, is a toy retailer with 25 retail locations in California,
Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Illinois and Michigan. Play Co. Toys has
currently signed leases for eight new stores in 1999 and is looking at
additional locations. The stores range in size between 10,000 to 12,000
square feet and are in mostly large regional upscale and new
entertainment malls. The company operates under the Play Co. Toys, Toys
International and Toy Co. trade names.
Play Co. Toys is the first major toy retailer in the U.S. to combine
educational, collectible, specialty, import and traditional toys in one
location, with special areas set aside in each new store for children's
play area, video theater, computer center and libraries.
biz.yahoo.com
Guys I think the wait was worth it ...Excellent potential.
Ray |
