Toys ‘R’ Us Launches Live Shopping Spinoff Toys.com

Toys ‘R’ Us recently paid a hefty $5.1 million for the domain Toy.com, “just” (as some would argue) to create a live shopping spinoff on top of it.

The issue here is all too clear:

"The company said the site would offer a wide range of unadvertised and exclusive deals, many of which would appear on Toys.com before anywhere else on the web."

Conceptually, some German counterparts such as Quelle, Otto, and eBay (with their respective efforts, “Q of the day”, “Happy price of the day”, “Wow of the day”) could be learning a few tricks here. Noted though, is the fairly weak implementation.

The step from Toys ‘R’ Us follows the trend towards separate live shopping sites. The most progressive at the moment is probably QVC with their Handbag Chick.

The evolution is pretty exciting to watch. Evidently even the big players have by now realized that live web efforts on Twitter, Facebook & Co. don’t have a chance without fast paced live shopping offers. The only question now is how long this can work using only price as a competitive factor.

Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.