Remember the Lady Who Lived in a Shoe?… You Can Still be a Toys ‘R’ Us Kid… American Dream to Open Spring 2019

Remember the Lady Who Lived in a Shoe? She’ll Want to Shop Here

Your humble e-newsletter editor is, in case you couldn’t guess, really a big kid at heart. He fondly remembers the days of the Horn & Hardart Automat in New York City. He would even purchase a car out of this thing if he thought it was actually real (it’s not, is it?). Footwear retailer DSW is hoping women will feel the same way about getting their shoes. The company recently opened an experimental store on the Las Vegas strip called the “Shoevator” (is it pronounced “shoe-VADER” or “shoe-a-vator” we wonder?) and it is “essentially a giant shoe vending machine inspired by the assembly line-style mechanisms that we use to move product around our actual warehouse. DSW has been transforming itself by creating engaging experiences that stir emotion and inspiration,” DSW CEO Roger Rawlins told Pymnts.com. According to Forbes.com, the store also features “a video tunnel designed to make customers feel as if they’re flying over a city, swimming under water, or walking through a desert, when in reality they’re traveling down an escalator on to the DSW sales floor.”

You Can Still be a Toys ‘R’ Us Kid – in Canada

The fate of Toys ‘R’ Us in Canada is not the same as its counterparts in the UK and United States. While the retailer has needed some help up north, it hasn’t nearly faced the same struggle, and executives there are working hard to keep Canadian kids Toys ‘R’ Us kids. In addition to working overtime to make sure Canadians knew their fate wasn’t the same as what was happening in the U.S., Toys ‘R’ US Canada president Melanie Teed-Murch told The Financial Post that the company is looking to do things differently. “The brand is adding benches to play areas where children can test new products or take part in crafts and games. It’s toying with allowing families to throw birthday parties at stores and opening smaller format locations,” The Financial Post said. They are also finding that millennials are going the other direction, encouraging their kids to play board games instead of electronic devices.

We Mean it This Time: American Dream Slated to Open Spring 2019

Your humble e-newsletter editor hates to be a Negative Neddy but whenever he sees an article like this he gets a little hopeful and then pauses to remember to hold the champagne until the deal is actually done. Owners of the American Dream Mall in northern New Jersey, which was born as Xanadu in 2002 and has yet to see the light of day, are claiming the mall will open this spring 2019. Triple Five took the governor and other local officials and business leaders, and the media, on a tour of the facility in late August. “There have been a lot of naysayers. Now we’re proving the naysayers wrong,” Bergen County Building Trades President Rick Sabato told NorthJersey.com. When it opens, the mall will feature an indoor water park and amusement park, an indoor ski and snow park, a performing arts theater, an aquarium, an NHL regulation-sized hockey rink, and more than a dozen restaurants.