Marketing and all things related

This holiday season, we can expect the Toy Wars to get ugly. Wal-Mart will continue to discount deep and early, forcing everyone else in the industry to lose sales, or make prices and lose margin. Toys R Us is still angry with Amazon for their breech of partnership agreement from 1999. (Toys R Us won a judgment against Amazon in court—Amazon is still appealing.) This year, the toysrus.com website enlisted e-commerce expert GSI Commerce and logistics expert Excel to make sure their website and companion site babiesrus.com are readily to battle Amazon, Wal-Mart and eBay online. Toys R Us will offer gift cards for the first time this year, and add children’s books and DVDs to the assortment this year (these items where prohibited under the old Amazon deal.) So as you might expect, Tickle Me Elmo Extreme will be dressed in fatigues this year.