10


Winter 2018/19


BRANDS WE LOVE


Brands We Love: AMAZON’S LATEST PLAY—


The surp prin Are the


Print!


The online commerce machine surprised everyone by publishing a printed toy catalog for the holidays. Are they simply traditionalists, or was there something more behind it?


If y or


If you’re in your 30s or 40s, you probably sp N


spent at least a few November and D


December childhood weekends making your Christmas list frf om the Toys “R” Us holiday catalog. If you are a little


have ffo the Sears Wish Book


older, no doubt you ond memories of


k holiday catalog. Whether Back Cover of Catalog


you were hoping Santa wo hoping Santa would deliver your favorite Cabbage Patch doll, a Tonka truck, or a Nintendo gaming system, those catalogs were bibles. Today, four-year-olds play with iPads and select their gifts using their parents’ smartphones. Whether you find that promising or frightening, it nevertheless begs the question: Why would the single biggest internet retailer on the planet—one who has made Christmas shopping something you can do comfortably from your couch while watching football and sipping a glass of eggnog—suddenly feel the need to launch a


printed toy catalog for the 2018 holidays? Most companies have substituted online


catalogs for traditional print versions (even for their own sales reps and retail partners), but Amazon seems to have zigged when everyone else is zagging. In October of 2018, the company mailed their 68-page toy catalog, called A Holiday of Play, to more than one million people. And, upon closer inspection, outlaying what has to have cost a pretty penny to create, print, and distribute just might have been a stroke of genius. The opportunity to move into the space


once occupied by Toys “R” Us and Sears came after the two former giants both stumbled in recent years. In October, Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and it has been closing stores across the nation. After bringing back its iconic Wish Book (which debuted in 1933) for the 2017 holidays, the company announced it would not be producing one in 2018. The 2017 Toys “R” Us holiday toy book was 120 pages, but there won’t be another one in the United States anytime soon. In March of 2018, the company announced that it would close all its remaining stores in the United States and Great


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24