As many toy retailers across the nation struggle to keep up with online competitors (i.e. Amazon), the CEO of Camp, an experiential toy store that includes activities for kids, said "people don't leave," which has helped his store avoid the feared retail apocalypse.
"There's a tradition at the front of the store, which is the counselors — that's what we call our staff — count the number of kids who cried on the way out," Camp's CEO and co-founder Ben Kaufman told Cheddar. Most people stay, on average, 90 minutes inside the store. "We like to tire [kids] out."
The store offers both free activities for visitors and classes parents can sign their kids up for (like snow globe making or music).
One year after its opening in December 2018, Camp has expanded to five stores with more plans to expand nationwide. Last Thursday, it opened its latest location in New York City's Hudson Yards. Camp "was a great cornerstone of the neighborhood they're trying to build," Kaufman said.
He has been surprised by the excitement the store has received from communities — especially parents eager to find fun things to keep their kids entertained. "One of the craziest things we figured out after launching our first store is that Camp becomes a ritual for families in the neighborhood," he told Cheddar.
Every surface of Camp, which sells both toys and experiences, is a play area for children. Toys R Us, which shuttered 700 stores after filing for bankruptcy in 2017 is planning a similar experiential shopping strategy.
"A lot of people are like 'how are you going to compete with Amazon to sell toys' and we actually don't think about that as part of what we're trying to solve for," Kaufman said. "We like to think we're competing for people's time. What are we going to do on Saturday? What are we going to do after school? If we win that, then they'll come into our stores, they'll have fun, we'll be part of their lives, and they'll buy stuff along the way."
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
