Too much fun to make money?

MORE adults than children queued for their turn on the “Big Piano”, a giant floor keyboard, in FAO Schwarz, America’s oldest toy shop, on June 1st. A couple of millennials half-heartedly tried to play “Chopsticks”, before deciding to skip instead along the enormous keys. Someone else made a valiant effort to play a few bars of “Heart and Soul”. Both the songs and the piano featured in the film “Big” starring Tom Hanks, which helped propel the shop to global fame. Nearby, a little boy was building and customising his own toy car, with assistance from the shop’s “mechanic”. Downstairs other customers were picking out eyes and noses for their personal Muppet puppet. Red noses had sold out. A large clock played “Welcome to Our World of Toys”, the shop’s theme song.

The clock will not play the song much longer. FAO Schwarz will close its doors on Fifth Avenue next month. Even for New Yorkers, well accustomed to change, the news has been a shock. The shop’s owner, Toys “R” Us, announced it was giving up its lease nearly two years early to save money, with no definite plans to open anywhere else. It remains committed to the brand, it says; but not to that building, in that place.

FAO, as locals call it, has had a presence in the city since 1870. Its current spot, near an Apple Store, Bergdorf Goodman, the Plaza Hotel and Central Park, is the most expensive retail space in the world, at $3,500 per square foot ($37,700 per square metre). But although millions of people visit the store each year, most of them tourists, few end up buying anything. They go for the experience and then buy elsewhere, more cheaply: typically on Amazon or at Walmart.

Unlike other toy shops further downtown, such as the Lego Store or American Girl Place, FAO never worked out a way to monetise the fun of going there, which was thrilling even for adults. The three-storey shop was—still is—more like Toyland or Santa’s workshop than a place of business. Life-size Lego figures of Star Wars characters, giant cuddly snow-leopards and a nursery full of baby dolls seem designed to enthrall, not sell. Children of all ages are encouraged to play with the stock. As Chris Byrne, a toy-industry analyst, concluded, “Maybe they should have charged admission.”