When business was good for Barry Schwartz, it was great.
His Try & Buy toy stores in downtown Pleasantville and Katonah were thriving in the mid-1990s shortly after they first opened, so much so that he was able to open two more locations with his wife and co-owner, Linda Schwartz, in Bronxville and a gift shop in Maria Fareri Children”™s Hospital at Westchester Medical Center.
A transplant from the electronics industry, Schwartz was riding high.
Then, the millennium hit, and thus began the abrupt shift to buying toys online, where they could be found at lower prices and bought from the comfort of one”™s own couch. Business suffered.
In 2005, the Bronxville location shut its doors. The gift shop closed a year later. The Katonah shop was vacant by 2009.
Schwartz is now left with just his Pleasantville store, one he said is experiencing the worst two-year sales stretch in its two-decade-plus history. To cope, he has implemented small-business amenities.
“Our volume really has been going down since 2011,” Schwartz said. “We have people who help customers select gifts and we have a liberal return policy. It”™s all based upon service.”
In the past year, four independent Westchester County toy destinations shut their doors for good ”” Auntie Penny in Chappaqua, Child”™s Play in Scarsdale, Family Discount Center in Rye Brook and Merry Go Round Toy Discount Center in New Rochelle.
Merry Go Round, a North Avenue staple for 65 years, closed last month. Owner Greg Choron began a 50-percent-off sale March 18, which lasted until the store”™s closing. The former prominent storefront on the city”™s south end is now nothing more than a few greeting cards and 99 cent special items that went unsold.
Schwartz didn”™t speculate on his store”™s future, but said at 61, he will contemplate retirement at some point in the coming years. As of now, he knows no buyer that would want to come in and take the business over.
He estimated fewer than 10 such stores remain in Westchester County. The other independent toy stores ”” the ones he used to see as the main competition ”” he now bands together with.
“We”™re more supportive of each other than ever before,” he said. “We were all subject to the same restrictions, guidelines and the cost and expenses we all had to pay. But the Internet has allowed people working out of a garage or a cornfield in Iowa to go sell directly to our customers. They don”™t have the same cost limitations we do. It makes it extremely difficult for us.”
Community staples have given way to big-box stores like Toys R Us and Walmart, and the still-expanding online market.
Even FAO Schwartz, the Fifth Avenue icon, closed its White Plains location on the upper floor of The Westchester mall.
Try & Buy instituted a customer loyalty program, but even that is not bringing back the lost customers or helping to pay the high suburban rent. The owners attempted to match the online threat by putting together what Schwartz said was a “very expensive” website in 2006.
“It went absolutely nowhere,” he said.
To cut costs, Schwartz said he and his wife are the “chief, cook and bottle wash” of the business now. They do the book keeping, inventory, advertising and accounting work.
The store”™s telephone hold service informs callers, “There are very few specialty stores left. Try & Buy is one of them.” Schwartz takes pride in that, and hopes that area residents do, too.
“What”™s going to happen when people come into towns and see all the place is is a food court with a nail salon and a dry cleaners?” he said. “They”™ll say, ”˜This is a boring town,”™ and they”™ll leave.”
