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Toys 'R' Us plans to add some extra fun to its stores

Toys “R” Us wants your kid's next play date to be in one of its stores.

The privately-held toy chain plans to increase play space in stores in an effort to make its locations more engaging for children. The company says this move will reduce the need to compete with big discount retailers on price, such as Wal-Mart (WMT) and Amazon (AMZN).

“It has to be something where kids want to go and play,” CEO Antonio Urcelay said at event on Tuesday, “We have to reinforce that we are a specialist.”

Yahoo Finance’s Aaron Task thinks it’s a good idea,

"As a parent, you would think, yeah, let's go to Toys “R” Us--  the kids can play, and we’ll get out of the house, it will be a different environment and hopefully they'll have fun," he says.  "Then I'm sure a lot of people do that they'll actually end up buying something, which would be good for Toys "R" Us,” Task says.

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The company plans to open a new prototype store in New York this year, according to Bloomberg.

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Task says the big challenge for all retailers is that you have to be everything to everybody, or the so-called omnichannel. 

“Toys “R” Us needs to focus on the web and they need to focus on the customer experience in the stores, as well.  And you’re seeing a lot of retailers doing different things to get people in the store.  I think for Toys “R” Us this is a natural.  A lot of people go to IKEA because they have a ball pit and a place where you can take the kids to buy furniture.  It makes much more sense to bring the kids to toy store and have them play there than to do it at a furniture store," Task adds.

The company has been looking for ways to turn things around in an effort to slow declining sales.

“A year ago, we introduced a new strategic plan, with initial efforts concentrated on strengthening the foundation of the company so revenue and profits can grow in the future. Our strategy remains the same, but will evolve in 2015 as we continue to strengthen the foundation of the company in order to achieve sustainable growth in the future. We anticipate this will be another year of significant change and we will take aggressive steps in the months ahead to further right-size the cost structure of the business,” Urcelay said in a statement.

Toys “R” Us also said it expects e-commerce to be a big driver of growth going forward as it works on improving its physical stores. The toy chain's online sales increased nearly 7% to $1.23 billion last year.  Meantime, total revenue fell 1.5% to $12.4 billion.