eToys = KB Toys

[ACPin]

Just viewed the eToys site which is back in business and found it eerily similar to the KB Toys site. After checking both sites, I beleive that there's really only one store! Take away the differences in the headers and background colors and you'll see what I mean. Is this legal? Even though it says that eToys is owned by KB Holdings, I don't think that it's prudent to actually have two sites which look like competitors and yet are truly just one store.

[El Chuxter]

It'd be like the 80s and early 90s when KB was known as KB, KayBee, Circus World, K&K, Toy Liquidators, and about fifty other names, so it wouldn't shock me a bit.

[JediTricks]

Yes AC, it's pehfectwee weegal!

[ACPin]

Originally posted by El Chuxter
It'd be like the 80s and early 90s when KB was known as KB, KayBee, Circus World, K&K, Toy Liquidators, and about fifty other names, so it wouldn't shock me a bit.

There is a big difference between having actual retail stores with different names against online stores. In this case, eToys doesn't really have its own inventory. In the retail stores, even though they have different names, they still maintain their own store inventory.

Imagine a retail corner store where one side says eToys and the other side says KB. You go in through different doors and you wind up inside the same store.

[JediTricks]

Hee hee, it's the all-moderator thread!

Anyway, on the net, there are VERY few rules about this sort of thing, different URLs selling items out of the same warehouse by the same owners isn't even that uncommon. You'll find that the government, especially the lawmakers, are totally baffled by the internet and are like 50-60 steps behind the technology. By the time someone properly explained the issue to some federal judge, there'd be 10,000 sites doing something even MORE ridiculous and you'd have to start the process over again.

I bet in 5 years, we'll be seeing lawyers and, more importantly, judges who are savvy to the net and only 10-15 steps behind the schems and can actually fathom the concepts like URL theft and traffic diversion.

[derek]

it was my understanding that when e-toys went under, kb toys bought up their inventory.

[ACPin]

Originally posted by derek
it was my understanding that when e-toys went under, kb toys bought up their inventory.

KB did and a lot of the stuff you find in their retail stores were from the eToys inventory. At that point the eToys website had been closed. They've reopened the site as I've mentioned but it's just another door not really another store of KBs. Btw, I didn't know that you were a moderator. Jk, !

[El Chuxter]

ACPin, yousa point well seen!

(Sorry, I couldn't resist. )

[Lowly Bantha Cleaner]

Yes, it is all coming together now.

Back in August, the KBs in my area had a special sale of items (most of them were 5 bucks). The sign above these items stated something like this, "due to certain internet website(s) going out of business, KB has recently acquired these items at clearance prices!" The only Star Wars stuff they had were Mega Action Kenobis, some Micro Machine pod launcers and a couple of different toy lightsabers. Never bothered to take advantage of the sale though.

While we are on the subject on corporate conglomerates, I work part-time for a company that ships jewerly boxes to Piercing Pagoda Jewelry Stores. Piercing Pagoda also owns Silver and Gold Jewelers and one other jewerly company (whose name I can't recall, Plumb Gold ring a bell?) that are commonly found in malls across the country. Sometimes we are shipping boxes to these 3 stores that are all in the same mall, and they again are all owned by the same company. So I guess that is one way to maximize your profits.

[Lowly Bantha Cleaner]

Oh I neglected to mention that Zales Jewelry owns Piercing Pagoda, Silver n Gold, and Plumb Gold meaning that Zales probably controls 75% of the Jewerly chain stores in North America.