THE BEGINNING
In 1948, 25-year-old Charles Lazarus turned his dream of creating a child-oriented business into a reality. A visionary for his time, Lazarus started a baby furniture store, Children’s Bargain Town, in Washington, D.C. to cater to the post-war baby boom era. Lazarus filled his store with cribs and baby furniture and ran it single-handedly, overseeing everything from bookkeeping to delivering merchandise to customers’ homes.
Continually looking for new ways to satisfy his customers’ needs, Lazarus introduced infant products and toys for older children into the store’s growing product assortment. The first toy he added to the inventory was a cradle gym. When it proved a strong seller, he added tricycles, books and other toys. Lazarus learned early on in the toy business that unlike furniture, toys broke or fell out of fashion with children, prompting parents to return to the store again and again.
Almost 10 years later, Lazarus adopted the supermarket model for his store, which allowed customers to examine and pick out products on their own and pay for them at a checkout stand. With the opening of his second store, he settled on the name Toys“R”Us® with a backward “R.” Although the name drew ire from parents and teachers alike for its grammatical incorrectness, Lazarus knew it was an attention-getter.