Toronto market is Walmart and Mattel’s first test-market for the virtual store in Canada. This is also the second store of its kind in Canada. The first one was by Canadian online retailer Well.ca, which opened in early 2012 in the same area and sold health and baby products.
The digital toy store features two walls with images of products like doll houses, toy trucks, and race car tracks. Shoppers can purchase popular Mattel products using a smartphone application to scan a code, or access the store’s website and find the product code manually. Once the purchase is charged to shoppers’ credit cards, the products will be shipped to them before the holidays.
The pop up store has been opened at Brookfield Place in the PATH, Toronto’s underground tunnel network and is located right next to an entrance to Union Station, the city’s commuter hub. It will be open for the next four weeks.
The virtual shopping style was earlier used in South Korea on a larger scale last year, when Tesco Homeplus, a retail chain in the country, put up billboards that featured their products accompanied by codes that could be scanned.
