Hey! Joy Opens Second Toy Store At Roosevelt Field Mall

GARDEN CITY, NY — Among the many independent toy companies vying to fill the void left after the drawn-out departure of Toys R Us, Hey! Joy opened a second store at Roosevelt Field mall last month.

The Ukraine-native owners, Constantine Rolin, Vadim Chomenko and Oleg Fedkev—who debuted their fledgling Texas-based company at the Mall of America in Minnesota in November 2020—strive to stand out by integrating in-store experiences with their website that is currently under reconstruction toward that end.

By next year, Hey! Joy's toys and games, a mix of American and European brands, will sport QR codes that customers can scan with smartphones and watch company-created TikTok-type videos demonstrating how to use their merchandise.

The brand is designed to bridge the gap between the interests of children and their parents. Rolin and his colleagues have experience working in the toy industry and have studied the market extensively. They have found that while children tend to play with toys and games solely for entertainment, parents want to buy their kids more education-oriented products, such as the store's levers and linkage sets by Discovering STEM and Ready, Set, Money learning kits by Alex Discover.

"The main issue with parents almost all the time is that they want to provide kids with a toy that requires some thinking," Rolin said about their findings.

Toys and games are displayed on shelves not by brand or category but by a child's interests. Emergency vehicles, such as fire trucks and police cars of various brands, are grouped in one section, while race cars and monster trucks occupy another area. Similarly, Barbie and Rainbow High fashion dolls are displayed together, as are infant and baby dolls.

The 3,600-square-foot Roosevelt Field store also features a short, pool table-like structure filled with gravel where kids can try out remote-controlled construction trucks. Other stations throughout the store include hopscotch tiles spread on the floor, a chair and table to play with Legos, and a free-standing Mortal Kombat II retro video game. After Christmas, kids can learn to apply makeup to a mannequin and create jewelry they can wear at a table with a mirror.

These stations allow customers to test and buy products, providing hands-on, in-store experiences that have waned with the rise of online shopping.

Hey! Joy's owners also study how Amazon operates within the toy industry, helping them to discover trends and what customers want. A key to their early success has been to match the cheaper pricing of their much larger competitors.

"It is hard but we are managing to do it," Rolin said. "We cut our margin, but we need to do it. Not always Amazon, but Walmart and Target also have the best prices."

Rolin believes a major reason Toys R Us went belly up was due to its lack of stores at malls. For that reason, he and his partners plan to open more stores at top-tier malls owned by Simon Property Group, the real estate corporation that owns Roosevelt Field and other top-rated malls nationwide. Last month, Hey! Joy opened their third store at Simon's The Florida Mall in Orlando.

"Physical stores will still be huge, but they need to [have] the same pricing and have better customer service," he said. "People want to get the best customer service, fast and easy."