Review: Being a Toy Outpost Merchant

In the tragic beginning when me and my boyfriend first came up with the brilliant idea of renting a booth at toy outpost, our sincere thinking was that it would work - how can it not when our costs are so low?

I mean $230 a month to expose your stocks to a potentially countless myriad of customers. The weekend crowd is impressive and the weekday crowd isn't all too bad. Selling one item a day would recover the day's cost immediately. What's there to lose?

E V E R Y T H I N G.

So dear reader at 2am googling "toy outpost merchant review" thinking your entrepreneurial idea is bloody brilliant, you're in luck. Here is the naked, writhing truth about renting a booth at Toy goddamn Outpost.

There will be expletives involved because I'm a mean son of a bitch so don't read on if you're looking for a sugar coated review of this hell I call Toy Outfuckingpost.



Aww look at how eager I was.

Me and my boyfriend spent the past couple of weeks looking around for booths. There were always a couple of empty booths around but all of them were bad placements. We found this one by chance.

This booth is 1717, the placement is basically two locker booths away from the entrance of Vivocity's outlet. We went on a Sunday. The owner had just moved out. We saw the vacated slot and wanted to book it immediately but they don't take merchant queries on weekends.

So I cabbed down to Vivocity at 11am the next day and waited for this place to open. When they did, they offered me a leasing contract to sign. Because I know your attention span is running bleak, here's a quick rundown.

1st: Pay deposit of $150, pay one month $230. 

Timeline: We opened the booth in end May.

Termination notice needed is a month so even if you regret it and decide to close your locker in early July, you would still have to cough up the rent for from July to August. Your misery will only end one long month later.

You can decorate your locker as you wish. No restrictions but you can't scratch or leave marks on the interior if not you'll be liable for a fee. I am rolling my eyes so badly my corneas hurt.

2nd: Start rearranging your locker!




Wow so exciting! 

But hold your illegal Singapore horses.

They have a long list of products you can and cannot sell. No branded products nor replicas. They rejected the Balenciaga inspired wallets (corner left) and my Hello Kitty bracelets (roof corner right). They also rejected the My Melody casing (front corner left).

Things you get at this point:

1. a long list of price tags that you can write your prices on
2. a little card to verify you're the locker owner anytime you need to open it to restock
3. a username/ password for you to log onto their website to track your daily sales

Price tags are replaceable, you can claim a new sheet everyday. Card loss results in a replacement fee. How much it is I don't know, I held mine onto today even after the lease has ended. I'm still mulling over which murder method would hurt this card the most.

To digress a little, it is important to note that while there are always lockers available, it is rare to find one in good placement. So when we did find ours, we had no ready stock because we weren't prepared. This pile of junk you see above are leftover stocks from my old Carousell business and assorted pre-loved stuff.

So if you see piles of junk in lockers in toy outpost, sympathize with them, because it is very likely they were in the same situation as I was. In case you can't visualize, here's the easy rundown:

Oh my god dardar look! There's a locker, let's book it! Fuck we have no ready stock because who knew the previous owner loser would open up today! Let's just sell your precious fake tattoo stickers/ my worthless jewellery knockoffs! Oh yeah we are doing this!

Got the picture? Okay moving on.

3rd: Leave and pray to God that your locker doesn't end up a loser locker

For the first two weeks, I religiously logged in onto the website hourly to check my sales history. And for the first three days, I got nothing. Within two weeks, I managed to sell a grand total of two items.

Take note that from the minute I opened my locker, I already started making losses.

Sales was so slow, it would make the nearby snails feel proud that they are little racers. But that's okay because after all, it was still my old stock we were selling. We finally gotten our shipment of accessories so we went over to tear down the old stuff and mount our new ones.

Take note again that because of the ridiculously stupid small space, you can practically sell nothing but accessories. I spent nights agonizing about how to display everything because the space was so fucking small, its senseless.

Timeline: We took the whole locker down and redid everything in mid June. 

I don't have a photo of the re-done locker because right now, our earnings were a grand total of $47.50 (after close to a month, which has been at a $250 rental cost) and we were both pretty pessimistic about the whole thing.

Still, our new stocks made us a little more hopeful so we persevered.

From here on, read everything carefully and wake up.



I will tell you: in the next two weeks of wondering why the fuck aren't my things selling, I went back to check on my booth. To see this. Now well well well, isn't my locker beautiful!

Now, what is wrong in the picture? Shall I start with how my new stocks are spilling out from the side? Or shall I start about how my necklace hooks are empty? Or how about how my price tags were taken down? Or how about the general fuckpile of mess at the bottom?

Because you see folks, the staff do not give a fuck.

I told them nicely that the necklaces on display are, well, for display and new stocks were at the side. But did they give a fuck? No. Whenever a customer bought a customer, they took the display, took the price tag off, and went to sell it.

So what am I left with?

A grand total of three necklaces sold in two fucking weeks. That is a $15 sales by the way because there is NO WAY you can sell accessories in this shithole for anything more than $8 and expect to profit.

In the next two weeks after that horrifying mess, I forced myself to go down once every fur days to tidy up since THE STAFF COULDN'T GIVE A RAT'S ASS ABOUT MY ARRAGEMENTS and so finally, me and my boyfriend decided to cancel the lease the soonest we could.

Timeline: This is end June.

We were informed we can clear out on 15th July. Hallefuckinglujah.

Timeline: This is 14th July.

Our total sales were $100 in two months. At the cost of $250 + $250 + our travelling expenses every four days to rearrange the locker + $350 which is the costs of our accessories seen in that box.

Plus we sold every necklace for less than $3 because we had to cover costs and even at $3, sales were so low, I could find nickels on the streets and still earn more than I do at Toy Outpost.

We had to take everything down and clear out leaving the locker pristine. Exhausted and pissed, we finally got it done and went to the counter. Now this is not unexpected of course, but while Toy Outpost was lightning fast to claim monthly profits (6% of your sales) and demand rent, they told us it would take 2-3 weeks for the deposit to be in.

Weary and feeling absolutely fucked over, we surrendered the locker's card and prepared to leave when a staff helpfully told us we can keep the card in case we ever want to reopen a locker again.

My boyfriend took the card from them and threw it at their shelves and stomped off. I picked it up and kept it in case there were deposit issues. As of right now, it is sitting flaccid and worthless in my drawer, being the little prick it was in life and in death, in rental and in retirement.

So here's my word of advice to you, potential locker master:

DON'T FUCKING DO IT.

And Toy Outpost Vivocity if you read this, fuck you and your system to hell. I await the day your stores pull out of Singapore after every locker renter see how big a pile of bull you are.

And to you, dear reader. You can say I wasn't prepared. You can say accessories are done to death and I could've sold something else. You can say my decorations weren't good enough to attract. You can say my prices were too high.



But you can't tell me this service is acceptable.

If it can happen to me, then it can happen to you. Should you still wish to execute your idea at this point, I wish you all the best and I hope you give my regards to Toy Outpost. And by regards I mean concentrated acid.

Meh.