Toys "R" Us, which declared bankruptcy in September, was unable to convince creditors to refinance its more than $5 billion in debt, a crushing load that experts say hampered its ability to adapt to the growth in online shopping, among other consumer trends.
33,000 victims of a Leveraged Buyout (LBO) but I am sure the vampires made out like bandits.
Bain where have I heard the name before????
Amazon or Russians ? A run on legos ?? (just not barefoot)
I’m not helping the situation by buying toys on EBay and Amazon.
Wow. 26 years after Children’s Palace/ Child World.
Clearly, they needed to grow their online presence significantly, and probably peel back on some stores - concentrating on the iconic stores like the one they had in Times Square. But I don't think that would have been enough. They needed to provide products difficult to get elsewhere, and needed to have lines of unique educational toys, and very affordable non-electronic basic toys - including being the place for timeless high-quality ‘retro’ toys that parents remember and kids would like.
Personally, I like buying from small local toy stores with unique toys and owners that are personally involved and who are passionate about selling toys. Toys R Us, the last time I was in one, tended to concentrate on bike sales (bigger ticket, higher profit), and all the plastic stuff (mostly made in China etc.) that was ‘thematic’, like Transformers. Anyway, they could have done better, and I'm sorry all those people will be losing their jobs. Hopefully someone will step up and salvage what is good and move forward with a more successful business model.
Well, Bye.
I am saddened for my children who always love to go to Toys R Us even if just to look around.
For my wife and myself the closing hurts a bit too. It’s corny but we have a lot of memories wrapped up in our local TRU. Shopping for baby stuff, seeing our little one eyes light up when we walked into the store and the yearly ritual of videoing them riding the Dino the Dinosaur coin op in the lobby (they totally think it is uncool now but still humor us).
Contrary to some opinions, I found it a decent place to shop. The staff at our store was always helpful and it was a great place to grab a birthday gift on short notice or to get something big like an electric scooter or trampoline. It also employed a decent number of young local kids who seemed to have good customer skills.
Our family will miss TRU and my kids were really shaken last night when we heard the final verdict.
$5 billion in debt. Wow! How much of that went to management bonuses secured in the LBO?
Wonder how much of a role minimum wage hikes played in this....
Plus 1/2 of their customer base has been destroyed:
Millions of parents and teachers actually believe that all their dolls were evil for trying to force girls into adhering to outdated gender stereotypes, and all their boy’s toys encouraged toxic masculinity, and all their bouncy balls encouraged competitiveness, which of course leads having “Winners” and “Losers”.... Which leads to school shootings and wars.
I’m sorta sad to see this go in a strange way — mostly because it was my daughter’s favorite place when she was little. Kind of the way I remembered Lionel Playworld when I was little — the one in Hollywood FL was like Heaven to me, and was the scene of many toy binges.
Toys R Us ate up the small stores back in the 70s and 80s. Now it, too, is being eaten by a bigger predator.
Personally, I hate Amazon and online shopping — I like to see what I’m getting... but oh well, off to the tar pits for me, I guess...
Anybody who has TRU gift cards needs to use them right away, for anything of value right now. Once they are in bankruptcy the cards will instantly be worth $0.00
The Canadian stores survive for now but the future is murky.
“adapt to the growth in online shopping”
What is that supposed to mean though? They did have a presence on line.
My 17-year-old is one of those victims. He’s not mature enough yet to appreciate what a great experience working there was. Well, there always Best Buy or Home Depot.
Used to be a Thanksgiving tradition - the Toys R Us catalog would come in the big newspaper and the kids would sit around and make their Christmas lists from it.
Alas.