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Businesses

Toys 'R' Us, Back From the Dead, Will Open US Stores in 2019 (bloomberg.com) 47

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Maybe American kids will only have to live through one Christmas without Toys "R" Us. About a year after shuttering U.S. operations, the remnant of the defunct toy chain is set to return this holiday season by opening about a half dozen U.S. stores and an e-commerce site, according to a report. From the report: Richard Barry, a former Toys "R" Us executive who is now CEO of new entity Tru Kids, has been pitching his vision to reincarnate the chain to toymakers, including at an industry conference this week, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren't public. The stores are slated to be about 10,000-square feet, roughly a third of the size of the brand's big-box outlets that closed last year, the people said. The locations will also have more experiences, like play areas. The startup costs could be minimized with a consignment inventory model in which toymakers ship goods but don't get paid until consumers buy them, some of the people said.
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Toys 'R' Us, Back From the Dead, Will Open US Stores in 2019 More

Toys 'R' Us, Back From the Dead, Will Open US Stores in 2019

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  • Why? (Score:3, Funny)

    by kackle ( 910159 ) on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @03:10PM (#58823258)
    "R" you kidding me?

    • Shedding Pensions and higher paid employees (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @03:27PM (#58823426)
      without having to pay much or at all in severance. That would be my guess. It's why Hostess crashed and burned. You shut down the legal entity and reform it, easy peasy. General Motors did it too. Bud of mine lost a few hundred in stock to it. Wish I could've done it back in 2008.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bws111 ( 1216812 )

        Huh? You're not making any sense. In all three cases, the companies went bankrupt and were liquidated. Liquidating the company is a pretty extreme way to 'shed pensions and higher paid employees' since the owners of the company wind up with basically nothing.

        The fact that the brands may have some value, even though the company doesn't exist anymore, is why someone different may want to continue the brand.

        • it's child's play to extract the value from a company you're liquidating. The value is in the recognizable Toys R Us brand and the fact that most adults think of them when they think toys.

          It only seems extreme to you and me because we're not venture capitalists. If you'd grown up watching your father do this to company after company and went to a school to teach you how to (legally) do it yourself it would just be how you make a (very, very nice) living.

          Also, pensions are usually tens of millions of
      • Worth noting though, GM, Hostess etc... made products that they sold to resellers. In the reseller industry the big guys, are just getting too big. Regardless of whether they went bankrupt due to severances, or bain capital loading debt on them... Toys R us rising from the ashes would be almost as supprising to me as if blockbuster could, at the end of the day they basically they want to start up, in an industry that's already dominated by the big players.
      • No, Toys 'R Us got private equity'ed. Here. [bloomberg.com] Bain Capital, no less.

        Hostess didn't shut down voluntarily, they went bankrupt and got bought out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Good question actually.

      And one that's going to be extremely messy, because a financial holding firm in Canada owns the rights to Toys R Us in Canada. (In fact, they've been doing quite well - the only problems arose when the US company ran into trouble and started bringing down the Canadian division as well. But once freed from that they seem to be going strong and no Canadian stores were closed as far as I can see.)

      And those rights include the trademark to the name - they bought it outright.

      I wonder if thi

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: Why? (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Spot on. Iâ(TM)m middle aged, and I donâ(TM)t really want to buy a toy, of all things, online.

  • Sounds risky as hell for the suppliers. Good on Toys R Us for bringing back the toy stores of old. I don't think they will last that long or do especially well as that type of brick and mortar ship has sailed.

    • Re:Consignment inventory? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @03:19PM (#58823344)

      Sounds risky as hell for the suppliers. Good on Toys R Us for bringing back the toy stores of old. I don't think they will last that long or do especially well as that type of brick and mortar ship has sailed.

      Too expensive. When everyone from Walmart to Target, Amazon to ebay and almost everywhere else offers the same toys for less money, it was always going to be hard to survive. If they come back with premium prices they're going to shut down again.

      • Plus Walmart & Target has the benefit of having parents shopping there and being pestered by the kids to just take a look at the toy aisle, something Toys'r'Us never had.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        In my experience, Walmart and Target have less selection. There were several toys and tabletop games that I could find at TRU but not at the local Walmart or Target store.

        • Except at 10k sq. ft. you are not much more than triple the size of the toy section of a Target or Walmart. And the new Toys R Us wants to have play areas and more interactive displays. If you are selling on consignment you will likely not have a consistent inventory. They are going to be a niche market at best, with little ability to move the high volume of merchandise required to be a major player in this business.

    • "Hey, remember when we went bankrupt and liquidated your stock for pennies on the dollar?"
      "Who wants to do that again?"
    • Sounds more like the plan is to go with a predominantly online store with a few "Experience" stores to serve as advertising.

  • ... that the name wasn't "Toys R We"

  • Get it? Tru Kids == (T)oys (R) (U)s Kids (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @03:21PM (#58823360)

    Get it? Tru Kids == (T)oys (R) (U)s Kids

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mattyj ( 18900 )

      I did not, but *groan*.

      A giant toy store is one of the last things a kid is going to leave the house for in 2019.

  • I liked Toys R Us. Young kids *really* liked it. But they only liked it until they were old enough to really use a computer/tablet/phone/console.

    Kids stop playing with "toys" once they are proficient readers, these days. There just isn't a market for toys like there used to be. A whole chain of toy stores is doomed. Again.

    The market hasn't changed, why are they doing this?

  • It was a great place to shop if you didn't know what you wanted to buy for a child, or had a specific wish list - trying to browse for suitable toys on-line is not a great experience. But it is hard to see how this new rendition of Toys 'R' Us could turn into anything more than a niche player.

  • Soon be Zombies for a couple of months or years until somebody cuts their head.

  • I think a better option would be a chain that brokered used toys. Toddlers and young kids have been playing with the same kind of toys for decades and only use them for a year or so. Having a place where you can buy used toys and sell back your old ones as well as having play areas maybe an arcade, video game consoles, etc. in addition to selling the new and used toys. Then buy used toys for pennies on the dollar. Still a better option than throwing them away to sit in a landfill for centuries.

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