Posted on 04/06/2018 6:58:05 PM PDT by Morgana
Toys R Us, otherwise known as heaven for us kids who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, is closing all 800 of its stores’ doors. One of the nation’s largest and oldest toy retailers, the toy chain made the announcement last week.
In its annual filing, the company pointed to online competition like Amazon, as well as traditional retailers like Walmart and Target, as the major reasons for its bankruptcy. But Toys R Us (which also runs Babies R Us) cited another and much more troubling reason for its collapse: sagging birth rates.
“Most of our end-customers are newborns and children,” writes the toy chain’s management. “Our revenue [is] dependent on the birthrates in countries where we operate. In recent years, many countries’ birthrates have dropped or stagnated as their population ages.”
It’s so obvious, most people don’t even consider it. But a toy chain’s business model is dependent on, well, children. One of the reasons toy retailers are dying is because their base of small customers has become…well…too small.
The U.S. fertility rate is now at an all-time low. Some experts estimate it could be nearing 1.77 children per woman, which is well below what’s known as the “replacement rate”—or that number of babies each couple must have on average in order to keep the population from shrinking.
Little wonder, since according to a recent Pew Research poll, young Americans today are less likely to be married than any prior generation. In 1965, nearly 80 percent of “silent generation” members between 21 and 36 years old were married. Today, just 37 percent of Millennials that same age are married.
As a result, the non-immigrant population isn’t just shrinking. It’s also graying—and fast. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2035, senior citizens will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history.
With trends like this in progress, the closing of toy stores may be merely a bellwether of further effects of low fertility to come. Smaller generations mean smaller consumer bases, which in turn mean less economic growth, and further declines in fertility.
As I explained on this program back in December, low fertility is also an unfulfilling way to live as a society. In a 2014 Pew poll, two out of five mothers nearing the end of their childbearing years said they wish they’d had more kids.
Babies are catalysts… they lead adults to care more about the future: to save, invest, make sacrifices, and defer gratification. With fewer children, there’s less of that other-centered love that children inspire. And our already me-centered culture may yet become even more me-centered.
In fact, the consequences of long-term population decline and aging can be seen in other countries ahead of us on this downward demographic curve. For example, Japan has shrunk by over a million people since 2010. The remaining share of Japanese students and young adults face crushing financial burdens, sometimes working 16-hour days to provide for older family members and prop up the country’s entitlement system. Many young people succumb to despair; Japan has one of the highest suicide rates among school-aged children in the world.
Folks, the negative consequences of a culture that fails to see children as the blessings they really are and who view family as a second priority at best, far outweigh any short-term gains. If you couple child-free lifestyles with our society’s disregard for marriage and support for abortion, we will deprive ourselves of more than just toy stores. We’ll be depriving ourselves of a future.
BUt they still support Planned Murderhood.
Not any more.
For the following three kids, "Once Upon a Child" and the other "gently used" stores have received most of our business.
It isn't sagging birth rates. It isn't abortion. It's overpriced junk.
Uhhh yeah, you can tell our country is desperately underpopulated by the freeways empty of cars for as far as the eye can see
Internet stores did them in like they’ll do others as well.
99% was made in China.
"...Toys R Us..."
Based on my interaction with them over the years they hired unhelpful clerks, had poorly stocked, dirty stores and checking out turned into "twenty questions".
The last time I went in I was looking to buy over a thousand dollars worth of stuff. They could not be bothered to help me find the games and toys I was looking for. I left and never went back.
Customer service is the life blood of retail. No matter where you set up shop, you are no longer a monopoly.
Really?
Trying to clean up their act after the internet put the fear of bankruptcy into them was too little and thirty years too late.
There is a market for brick and mortar toy stores, but it will be a new company that didn't tarnish it's reputation for decades that will fill the role.
Or it could have been their high prices and run down stores.
Fact is that children’s toys are outrageously expensive. They make toys in China for a $1 and sell them in America for $35.
People buy toys on the used market because of this. Children outgrow toys before the toy is destroyed, so the secondary market is hot.
Yeah. Sure. Nothing to do with the stores being dirty, expensive and rude workers.
Online retail is destroying all “box” retail. Furthermore, customer service is putrid everywhere one shops now. When our daughter was born, a great portion of baby stuff was bought there. If online options were available back then, I would not set foot into any brick and mortar store because of idiocy, ineptitude and disregard from employees and sales tax.
Don’t forget the role minimum wage hikes play. If a biz has to pay through the nose for mediocrity, there’s going to be less money available for more productive employees.
In 2005 Toy R Us was sold to Bain Capital and two other investment firms for $6.6 Billion. Those three firms ponied up about 20% of the purchase cost, borrowed the rest, then saddled Toys R Us with the rest of the debt. Thus, Toys R Us instantly had over $5 Billion in debt and could not do anything to improve itself in the market as it had to service that debt.
Here's why...
Do kids even play outside anymore? Ride bikes for miles like I did when I was a shorty?
Do kids even play board games anymore? Play amateur sports like tether-ball and softball, in which Toys R Us sold many of the accessories?
This is the root cause of Toys R Us demise: The liberalization of American kids.
Toys R Us supported Planned Butcherhood. They have no grounds on which to complain.
Simply, cell phones and computers are the new “toys.”
Don’t think abortion has anything to do with it.
I know they did. But that doesn’t detract from my point.
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