BUt they still support Planned Murderhood.
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.
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.
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.
Simply, cell phones and computers are the new “toys.”
Don’t think abortion has anything to do with it.
Notwithstanding the slant of this article, the Toys R Us meme that their troubles are because of declining birthrates is bogus. Yes, the birth rates are declining. Some of that decline is because our population is increasing. If the population rises by 3 million per year (4 mill births plus 1.5 mill migration minus 2.5 mill deaths) and about the same number are born, then the rate is going to decline. If the number of births were really significantly declining, the rate would be nose diving.
As noted in the data below, the high point of US births was in 2007 with our currently yearly pattern approximate to the number in the 1990s. Why did Toys R US not struggle then. A couple hundred thousand babies do not make or break a company.
Year. Births
1995. 3,899,589
1996. 3,891,494
1997. 3,880,894
1998. 3,941,553
1999. 3,959,417
2000. 4,058,814
2001. 4,025,933
2002. 4,021,726
2003. 4,089,950
2004. 4,112,052
2005. 4,138,349
2006. 4,265,555
2007. 4,316,233
2008. 4,247,694
2009. 4,130,665
2010. 3,999,386
2011. 3,953,590
2012. 3,952,841
2013. 3,932,181
2014. 3,988,076
2015. 3,978,497
2016. 3,945,875
CDC data