Kids like toys. Toys R’ Us was synonymous with toys. Its name recognition was unparalleled in the industry. How could they go out of business?
Marezilla has a rant-
Much like a certain failed U.S. Presidential candidate, Toys ‘R’ Us is blaming its catastrophic failure in every direction except where the blame squarely lies – on itself. It wasn’t killed by Amazon, it wasn’t killed by Target or Walmart, and it wasn’t killed by babies or a lack thereof. Toys ‘R’ Us killed itself, not only by failing to adapt to a changing marketplace but also, and more importantly, by failing to provide adequate customer service which would have garnered it some customer loyalty.
Shopping at a brick and mortar Toys ‘R’ Us store is a miserable and stressful experience. At my local store the place was always
I also read that the current owners TRU went so deeply into debt to buy it that they could never make enough money to stay in business.
Funny thing in the local mall. TRU moved to bigger digs in the mall, and now they are going out of business. They moved into where the Target store was after Target (Canada) went out of business. And TRU going out of business is right on the heels of Sears Canada going out of business.
Want some space in a big mall, cheap?
Never been a shopper there. We have a TRU express here and it sux.
No loss.
Ahhhh Toys R US. The “Chuck E. Cheese” of merchandise.
I’m basing this comment on the stores in Southern CA:
They’re constantly getting robbed, someone’s getting robbed in the parking lot or inside the store, there’s a fight breaking out somewhere in the back, they never have security, or has a lame security guard holding a weapon which equals to a fly swatter. In some stores, the employees were bigger low-lifes than their customers (That’s what happens when you hire employees based on how much of a federal or state tax credit you can get for hiring them). The price points for the merchandise is usually wrong and if you did find an employee to help you out, they probably don’t speak English anyway. How in the world did they last this long?
Never even seen a TRU, I would assume it’s a toy manufacturer.
TrU blew it in 1999 when they failed to deliver for Christmas with the start of online ordering on their website.
They they opted to contract to Amazon for fulfillment, which only works for companies manufacturing and working on big margins (I know this as a retailer who has to constantly resist the “sell on Amazon, it’ll be good!” b.s. I hear daily). Add in being gutted by venture capitalists who destroyed the inner workings that build their brand, and it was inevitable doom.
It was more than one factor, but 1999 was when the decline began and rather than learn from being ill-prepared, they threw in the towel, let their operation be wrecked on multiple fronts and never, ever had a viable recovery plan in an era where kids don’t want toys, they want their own iPad by age 4 or a phone like mommy’s, and that’s it. They became the rotary phone of the toy world, but that was by their choices.
This reminds me of the self-induced immolation of RadioShack. They had a commercial in which they said “ You’ve got questions…we’ve got answers”. No. It should have said, “You’ve got questions….we’ve got morons”.
Toys R Who?
We have one in our town, but we rarely ever shopped there when our kids were young.
Went in their with my kid 8 or 9 years ago. Bought nothing, grossly overpriced. Never went back.
Worked at both TrU and Sears in college, back in the early ’90s. I didn’t realize it then but looking back you could already see the writing was starting to show up on the wall. Limited selections, higher prices than you knew stuff was worth, and abysmal customer service (at least at TrU). Sears around that time launched Canyon River Blues, which I believe pretty much flopped, and then started getting really trendy and fahsion-y. The workwear section dwindled, then disappeared, at least it did at my store. This was an anchor in a mall; TrU was free standing just outside. That mall now stands half-empty, last I checked.
Interestingly, this was the same time I really liked shopping at Target, before they went all Tar-Gay and trendy. You could get a really cheap (around $12?) but decent and comfy pair of jeans at Target back then, plus a nice variety of adult clothing. It really was a decent store. All that stopped many years ago, of course.
I remember going to the HUGE Toys R Us in Rockville, MD when I was a kid. It seemed as big as a Home Depot, filled with nothing but toys and games. Every visit was like an adventure. They had a big slot car display with a track and cars racing non-stop. I believe I made my first purchase with my own money at that store.
In any company the rot starts at the top.
I work for a fortune 100 company where stupid decisions are the norm. When anyone at work complains about stupid management decisions I say, “We make money in spite of ourselves.”
TRU was terrible to suppliers as well.
Sounds like it’s: Ready, Fire, Aim
We had two “toy” stores when I was growing up. A Toys R Us and a Service Merchandise. Service Merchandise had more than toys but they were essentially a pre-internet era Amazon and an unrivaled selection of items across seemingly every category. At one point, they advertised themselves as “America’s Leading Jeweler”.
You’d place your order on a computer, go to the counter a few minutes later, and it would all be put together – ready for payment.
https://www.servicemerchandise.com/about-us/
The filed for bankruptcy almost two decades ago but the owner has started to sell jewelry online again.
If there is one company I wish that could come back so I didn’t have to go to Amazon, it would be that one.
Thanks!
Every time I had to go there in the 20 + years that I have lived in this area, the store was a mess and the employees, if you could find any, were surly. Frankly, I am surprised they lasted this long!
Toys weRe Us.
Good-by, good riddance.
Do children, who’s parent (didn’t miss the edit button) is rich enough to afford new toys, still play with toys? I thought the big selling point of iDroids was when they got tired of putting combat boots and tiaras on zombies in “Differently Documented Lives: Fashion Designer,” they could buy “A Wrinkly Time” and shoot “the hordes of baby boomers, that… just… won’t.. die!” without ever relocating their “comfy” backsides.
Our local TRU has a lot of problems. If you’re overweight, good luck getting in the door. It’s so narrow the carts barely fit through. Their selection of toys is horrible. They clearly cater to girls, political correctness and China. They brought in so much baby merchandise, it took up half the store. There aren’t any employees around to help. The prices are outrageous.
Every time I go in there, I end up leaving with nothing.
They used to have great stuff.
Bathroom always dirty and way too small when one is hauling kids in there. Walmart wasspotless BY comparison.
In the last 20 years I bought 1 large Duplo platform there and that’s all. I had not been in it in that many years either.
I didn’t mind ToysRUs, I shopped there at Christmas and got a lot of good stuff for less than WalMart.
Now when my kids were young I preferred KB Toys, they were a lot cheaper than TRU, with the only drawback being I had to go to the Mall and I hate malls.
Plain Jane, oh yeah, I’d forgotten the bathroom. DAILY there was at least one dirty diaper and/or crap on the floor, or a plugged up john.
imagine working at a store where your customers are mothers with their screaming free range kids running through the store or screaming and crying babies ALL DAY LONG.
Is it any wonder they have employee problems?
I think one of the biggest factors in the demise of brick-and-mortar retail stores and malls is the ghetto-ization and barrio-ization of American cities. Flash-mobs, theft and violence scares away customers who can shop comfortably and safely from home. Same thing with movie theaters.
I blame that dyslexic backwards “Я” in their sign name, myself.
We were supposed to do vendor managed inventory for video and audio product for them, where we created their new release allocations, got their point of sale info, trended their sales by store and SKU and created replenishment orders and basically managed that category.
Their back office systems were run on an Eniac or something. They totally sucked. We dumped them a decade ago.
I have fond memories of the store. As Watch Out mentioned, it’s the Radio Shack of toys.
I had need of a ball that lit up or flashed when bounced. Finally found one at TRU. The family wanted to play Monopoly out of the blue one night. We got a box at TRU. I remember when starting out in my 20s, they had a baby sale where multiple purchases resulted in a 20% discount. That goes a long way when buying a crib, bureau, and car seat in one go at eight buck an hour.