OT: Toys R Us Closing all US Stores

Submitted by ctallarico20 on

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2018/03/14/toys-r-us-told-employees-wednesday-planning-sell-close-all-its-u-s-stores-and-file-liquidation-paper/426292002/

 

"The company confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that Chief Executive Dave Brandon had shared the news with employees in a conference call. A spokeswoman for Toys R Us told The Record that Brandon told employees it was a sad day and that customers and others would be sad to see the brand disappear."

bostonsix

March 15th, 2018 at 1:00 AM ^

Bite the bullet for about a decade and they would have been fine. Instead, their prices were consistently 10-20% higher than competitors trying to get out of debt and keep the corporate salaries up. In the decade of doing so they couldn't invest back into the company and ran it into the ground.

rob f

March 15th, 2018 at 1:10 AM ^

that Dave is going to offer a "retail activation" of two free 2-liter bottles of Coke™ in exchange for the employee discount cards of all Toys R Us clerks, if they spend $500 or more of their hard-earned wages during the TRU Liquidation Event this weekend.

ST3

March 15th, 2018 at 1:39 AM ^

Not Geoffrey! Don't fuck the poor giraffe. He was just a pawn in Brandon's sick, demented games. Would you fuck that kraft noodle or the two liter bottle of Pepsi (or was it Coke?) Of course not. I beg of you, please, please save all of your outrage and angst for overpriced, plastic merchandise and direct it where it belongs, with Dave Brandon and the parents of America who were taken in by a cute, backwards R for all those years.

ToledoWolverine

March 15th, 2018 at 12:21 PM ^

The proverbial fuck. I’ll leave the physical act of love to MeanJoe or the Mad Hatter.

Just a joke guys, a little levity. Yeah it sucks all those people are losing their jobs. But they will be ok. It’s only life, nobody is getting out alive.

the Glove

March 15th, 2018 at 6:55 AM ^

This sucks, I personally have a lot of friends at work on the corporate side as well as the store side. I'm not worried about the ones with degrees, I'm worried about the lower-level employees that don't have college education's. There are a lot of good people and about 65,000 of them are going to be jobless soon.

The Mad Hatter

March 15th, 2018 at 8:12 AM ^

Yes, Amazon (and before them Walmart) is killing everyone on price, but many of the corporate bankruptcies happen after a private equity firm bleeds the company dry.

If Toys R US didn't take on such a massive amount of debt to enrich its corporate masters, they would have been much better able to compete on price.  Hell, many of their stores have been there long enough that they probably own the real estate they sit on outright.

1VaBlue1

March 15th, 2018 at 8:33 AM ^

Bain and KKR are both well known for bleeding companies dry.  With TRU, they even brought along a real estate company!  They leveraged heavily to buy in, and bled everything they could get out of it.  Now they get rid of it in bankruptcy without actually losing out on the 'investment'.  

You'd think they would have problems getting loans in the future for other 'investments', but they won't.  The bankruptcy, and leaving thier lenders dry, won't hurt at all.  They'll end up providing a loan to some other 'investment' firm that will bleed out some other sad sack company, and the cycle will repeat itself.

BTW, if you work for a company that Dave Brandon takes over, start betting large amounts on its future bankruptcy.  It's what Brandon does, and he's good at it.

ThereWillBeNoHugs

March 15th, 2018 at 7:39 AM ^

It is being reported that if you have gift cards at either Toys R Us or Babies R Us, to use them ASAP before they become worthless. As of this morning, it is said they are still working online. Please let family and friends know.

Denard's Pro Career

March 15th, 2018 at 9:55 AM ^

possible solution--Brandon stays on as CEO, orchestrates sale of all Toys R Us locations in the continental US to Arizona State University, creating a network of nationwide satellite campuses/internet cafes where you have to pay to access websites that aren't ASU online. Everybody wins, but the real winner is the American dream.

Hail-Storm

March 15th, 2018 at 11:20 AM ^

It was an hour away in GR, so we rarely went, but the local Meijers only had two or three aisles of toys, where toys r us had a whole aisle of star wars toys alone.  Such a crazy experience as a child.  

When I've been in them lately, they always seemed like they looked like they day after black friday, except it was just a normal random day.  Stuff everywhere, packaging of toys destroyed.  It looks like Bain bought in just to destroy the place. 

M-Dog

March 15th, 2018 at 12:16 PM ^

This is the "creative destruction" of free enterprise.

Let's not forget, Toys R Us itself put a lot of mom and pop toy stores out of business.

They weren't "evil" for doing that, they had a better business model that people liked.  And it made them successful.

Now people like Amazon.

Believe it or not, there will be a day when Amazon's time is done.  That's how it works.

I remember when K-Mart was the 800 lb. gorilla and could never ever be stopped.  Until it was.

Your grandparents remember when it was Sears.

And so on.