Toys R Us United Kingdom falls into administration

Discussion in 'Transformers News and Rumors' started by alldarker, Feb 28, 2018.

  1. BB Shockwave

    BB Shockwave Behold, Gagatron!

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    WTF? I can buy Toys R Us closing shop, sure, but... how come none of the competitors jumped to buy off their stores and merchandise? In my country we have often 2-3 competing toy stores in the same supermarket... or even cases when a store chain has two stores in adjacent supermarkets and they are still profitable to run. This is weird that they could not find a buyer.
    I find it odd they only employed 3000 people in the whole of UK? That country is pretty large. I expected more people to work at this store chain.
    Pretty much why I work in the pharma industry and not make my living by selling Transformers in Hungary... :D  The collectors usually know enough english/internet to order from ebay, and the average Joe and his mom will go to the local stores or the web toyshops - we have also our own local "Ebay" called Vatera and the even simpler small ads site called "Jófogás".
    A friend of mine started an online toy store, he rents a small space for toy display where buyers can pick up the toys - he cannot actually sell from the shelf, as that'd put him in a different tax category. He buys old toys in bulk from UK and Germany and re-sells here. And.... he barely breaks even. He makes an OK living from it, has food and rent, but he had to give up collecting Transformers (or anything else) for his personal collection - he simply does not make enough for that.
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2018
  2. Hoffman

    Hoffman Well-Known Member

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    Because toys are a not a hugely profitable business. Honestly, if a company wants to run dedicated toy store, they kind of have to do it because they want to. Otherwise there are dozens of other more profitable retail sectors they could get into.
     
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  3. BB Shockwave

    BB Shockwave Behold, Gagatron!

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    Sorry, but it is 2018. I see 80 year old grandmas with Iphones and speaking fluent english...
    If you have some sort of income (which if you are a toy collector, you must have), and you speak some basic english (or know how Google translate works), can use the internet, then you have no excuse for not being able to buy stuff from webshops, Ebay, Amazon.
    I mean sure, 5-6 years ago, I still knew rusty old curmudgeons who were 10 years older than me, collected GI Joe, but still lived with their moms and did not have internet or a mobile phone. But today? Everyone has both. And I live in a rather poor country when it comes to the European standard. I imagine in places like the UK or France or Germany, everyone has these things, so they should be perfectly capable of ordering from online.

    Frankly, what would be perfect - and what I really wanted to happen for ages - is for Hasbro to make a European HasbroToyshop website and/or finally start shipping outside North America. Even with taxes and shipping, it would be far below the price toys cost here, which is about the double of the standard US prices - and which is why collectors here rather buy online from outside the country, or wait for half a year for a discount or prices to drop.
     
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  4. RKillian

    RKillian http://www.rktoyandhobby.com

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    Oh I believe it. I had my go at selling and I don't think I ever made money at it. I keep waiting for the hip new(er) shops like Toy Dojo or Dorkside or Chosen Prime to close up shop. They don't seem to carry much more than I did and some of their categories are awfully thin since the Hasbro embargo pushed them to branch out. It's not that I dislike them, I've never ordered from them to form an opinion, but I've seen alot of shops suddenly close over the years. And that was in a market that was booming compared to today. If you told me in 2012 that I'd struggle to move 25% of what I was buying, or that all of these stores would be carrying stock that was 3 and 4 years old, I would've thought you were crazy, yet here we are...
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2018
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  5. primalxconvoy

    primalxconvoy Banned

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    Why did Hasbro embargo them? Was it because they sold 3P or KOs? Then good riddance to Hasbro stock, then.

    Hasbro are only shooting themselves in the foot. What would make people like me buy MORE if their products is if they were cheaper/easily available to purchase online.
     
  6. Hoffman

    Hoffman Well-Known Member

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    They embargoed all online sales. Pre-sell dates that are often after the products have hit big box retailers, and then an even longer wait to actually receive the product.
     
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  7. primalxconvoy

    primalxconvoy Banned

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    Really? TFSource seems to sell them before BBTS (BBTS suggested that TFSource breaks a sales embargo, or something), while they sell them too.

    Is this related to the problem that Sony, et al office, with regards to digital sales? They want to go sell more products (cheaper) digitally, but don't want to anger retailers (who sell the physical consoles) wishing to make profits on the games (as, presumably, the consoles are loss-leaders, it whatever the term is)?

    Personally, in Japan, Amazon is great, and doesn't seem to be restricted by Takara about what regular TFs they can sell. Is Amazon US restricted?
     
  8. G1Prowl

    G1Prowl Prick, apparently

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    Without Hasbro, Wei Jiang would have no good toys to ape. They'd either collapse at the speed of light, or be forced to actually do some engineering.
     
  9. primalxconvoy

    primalxconvoy Banned

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    You mean, like the original combiners that they made? Or the rengineered figures that feature extra or improved parts over the originals. However, I digress, how is your above statement relevant to my original post, which was:

     
  10. G1Prowl

    G1Prowl Prick, apparently

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    The first line was a pro KO anti Hasbro shot, I called you on it. Politely, I might add. I also can take a car engineered by someone else and redesign the door latch, and while that may improve the design of the car, I'm still a bootlegger.
     
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  11. Hoffman

    Hoffman Well-Known Member

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    If TFSource has items up for pre-order before BBTS, they are likely breaking the pre-sell date. BBTS seems to get their stuff up right away.

    While it is speculation, I would suggest that the big box retailers have put a bit of pressure on Hasbro to give them "first to market" on products. If people can secure a pre-order online really early, they may just be happy to wait. But if they find the product in Wal-Mart before they can even place a pre-order, obviously they'll just buy it from Wal-Mart.

    I don't know if that's true, or if Wal-Mart is the one doing it, but it's the only logical reason I can think of that Hasbro wouldn't allow e-tailers to put items up for pre-order as early as possible.
     
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  12. Nevermore

    Nevermore It's self-perpetuating a parahumanoidarianised!

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    Rkillian has been propagating that story for years.
     
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  13. motorthing

    motorthing Too old for this $hit

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    UK Independents have had this BS to contend with recently too. Kapow have had to "comply" and not have POTP waves up months in advance like they used to be able to do. So it's a thing. It's just that in the UK it makes even less sense as POTP Wave 1 has been staggering out in dribs and drabs since December last year but still hasn't arrived at most usual vendors. Likewise Wave 2.

    But then Hasbro UK are beyond explanation anyway.
     
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  14. Hoffman

    Hoffman Well-Known Member

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    That seems a tad hyperbolic, as there was a notable change about a year ago.

    The presell embargo is absolutely 100% a thing, even the bigger etailers will confirm it.

    The reason is speculation on my part.
     
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  15. tikgnat

    tikgnat Baweepgranaweepninnybong.

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    I didn't find it odd, so I did the maths. According to Wiki, TRU has 382 stores in the UK, so 3000 divided by that may stores is 7.8 people per store (on average)... which does seem low.

    I would have expected around 20 people or so per site.
     
  16. Hoffman

    Hoffman Well-Known Member

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    382 stores in the UK? That doesn't sound right at all.
     
  17. stad

    stad Well-Known Member

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    I thought they only had around 100 stores...
     
  18. Hoffman

    Hoffman Well-Known Member

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    Yeah rharth what my quick check said. 30 employees per store sounds right.
     
  19. primalxconvoy

    primalxconvoy Banned

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    It's strange that in Japan, Amazon officially sells TFs with no problem whatsoever. Takara even has an official page there.
     
  20. Nevermore

    Nevermore It's self-perpetuating a parahumanoidarianised!

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    That's because the entire distribution system for Japanese Transformers figures is very different from how it works in Hasbro's market, and has more or less been like that from day 1 of the brand.

    Takara solicits toys to retailers (online and brick and mortar alike) and has official release dates. Usually, those solicits double as the official announcements of those toys.

    Hasbro these days typically announces toys at New York Toy Fair, San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic-Con, with a few more announcements at Toy Fair Australia, and occasionally also at Hascon and CybertronCon, assuming those shows take place that year. However, those announcements don't double as official solicitations to online retailers.

    Now, Hasbro's entire distribution system is different than Takara's. Whereas Takara markets, sells and distributes every product as its own entity shipping in solid cases that contain nothing but multiple identical figures (not counting the occiasional deliberate color variant within a case), Hasbro markets, sells and distributes toys as pre-determined assortments/price points which ship as mixed cases (i.e. different figures sold under the same price point shipping in the same case in a pre-selected case ratio), and are further divided into waves (i.e. a change in the case ratio), with new waves being the way to introduce new figures into an assortment.

    Now in the past, it worked like this: Hasbro would solicit toys to online retailers, which would then put up preorder listings, and then Hasbro whould eventually ship out the toys. Sometimes the online retailers would get them first, while other times the brick and mortar stores would put them out faster, depending on the routes of the trucks and whatever else.

    Now apparently this has changed a few years ago: Certain brick and mortar retailers (read: Walmart) have been demanding (under threat of no longer ordering new stock from Hasbro) that Hasbro must set up specific solicitation dates, by which point online retailers will be allowed to list those figures for preorder. This essentially amounts to street dates. The idea is that these street dates either don't apply to the brick and mortar stores (thus giving them an edge over the online retailers), or the brick and mortar stores simply don't care because they and not Hasbro are calling the shots, so Hasbro has to enforce those street dates (under threat of no longer supplying the online retailers with new stock), but Hasbro can't in turn also make the brick and mortar stores adhere to the street dates they themselves demanded.

    Now in practice, this won't always turn out the way it's intended by the brick and mortar retailers; in some cases, the street date has come and gone and the brick and mortar stores still haven't stocked the new figures, but now the online retailers are allowed to list them... by which point they already have them in stock, so it's not so much a preorder listing but rather an instant "in stock" listing. So due to their own incompetence, the edge the brick and mortar stores wanted to have over the online retailers has expired. But it's highly likely that the powers that be at Walmart don't really care anymore about the trivial specifics by this point.
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2018
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