They weren’t sinking out of necessity. The owners euthanized a viable business based on self-serving nonsense in the financial sector.

This is happening all over the place. Niche, specialty content has to be built on niche, specialty knowledge, not a bunch of know nothing investors who sit around watching Jim Cramer all day.

I saw this not long ago with a video game publisher. The investors were breathing down their neck to do mobile, app based games. Problem is, their proprietary game engines and human knowledge were all desktop development oriented. The investors were foaming at the mouth because generalist analysts were saying mobile was the future and PC gaming was dead. This publisher would have had to invest in mobile gaming as if they were a new entrant and would have been forced to kill a bunch of profitable games to free up the capital to do so.

Finally, the CEO/founder ponied up his own money to buy out the investors and go private. They killed their few nascent mobile initiatives and doubled down on core competencies in PC gaming. Everyone got big bonuses because they had a record year after being freed up from a bunch of micromanaging investors trying to steer them away from what they were good at.

 

I gotta admit to you this one got me sorta stumped. But I know TRU and that wasn't TRU. It was like something was wearing TRU. Like a suit. A TRU suit.

Man, this somehow makes it worse...

 

Because the company still has value in its name, and another investment firm may want to take advantage of that. Not like this lazy attempt, which is a rehash of how KB Toys faded into the ether, but one that can recapture a market that's been depressed since its absence. Walmart says toy demand is up, yet they shrink their toy section in response to this, narrowing the offerings and leveraging their stranglehold on the market -- that kind of action could have brought about a response of a newcomer to the market filling the demand better.

 

It's basically a group of investors playing "Weekend At Bernies" with the IP.

 

Ever since tru died my local targets have had stock of all the waves. It’s been the best thing as hasbro has more stock to distribute out.

I’m afraid if it’s supported by target that just means the same, thinned out stocking marking it harder to find stock in the wild.

 

"...the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas."--Ian Malcolm

 

CNN and GMA both carried a story on their programs last week that target was going to launch Tru's web site .....

Target is going to power Toys R Us' new website

Target to Power Toys"R"Us Shopping Experience

 

Gee, where have we seen this play out before? Maybe how Amazon 'powered' the original TRU web presence into a full-power kamikaze dive?

 

Target to Power Toys"R"Us Shopping Experience

 

Also:

Don’t get me wrong.

TRU could have benefited from reorganization.

They could have shutdown BRU and consolidated with TRU for fewer locations. Birth rates are down in most of the US.

They could have gotten a smidge more price competitive in the short run, possibly.

In the longer term, I think stores could have benefited from remodels.

That said, the talk about “kids just play games” risks confusing the issue. TRU’s expertise was toys and IMHO they would have benefited from following the toy market where it went.

We’ve seen GameStop close Thinkgeek’s website and shrink it’s collectible section. In the short run, that may make sense but I think GameStop was the less sustainable business. People don’t need a physical store to buy games and console demand not only waxes and wanes based on offerings and the economy but isn’t something you need a ton of showrooming for. Does anybody want to pick a PS4 from a selection of boxes? Sure, somebody. But enough to matter. The gaming that isn’t handled by downloads is best served by warehouses and shipping. Aside from play testing, I’m not sure what a video game store offers aside from used games and I think 2nd and Charles and the like are more sustainable by doing ALL KINDS of used stuff, from toys to books to games. The used market can thrive through economic ups and downs because they can buy low during a downturn.

If you have a physical store, you need physical goods with showroom appeal.

Honestly...? I think maybe what the toy business needs is to roll with the punches a bit more with the aging demo. I don’t have their research but I kind of think stuff like Friends Legends and Seinfeld Legends might be viable. Toys by the Netflix trending section.

If you go by what Millennials are into, Friends and The Office are probably on par with Stranger Things. Bands. Stuff like Welcome to Nightvale. I think Rick and Morty was a hit for awhile but kind of got stripmined because there weren’t companion products (and because I think Roiland is a bit insane).

TFs and MOTU and all that 80s stuff at its peak benefited from tons of cross play with knockoffs and imitators. A good store gets you in the door for one thing and without a hard push either sells you something else or shows you something to buy on your next visit.

As much as people praise Amazon algorithms, they keep offering me stuff that I can see being related to past purchases that I have no interest in because they decided what linked my interests rather than letting me link them.

That said, TRU had small problems with organization. I’d probably have bought more and had more interest in toys grouped by scale than all the DC or Marvel stuff together.

I’m relatively confident that putting Mega Construx and Jada Metal Figs next to Transformers would move more of both and might have also sold more TitanMasters and created a market for TF humans enough for Hasbro to make a budget line.

The difference between a GOOD tacky Batman action figure with a gimmick and a BAD one was that the GOOD ones aligned with play patterns.

I see the big growth area right now with play patterns being Instagrammable toys. Sure. Folks here do it but kids have instagrams too and stuff like ExtremeSets would be a great fit IMHO for a retail toy store, especially as they tend to get expensive from individual shipping and would make a killing at a lower price if they could bulk freight them to physical stores.

 

Geoffrey’s New U.S. Troops to Command: Toys R Us Website Relaunched, Powered By Target - Transformers News - TFW2005

 

Could be worse. Could be powered by peapod.

 

Based on the video, they are becoming chuck e cheese 2.0? They could be hughly successful, if they just stopped trying to be the past, and actually tried to be something different & new, like retail is supposed to constantly do...success comes from effort. TRU has existed in Target for months now, unless you have the 1 store someone cares about, every single one I've visited has looked like they took a snow shovel & just tossed stuff out of a trailer into the store...Target is now the 80's version of K-Mart as it was going under...

 

And Walmart is an icky hell-dimension, and there are very few other options unless you live somewhere lucky enough to have small local indies. We live in dark times, my friends... every store seems to be taking on the worst traits of every other in addition to its own as everybody races for the bottom.  

 

Even funnier than that – Target used to be "powered" by Amazon too, until they realized they'd handed their own web presence over to a competitor, and pulled out of the contract to pour ton of money into developing their own web presence. It probably saved their butts.

 

@Gepard, can't remember if I linked this up-thread, but while this guy is a little unhinged on some issues my outside checking indicates he pretty much had Bezos's number here.
https://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2018/06/28/amazon-killed-toys-r-us-–-much-dishonestly-way-think/
Amazon’s No-Profit Model: Bleed Competitors to Death - Then Do Exactly What They Did

 

I don’t think that’s Bezo’s model despite Wall Street folks saying that for decades.

I think Bezos’ model really is high volume, low profit, wow the customers. It’s a free market ideologue’s dream of driving prices down.

That said, even if that’s what he wants, I think he’ll eventually be forced by investors to go the other way and already is.

Famous start-up (or effectively start-up) CEOs like Jobs and Bezos tend to have a “please the customers, grind the workers, stand up to the investors” mentality. Eventually, they die or get ousted by someone who maximizes the investor interests and that drives their company into the ground while some other start-ups “disrupt” by adopting a customer orientation and/or a skilled labor pleasing orientation that delivers a better product at a lower price, which lasts until investors screw that up too.

 

Yeah, no. That market doesn't buy toys. Game of Thrones, for instance, was all the rage around the office but the toys didn't sell until they were marked down from $20 to $5.