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Post by robeiae on Mar 14, 2018 8:39:34 GMT -5
www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/toys-r-us-is-preparing-to-file-its-liquidation-plan-with-the-court.htmlSeems like this has been on the horizon for a while, but I thought it would be a restructuring and downsizing, not a total liquidation. Not only will this put tens of thousands of people out of work, it will likely reverberate through the toy industry as a whole, as many companies relied heavily on Toys R Us for sales. And Toys R Us locations--being so large--are going to have a hard time finding buyers and/or tenants.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2018 10:04:43 GMT -5
This makes me really sad. It's another piece of my childhood gone.
For a number of reasons, I'm trying not to buy on A.m.a.z.o.n any more than I must. But with ToysRUs gone, and so many mom-n-pop toy shops gone (even here in NYC, which was a stronghold of independent shops during the great Mall Age), it's going to get harder for my to buy toys for the kids in my life without going to A.m.a.z.o.n.
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Post by robeiae on Mar 14, 2018 10:24:14 GMT -5
There's always Walmart...
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2018 10:45:32 GMT -5
gaah!
Until a couple of years ago, I had an awesome little independent toy store around the corner from me. It had been in business 35 years -- and it was very popular. What did this particular store in was not lack of business or online competition, but the insanely climbing rents in NYC, which increasingly make it impossible for anything but a chain store with deep pockets to keep the doors open. Lately, we've had a lot of chain stores close their doors too. A shocking number of storefronts staying unfilled for literally years on Broadway -- the larger ones especially.
I keep wondering if the landlords see the writing on the wall -- with online competition, brick and mortar stores can only raise their prices so high to cover rent, and I don't see that changing any time soon. There's a limit to how much stores can charge before it just becomes stupid to shop there. I hope they figure that out before my entire neighborhood becomes a retail wasteland. At one time, stores went out of business for sure -- but it would have been unheard of for prime retail or restaurant space on Broadway to stay empty for years. Now it's not uncommon at all.
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Post by robeiae on Mar 14, 2018 10:52:03 GMT -5
One of the biggest problems is rising rent at all these strip malls. The property owners upgrade facilities all the time in an effort to attract shoppers and pass that on to the store owners via rent increases. But few mom and pop retailers have the necessary traffic to keep up with those increases, so the strip malls are getting overrun with restaurants and coffee/juice/smoothie shops, which often seem successful early on, but then slowly lose traffic as they cease to be a new thing, causes most to fold as well.
Unless one owns the property, it's almost impossible to set up a new retail store that might grow over time. It has to be successful immediately, and that rarely happens.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 14, 2018 11:06:21 GMT -5
The same is being played out here.
And then, of course, all these little similar shops are competing with each other. We had this ridiculous proliferation of fro-yo and smoothie shops and nail and waxing salons. Like, several on a single block. You can't get that stuff online, so they're not facing that kind of competition. Only thing is, (1) we don't NEED 8 million fro-yo shops in a two-block radius, and (2) there's still a limit on what any normal human will pay for a fro-yo. So they mostly put each other out of business in short order.
Something has to give -- people do still need some brick-and-mortar places, and landlords still (presumably) want to fill their spaces.
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Post by Don on Mar 15, 2018 4:27:22 GMT -5
Welcome to the 21st century, folks. The 20th century economy is not coming back. They should be leveling malls all across the country and turning them into parks, but instead billions in resources will be wasted trying to reinvigorate what was once the status quo. There's massive creative destruction ahead. We are in the midst of a paradigm shift as foundational as the industrial revolution, and both parties are living up to the Bill Buckley definition of conservative.
A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.
Pretty much everything politicians are proposing and doing these days will seem either extremely wasteful or supremely silly on the other side of the digital divide. If I had a time machine, the one thing I'd do would be go forward 200 years and grab a few history books. They'd be wildly entertaining, I'm sure.
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Post by swachski on Mar 15, 2018 7:19:09 GMT -5
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Post by robeiae on Mar 15, 2018 8:00:55 GMT -5
Look at this piece at CNN: money.cnn.com/2018/03/15/news/companies/toys-r-us-closing-blame/index.htmlThe premise: Amazon isn't to blame for Toys R Us' woes. Uh-huh. I thought Bezos only owned WaPo. I didn't know he'd purchased CNN as well... It's true that Toys R Us had other problems, but those problems became insurmountable specifically because Toys R Us--like every brick and mortar retailer--is losing daily foot traffic and business to online retailers. Best Buy--which I think is being run very smartly--is shutting down all of its mall stores, because they just don't produce, and it has trimmed a large number of its regular stores as well. And it's revamped what it is selling, including getting rid of CDs (because it's not worth it to use up space selling something that barely moves). But it is clearly the exception (HH Gregg is more typical). |
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Post by Vince524 on Mar 15, 2018 11:57:38 GMT -5
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Post by swachski on Mar 16, 2018 6:51:51 GMT -5
Look at this piece at CNN: money.cnn.com/2018/03/15/news/companies/toys-r-us-closing-blame/index.htmlThe premise: Amazon isn't to blame for Toys R Us' woes. Uh-huh. I thought Bezos only owned WaPo. I didn't know he'd purchased CNN as well... It's true that Toys R Us had other problems, but those problems became insurmountable specifically because Toys R Us--like every brick and mortar retailer--is losing daily foot traffic and business to online retailers. Best Buy--which I think is being run very smartly--is shutting down all of its mall stores, because they just don't produce, and it has trimmed a large number of its regular stores as well. And it's revamped what it is selling, including getting rid of CDs (because it's not worth it to use up space selling something that barely moves). But it is clearly the exception (HH Gregg is more typical). Maybe TrU didn't fold because of Amazon, but that piece proves my point. Their customers complained about bad service in an unwelcoming setting. The dilemma for smaller retail businesses is customers want good service but don't want to pay for it. |
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Post by Amadan on Mar 17, 2018 13:11:48 GMT -5
The boardgaming industry has enjoyed a renaissance in the past few years. A lot of people are calling this the Golden Age of Boardgaming because so many new games come out every month.
Interestingly, despite the fact that Amazon sells boardgames far below MSRP, like everything else, there are quite a few independent game stores still doing well.
The ones that survive do so mostly by providing good service and a welcoming environment. I go to a couple and while I won't say I never buy an expensive game cheap on Amazon, I will generally try to buy new games at my FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) if the extra $5 or $10 isn't going to break my budget.
Part of what they offer is table space - allowing people to come and play games from their free game library, and of course, tournaments. (Magic: The Gathering still keeps lots of game stores afloat.)
Mostly, I just like going into a well-kept game store and browsing, and I almost always end up buying something.
Contrast with, say, the doomed Barnes & Noble. And Borders before them. I used to love those places - they felt like book stores where people who loved books hung out - but in the period running up to their demise, they became very much impersonal big box chains whose employees, being underpaid and treated like crap, generally didn't actually care much about books, and they tried to make money by adding lots of junk unrelated to books.
(Independent book stores, on the other hand, are and were very hit and miss. The nice ones are still surviving, but a lot of those places were frankly little hole-in-the-wall closets full of cat dander and grumpy proprietors who didn't really care if you bought something, which is why I never shed many tears about B&N and Borders eating them.)
Point of all this being, Toys'R'Us long ago stopped being a cool place to hang out and oggle all the goodies, and was essentially the Home Depot of Toys. Except toys don't sell like home improvement materials. No one wants to go hang out in a fluorescent warehouse. So they had nothing to compete with Amazon's prices and convenience.
Also regarding boardgaming and online sales - there are several major online boardgame retailers who manage to compete with Amazon, mostly with reward programs, good and obscure selections, and very, very tight margins.
So it's not impossible to compete with Amazon. But you have to be very focused and know your market very well.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2018 13:50:56 GMT -5
Contrast with, say, the doomed Barnes & Noble. And Borders before them. I used to love those places - they felt like book stores where people who loved books hung out - but in the period running up to their demise, they became very much impersonal big box chains whose employees, being underpaid and treated like crap, generally didn't actually care much about books, and they tried to make money by adding lots of junk unrelated to books. (Independent book stores, on the other hand, are and were very hit and miss. The nice ones are still surviving, but a lot of those places were frankly little hole-in-the-wall closets full of cat dander and grumpy proprietors who didn't really care if you bought something, which is why I never shed many tears about B&N and Borders eating them.) This is all true. That said, a couple of little book stores I adored were eaten by Barnes & Noble, too. One I particularly miss is Murder Inc., a wonderful tiny book store devoted to mystery novels and true crime, genres I adore. It was around for 35 years until Barnes & Noble moved in down the street. Between the competition with B&N and online competition, and the rising rents, it just couldn't cut it anymore. But while it was there, its workers were all people who adored books and made fantastic recommendations. I was so sad when it closed. But an interesting thing is starting to happen in NYC as B&N struggles -- some independent book stores are starting up again. Two of them have popped up not far from me, and Shakespeare and Co. (which closed to much lamentation a few years back), is opening a branch in my hood soon. I hope they make it. I agree that the key to making them work are the employees -- I went back to Murder Inc. again and again because unlike the B&N employees, they liked chatting about the books and introduced me to some writers I might never have otherwise found. |
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Post by nighttimer on Mar 19, 2018 19:57:55 GMT -5
What does Mitt Romney have to do with the demise of Toys-R-Us? A helluva lot more than you might think. Fast forward to around the seven minute mark for details. What happened to Toys-R-Us is the same thing that happened to Kay-Bee Toys.  Ain't capitalism great?  |
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Post by prozyan on Mar 20, 2018 0:42:23 GMT -5
Toys-R-Us was dead way back in 99 when it reported a same store sales decline of nearly 3%. Retail simply does not recover from a decline like that. It is a grand miracle it held on for nearly 2 more decades.
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