Toys 'R' Us lenders cancel auction

[AlexOak]

TL;DR: Lender's want to revive Toys 'R' Us.

Spoiler

Quote

The top lenders of Toys ‘R’ Us have decided to cancel the bankruptcy auction of its brand name and other intellectual property assets and instead plan to revive the Toys ‘R’ Us and Babies ‘R’ Us brand names, a court filing on Monday showed.

The bankrupt retailer’s debtors aim to open a new Toys ‘R’ Us and Babies ‘R’ Us branding company that maintains existing global license agreements and can invest and develop new retail shops.

 

The lenders also plan to expand its international presence and further develop its private brands business.

 

After seeing how investors have high hopes for this. I for a fact don't after seeing their decline in the recent years.

Reuters

Kotaku

[dizmo]

Kind of interesting, but I fail to see how this is tech related.

[Speed Weed]

Just now, dizmo said:

Kind of interesting, but I fail to see how this is tech related.

Toys technology. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

-Moved to Off Topic-

[EPENEX]

I've been inside a toys r us like twice in my life, my mom always said it was too expensive. So I guess I don't have a connection with the store so I don't care if it comes back or not.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 hour ago, EPENEX said:

I've been inside a toys r us like twice in my life, my mom always said it was too expensive. So I guess I don't have a connection with the store so I don't care if it comes back or not.

Yea they always seem to be marked up a bit higher. But you just don't get the same vibe when shopping for toys at a Walmart. Well.. shopping in Walmart in general just feels weird. There aren't many toy stores out there nowadays which is rather sad. 

[circeseye]

toys r us was good in the fact that they had pretty much what you were looking for....problem was it was always higher priced {sometime really over priced} then anywhere else . that's what killed the store

[Guest]

People want to buy their kids video games, most kids now don’t want toys in the conventional sense. New generation.

 

Toys R Us are going the same way as Sky TV - old industries dying off.

[Grimlakin]

As an adult Toys R Us is a bit lacking because I know they have to mark up to maintain the physical presence and stock in stores all around.

 

As a grand parent Toys R US RULES.   You ever bring a 4 year old grand kid you don't mind spoiling into a place like Toys R Us and just see their eyes light up?   It's like walking into a Microcenter after depositing your bonus check.    

 

I think Toys R us has a place in our commerce and in our collective consumer consciousnesses.  They just need to keep the number of stores down and make them more special.   Work with Lego, and Mattell and others to make them like mini toy malls.    I think that would be awesome.

[TetraSky]

They should just make it into an Online shop only, with maybe one or two small scale retail locations here and there as showrooms for the best products.

Retail simply cost too much money, it's also dying due to Amazon almost always offering better prices.

With an online store, they only need a warehouse or two and deals with shipping carriers to send products all over the country for cheap.

The only reason to go to a retail store today, is to get something in a hurry, because you can't be arsed to go through the online process or because you want to see/try something before buying it (in the case of clothes for example).

As far as toys go, as long as there's plenty of pictures of the item and a way to tell how big it is, there's no need to see it in person.

[Zando_]

20 minutes ago, Grimlakin said:

As an adult Toys R Us is a bit lacking because I know they have to mark up to maintain the physical presence and stock in stores all around.

 

As a grand parent Toys R US RULES.   You ever bring a 4 year old grand kid you don't mind spoiling into a place like Toys R Us and just see their eyes light up?   It's like walking into a Microcenter after depositing your bonus check.    

 

I think Toys R us has a place in our commerce and in our collective consumer consciousnesses.  They just need to keep the number of stores down and make them more special.   Work with Lego, and Mattell and others to make them like mini toy malls.    I think that would be awesome.

Heck yeah. If they could work closely with Lego and have like a mini Lego store inside that would be awesome, Lego stores are amazing but sadly there's not many of them. 

[dalekphalm]

Fun fact: Toys R Us Canada never went out of business. 

 

After their parent company went bankrupt, the Canadian division managed to secure a way to keep operating. 

 

Apparently the parent company kept kept taking profits from Canada and funnelling them into the US division to keep it afloat a little longer. 

 

In June, all 83 Canadian stores were bought by a Canadian holdings company (Fairfax) for $300m and by all accounts are doing well. 

 

So, I don’t think this will really affect the Canadian stores at all. 

[Grimlakin]

1 hour ago, Zando Bob said:

Heck yeah. If they could work closely with Lego and have like a mini Lego store inside that would be awesome, Lego stores are amazing but sadly there's not many of them. 

I live within a 45 minute drive from one in a outlet mall.  It's a neat thing and they have a few other little event places like that in this mall.  A skate park, an aquarium, and a lego world.   (I think it's like 20 bucks a head to go into lego world?).

But I think a partnership with a company like Toys R Us with perhaps a reduced price for the Lego World experience would be awesome.

 

Of course then Lego would have to deal with customers seeing all of the other toys around as well.   I don't know if that would be a bad thing for them

[Zando_]

1 hour ago, Grimlakin said:

Of course then Lego would have to deal with customers seeing all of the other toys around as well.   I don't know if that would be a bad thing for them

But seriously, any logical kid will choose a Lego spaceship over some other toy, so it should be great for Lego.

[Guest]

14 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Fun fact: Toys R Us Canada never went out of business. 

 

After their parent company went bankrupt, the Canadian division managed to secure a way to keep operating. 

 

Apparently the parent company kept kept taking profits from Canada and funnelling them into the US division to keep it afloat a little longer. 

 

In June, all 83 Canadian stores were bought by a Canadian holdings company (Fairfax) for $300m and by all accounts are doing well. 

 

So, I don’t think this will really affect the Canadian stores at all. 

Shows how much Americans just prefer amazon lol. 

[dalekphalm]

3 hours ago, fpo said:

Shows how much Americans just prefer amazon lol. 

Well - perhaps. Canadians love Amazon too.

 

I would suggest it's incompetent leadership instead. There are other "big box" style stores that have survived and adapted.