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The founder of ToysRUs, Charles Lazarus, has died this week, aged 94.
I guess watching the collapse of the global business empire that he created was too much for him to take.
Lazarus started the first ToysRUs store in 1957, after spending 9 years selling baby furniture, and didn't step down as CEO until 1994.
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Bad news for those still looking to get Arcee or Grotusque from the website (or were waiting for the allowance to be increased from 1 or 2 per person)... the TRU website is no longer allowing purchases, without any advance warning.
(they should have had some sort of warning of the exact closing day/time, as it would have helped clear out some stock as people rushed to buy things at the last minute)
No word on where their online exclusives or regular items will be going, or how long the website will stay up with its product listings.
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I'm glad I managed to snag 2 Grotusque and sent to a friend in the US and get them sent over to me. Bad that they gave no advance warnings
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It sounds like ToysRUs in America will be making back a fair bit of money from the sale of their interests in the more profitable foreign branches during their liquidation of assets... so I don't known why they didn't just do this in the last year and just focus on their core US business.
They would have then just licensed out the usage of the name around the world, and have access to those stores when organising store exclusives with toy companies... and then buy back those businesses later if/when they build up their warchest of funds to splash out on expansions.
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The first lot of sales have started, with the Irish/UK toy retailer Smyths, buying up the TRU stores in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.... but the articles say that Smyths are intending to use the purchase to expand their brand into Europe, which makes it sound like they are buying the existing infrastructure of the 93 stores in Europe, but will rebrand the stores to Smyths... which could well mean ToysRUs might only found in the Asian region of the world.
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The earlier report about KB toys having an accelerated return in America, has been reinforced by an official announcement by the CEO, that they will have to set up pop-up stores for the Christmas period this year, and then evaluate which ones to set up as permanent locations.
They plan to have 300-400 pop-up stores at the end of this year, and are aiming to have 800-900 permanent stores when they are fully (re)launched as a national toy retailer.
It probably can't come soon enough for the toy companies, who were hit hard by the collapse of ToysRUs - even Hasbro had a significant drop in sales and profits in the first quarter of this year when TRU stopped buying their stock.
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Australia also under administration now...
http://www.afr.com/business/retail/t...0180521-h10d2v
Need to subscribe to read the full article. Thanks AFR.Originally Posted by BruiseLee
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From news.com.au
http://www.news.com.au/finance/busin...fde6e0e53e3e90
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ENERGON: Six Shot
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Sad days for Australian retail
It's the pricing strategy that TRU utilized that failed them... I really don't understand how they expected buyers to pay significantly more when next door at Target or Kmart you can get the same thing for less.
Man, it just sucks that we're losing TRU... another one bites the dust.
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