Last month, I observed that “K-Mart is closing stores and Toys R Us is going out of business. Those are definitely topics for another day.” Today is that day, at least for Toys R Us.*
I begin with CNBC’s The Rise And Fall Of Toys R Us.
One of the most famous toy stores Toys R Us is closing its doors for good.
Oh, look, Bain Capital is involved with a failed toy store chain. Where have I seen that before?
There’s a double irony here. First, Toys R Us bought the KB Toys brand and was using it on its line of self-manufactured toys as of 2012. Two years ago, it sold the name off and the new owners are planning on taking advantage of the former owner’s misfortune. WKBW in Buffalo has that story, reporting KB Toys aims to fill the void of Toys ‘R’ Us.
Toys “R” Us is on its way out, but KB Toys is set to pop back up.
Strategic Marks, a company that buys and revitalizes defunct brands, owns the KB name and plans to open 1,000 pop-up KB Toys stores for Black Friday and the holiday shopping season.
“My assumption is that there’s about half a billion dollars worth of toys that have been produced for Toys “R” Us with no place to go,” said Strategic Marks president Ellia Kassoff, in a phone interview with CNNMoney. “That’s a big, big void that we’re hoping to fill up.”
…
After the holiday shopping season ends, Kassoff will decide which of the pop-up stores will become permanent, based on their performance and whether he can negotiate a lease.
I’m glad to have KB Toys back and wish the new owners luck. They’ll need it.
Of course, I can’t be all DOOM all the time, so here is Jimmy Kimmel having some fun with the bad news as Geoffrey the Giraffe Despondent Over Toys ‘R’ Us Closing.
Toys ‘R’ Us is going out of business and is closing all 735 of their stores. There are many people who are upset about this, including Geoffrey the Giraffe who stopped by the studio to share his feelings on the situation.
Go home, Geoffrey. You’re drunk.
*I’ll get to KMart in a future set of posts. In the meantime, stay tuned for three more parts to this sad series.
Excerpted from Toys R Us closing down and Kmart may follow at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News.
Covering the retail apocalypse can drive one to drink, so here’s Back to School Party on a Budget! – Tipsy Bartender.
Not exactly the kind of back to school shopping one could have done at Toys R Us, but fun just the same.
Interesting that when Toys R Us bought the KB assets, both were owned by Bain. Add self-dealing to all the other misbehavior.
I have to admit that hadn’t occurred to me, so good point!
I once worked a long time for a start up. Two guys, a programmer and a salesman mortgaged their homes and started a software services business. They hired the best and treated them like human beings. family in fact. Then a major client, a retailer, bought them to save money on the services. The retailer didn’t know what they were doing so they sold the business to Bain capital. They changed the name but I saw a balky client decide to sign immediately when he heard our old name. “Oh! You did a great job for us ten years ago!” Then they sold us to a bigger company in Texas. That company decided to get out of the services business and just rent
slavesbodies. So they discovered the H1-B racket and fired all the old staff. (mostly white but one black and one Mexican-American not a bad ratio for twenty or so engineers.)A few years later the company melted down as programming moved mostly off-shore. Luckily for me, I was a qualified mechanic (hobby) and found work with the USPS who, despite their managerial faults, really hire without age, ethic, or gender bias.
Today companies say they have to be off-shore because there are no qualified engineers, hardware or software.
Sort of like the boy who killed his parents then asked the court for mercy because he was an orphan.
Im not sure, but I think that TarHeelDem who never comes here anymore had a similar story.