After quite literally handing a head start to Amazon and enabling it to become it’s default connection for Customer’s Toys ‘R Us finds itself the latest victim added to the ever-growing heap at the retail morgue (see: Borders, HH Gregg, Circuit City, RadioShack, Payless Shoes, Sports Authority etc). That and the massive debt load (more than $5 billion) that it took on as a result of (over) leveraged buy-out by PE firms KKR, Bain Capital, and Vornado Realty Trust certainly didn’t help.
Toys ‘R US Chairman Dave Brandon said that today the company can operate free from financial constraints with the debt restructured under Chapter 11 and stores are supposed to stay open for the Christmas season where Toys ‘R Us earned 40% of its U.S. sales last year. He went on to say that this should also buy them time to invest in the business by improving the Customer experience (both in store and online). Part of that apparently will include closing underperforming stores whilst remaining locations would be reconfigured to be more experienced-based, incorporating amenities such as in-store play areas. But is it all just smoke and mirror at this point? Is a former category killer that rolled-up over small-town mom & pop toy stores have enough specialness in being a specialty retailer to turn it around?
http://www.chainstoreage.com/article/toys-r-us-files-bankruptcy?tp=i-H43-Q5S-4XI-6cbDX-1u-14Qs-1c-6cUEZ-12Dkn4&utm_campaign=BreakNew&utm_source=Experian&utm_medium=email&cid=17440&mid=97857547
https://www.wsj.com/articles/toys-r-us-once-a-category-killer-is-forced-into-bankruptcy-1505792620?mod=djemalertNEWS
In the ever-evolving content vs. pipes vs. tech battle Disney has fired a shot heard ‘round the world by announcing that it will pull all of its content from Netflix. On one side I think, it’s about time! Disney obviously has finally seen the light that Netflix is stealing a page from Amazon’s early playbook by establishing a direct link to the end user by inserting itself between the seller and the buyer. The seller in the Amazon scenario were companies like Toys "R" Us, Borders Books and Target (to name a few) turned over management of their eCommerce platforms to Amazon. But not only did they turn it over management but the actual Consumer experience was Amazon! So Amazon, by default, was who consumers felt they were actually shopping from and we all know how that ended for Borders and many other brick & mortar stores. So rather than letting Netflix Amazon them Disney decides to launch a rival streaming service (kinda late to the game if you ask me. CBS launched one ba
Comments
Post a Comment