Amazon Will Publish Toy Catalog This Holiday To Fill Toys R Us Void, Says Report (bloomberg.com) 121
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: In a drive to win the business up for grabs after the demise of Toys "R" Us, the online giant is going conventional with plans to publish a holiday toy catalog. The printed guide will be mailed to millions of U.S. households and handed out at Whole Foods Market locations, the grocery chain Amazon bought last year. The move is part of Amazon's push to incorporate traditional retailers' tools into its business model. It even looked at acquiring some Toys "R" Us locations earlier this year. That came after its $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods made a big splash as it pushed into brick-and-mortar retailing.
For all its woes, Toys "R" Us, which is closing all U.S. stores after failing to emerge from bankruptcy, was still a force during Christmas. Its "Big Book" toy catalog was a staple at 100 pages or so, with toymakers often starting their holiday advertising to coordinate with its arrival in late October. Even with the emergence of screen time and smartphones, kids still enjoy searching through toy catalogs -- which Walmart Inc. and Target Corp. also produce -- to make their wishlists.
For all its woes, Toys "R" Us, which is closing all U.S. stores after failing to emerge from bankruptcy, was still a force during Christmas. Its "Big Book" toy catalog was a staple at 100 pages or so, with toymakers often starting their holiday advertising to coordinate with its arrival in late October. Even with the emergence of screen time and smartphones, kids still enjoy searching through toy catalogs -- which Walmart Inc. and Target Corp. also produce -- to make their wishlists.
Next Up: Victoria's Secret! (Score:5, Funny)
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Party City is planning to open a toy city (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Party City is planning to open a toy city (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this pretty clearly shows plenty of Demand for a toy store.
No, it shows demand for a toy catalog. The kids would receive the Toys R Us catalog, lay down in front of the fireplace, go through the catalog page by page, and mark the toys they wanted. Then the parents would order them from Amazon.com.
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Then other parents would grab the toys of the porches of other people immediately after Amazon delivered them and then those parents would make a last minute dash to wallmart, to pay the poor tax on toys imported from China. US tarrifs on China basically a Wallmart sales tax on the poor, to fund the next tax cut for the rich.
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Or you know ensure the poor folks can actually find a job of some kind making something that does not require an advanced degree -- that.
Or you know slowing the out flow of US capital to the Chinese who by the way are run by a party that -
Has an overtly racist platform
Has an overtly nationalist platform
Is Anti-immigrant
Is anti-free expression
Is anti-freedom of religion
engages in human rights violations and not the BS o
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It was American corporations who outsourced to China specifically to break the back of American unions by shutting down industry and they did it on purpose because psychopathic greed and ego. Now you blame China, wake up.
Fair competition tariffs are quite reasonable, where the tariffs are based on the regulated cost difference, covering minimum wage, health and safety conditions, environmental rules, local, state and federal taxes, to ensure equal competition for locally produced product and imported produ
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I am with you on tarrifs generally. When it comes to trading with the EU, Canada, South Korea, Japan etc.
I just think we should adopt a cold war trade hostile stance toward China for all the same reasons we maintain sanctions on Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Russia etc.
The Chinese government is not a just one, they are not our friends, they are not really "neutral" actors either they are hostiles; and we are foolish to pretend they are not.
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then parents would go to Walmart and buy those toys cutting the crap out of toys r us. one of the reasons no one went to toys r us was they carried or had nothing special a target / Walmart / mall /etc didn't have ..heck Walmart will have 100+ Walmart only special toys this season
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We would use the toy catalog so that each kid would find out what other kids wanted, then head on down to toys-r-us, one parent would take 1 kid, the other would goto other end of store with the others, repeat for each kid. This system was the same for my parents.
But now, if we as parents didnt buy at that time(or ealier in year), would resort to toping off with orders from Amazon, sometimes toys-r-us website. It worked out to at least 50% of kids toys came from toys-r-us.
Taking all kids to 1 store to get
Re:Party City is planning to open a toy city (Score:4, Informative)
> Point being Toys R Us didn't die, it was murdered.
No, it died. The writing was on the wall for a long time.
The leveraged buyout was just a way to accelerate the inevitable. When you have access to massive debt creation tools, you can play games like that. What they did is create a bunch of money in order to jump the line of debtors and suck the marrow from the bones of the dying beast before it hit the ground. The real losers are the debtors who were not in on the game.
When it became obvious that the outlook was bleak, suppliers should have demanded better terms or even Net0 payments. ToysRUs defacto creditworthiness had defacto dropped to zero, and some sharks smelled the blood in the water first.
In a post-dollar economy, this might not be possible
You do know where Toys R Us' debt came from (Score:5, Informative)
Toys R Us had none of that because they had no money. They didn't have the resources to build a fun place to play so parents stopped going. At the end it was just a warehouse. That's not how you compete with the internet. You compete by making spaces people _want_ to go to. But that costs money. Money they were spending on interest payments to loans that were paid to CEOs as bonuses.
Re:You do know where Toys R Us' debt came from (Score:5, Interesting)
The "last time you went the the Toys R Us", they were in year 7-10 of being Bain'd. That's why they had no money to set up displays. Because Bain fucked them over.
My kid was in high school (Score:3)
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BINGO
Regarding what you wrote about spaces. I am not sure any of us have enough facts to know how the money choices were made. At the end of the day Toys 'R Us forgot their business model.
Get kids in the door let them "experience" the toys and than beg mommy to buy them. There is no ad you will ever place that will motivate a parent to part with their money as effective as their kid staring up at them with big eyes clutching something they want desperately can do.
That was key, no eCommerce site can match
Re:Party City is planning to open a toy city (Score:5, Informative)
No, it was murdered. The leveraged buyout basically killed it.
Toys R Us was actually a decently run company. They held their own against against big-box retailers like Target, Walmart, etc, they also had a decent webstore (it was one of the first online stores, at that) to compete against the Amazons of the world too.
The problem with the leveraged buyout is none of that matters - the leveraged buyout basically hung a huge anchor around its neck, such that instead of being able to invest in the business to compete (which it did so handily), it had to keep paying out tons of money in interest to service the debt. This works great, but a little hiccup in cash flow means you're circling the drain. Just a slightly slow quarter and you're screwed. And that's what happened.
That's why we call it murdered - because without the leveraged buyout, it was holding its own despite the onslaught of Walmart, Target, Amazon and others.
Company Man explains it much more clearly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Yes, Amazon and Target and Walmart and others had an effect, But they had an effect on every other store as well.
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Inside story about their webstore:
Their webstore was Carl Icahn'd. The company that did their webstore, GSI Commerce, was bought by eBay. GSI made some pretty darn good webstores and was quite innovative in the eCommerce industry. That's why eBay bought them. They were doing fine until Carl Icahn had the eBay board rigged with his people and voted to split the company. When eBay and Paypal split, they sold off eBay Enterprise (formerly GSI Commerce) to a bunch of private equity firms. Those firms "did
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That's why we call it murdered - because without the leveraged buyout, it was holding its own despite the onslaught of Walmart, Target, Amazon and others.
Company Man explains it much more clearly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Yes, Amazon and Target and Walmart and others had an effect, But they had an effect on every other store as well.
I think that's a bit of rose colored glasses.
Yes, they were holding on - having started with a huge reserve of goodwill, fond memories, nationwide retail presence and relationships, etc. - but they were still losing, bit by bit.
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How can you possibly believe that the huge debt they were saddled with was not the cause of their demise? The leveraged buyout stuck them with a HUGE annual interest payment. For the fiscal year ending Jan 2016 they had a net loss of $130 million dollars, which included $429 million in interest payments. For fiscal year ending Jan 2017 they had a net loss of $36 million dollars, which included $457m in interest payments. [1]
So tell me...what does a net loss of $130m turn into if you don't have $429m in inte
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...to add onto my previous post, effectively TRU paid out an average of $400m extra per year for the past 17 years to service that leveraged buyout debt. That's $6.8 billion total. How much different might things have been had TRU invested that $6.8b into their business over the last 17 years?
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> Point being Toys R Us didn't die, it was murdered.
No, it died. The writing was on the wall for a long time.
The leveraged buyout was just a way to accelerate the inevitable.
Grandpa Bain holding the pillow over grandma's face till she died wasn't really murder, as she was old and probably would have have lasted another ten or twenty years at most.
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It was worse than that. Some suppliers wanted their toys back before the liquidation started. The private equity people who controlled the company sued to stop that so that they could sell stuff they didn't pay for and get some money out of it.
Some companies did refuse to sell. I forgot who, but a lot of popular stuff was missing from Toys R Us during the holiday season. A lot of popular video games too
Re:Party City is planning to open a toy city (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, they'd probably still be around today and be able to limp on for some years, but they'd be in a very similar situation to Sears and many other dying physical retail giants. The unsustainable amount of debt taken on under the incorrect assumption that they were going to grow enough in online retail to offset the shrinking physical retail market merely sped up the inevitable. The significant interest payments that had to contend with ate up any profits and prevented them from making necessary investments, leading to an increased sales decline and finally when they realized that they weren't going to be able to pay an upcoming set of loan repayments (all stemming from the Bain & Co buyout) they really didn't have a choice but to throw up their hands and declare bankruptcy.
*Bain & Co took over the company in a way where the company basically bought itself off the stock market and took the debt from buying all of it's shares on it's own balance sheet, thus ending up with massive debts.
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Sure, they'd probably still be around today and be able to limp on for some years, but they'd be in a very similar situation to Sears and many other dying physical retail giants.
Yes, failure to adapt to a changing world. Both Sears and Toys R Us could have been viable if they had built a credible internet business. Sears put together a massive website on which you could buy anything, but the website itself is garbage (just grossly incompetent compared to Amazon) and their prices are beyond ridiculous. They would be gone now if not for their trucking line. There is significant demand for internet sales with local pickup, for customers with problems with mail delivery, and if Sears h
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I know everyone is blaming Bain in this thread but those who are should consider something else. The Cynical Critic is correct the market was shrinking and they had not been able to dominate the online space. Sometimes the only way a business can survive in a shrinking market is to shrink itself. Provide the size of the market has a floor and for the foreseeable future brink and mortar toys probably do/did; there is nothing "wrong" with downsizing to match the new market. The trouble is as a public comp
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So when you compare Toys R' Us to Sears and other dying-but-not-quite-dead retail giants, you can clearly see that their main difference is just that Toys R' Us took on huge amounts of
They weren't anywhere near Sear's situation (Score:2)
After a decade of losing ground to Walmart on the low end and Costco on the high end and Amazon on both ends they started a final death
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Retail stores are dying the world over.
Every week in the UK news, some other long-established store has gone bankrupt.
Retail is dying, and going online, and even the big boys can't keep up.
We had Toys R Us in the UK too, their adverts are famously linked to Christmas as children - for the last 30+ years. And the same company went bust here at the same time.
Physical stores are dying except for supermarkets, and even then if they weren't all onboard the click-and-collect or home-delivery after ordering onlin
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I think this pretty clearly shows plenty of Demand for a toy store. Point being Toys R Us didn't die, it was murdered.
Hopefully, it is still going strong in Canada. We prefer TRU to Walmart.
sears should of keep doing there catalog (Score:2)
sears should of keep doing there catalog
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Police officer, Eddie: "Did you hold a grudge against Montgomery Burns?"
Moe: "No!" [buzz]
"All right, maybe I did. But I didn't shoot him." [ding]
Eddie: "Checks out. OK, sir, you're free to go."
Moe: "Good, 'cause I got a hot date tonight." [buzz]
"A date." [buzz]
"Dinner with friends." [buzz]
"Dinner alone." [buzz]
"Watching TV alone." [buzz]
"All right! I'm going to sit at home and ogle the ladies in the Victoria's Secret catalog." [buzz]
"Sears catalog." [ding]
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there is no "knock-off counterfeiters" on Amazon, only very good quality products!
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I'm so fat that I have my own channel [youtube.com]
Buyer's remorse (Score:1)
I wonder if Amazon wishes they'd held out on that high-bid buyout of Whole Foods right about now.
Wrong link... (Score:1)
Since apparently nobody has tried following the link about the catalogue, nobody has figured out that it goes to a story about a Chinese medical startup.
toys - r - us is dead do not copy them (Score:1)
printing a flyer that didn't help toys-r-us for last 8 years is stupid ..going after Walmarts toy mailer and flyers would be a smart idea
Walmart makes a big deal out of the holiday toy area.
Wrong link (Score:2)
It goes to a story about a Chinese startup.
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that too, but it's also wrong link because it's fucking bloomberg, who thinks having javascript disabled or rejecting cookies is a 'terms of service violation'. fuck 'em. search engines exist. they are not the only source for news or 'news'.
here's some noscript friendly alternative sources...
https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]
https://nypost.com/2018/07/05/... [nypost.com]
https://www.engadget.com/2018/... [engadget.com]
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
any of these will let you read the article with noscript and adblock active.
captcha: bl
I Wish For The Sears Christmas Wish Book (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of you are too young for this and you don't know what you are missing . . .
Once upon a time a long time ago (1960's ish) Sears would publish the 'Christmas Year Book' their Christmastime catalog.
That was one druool maker! I would spend hours upon hours drooling all over that Christmas Wish Book! Wishing I could have all those wonderful toys that my family could not afford!
I wish that can return!!!
Re:I Wish For The Sears Christmas Wish Book (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only did the Wish Book last until 2007 (well after the regular catalogs disappeared), they brought back last year. It's only about 120 pages (about a third of the size of the classic Wish Books), but it is still there.
Re:I Wish For The Sears Christmas Wish Book (Score:5, Funny)
And when you got a little older, you would spend hours and hours drooling over the models in the Ladies' Underwear section.
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And when you got a little older, you would spend hours and hours drooling over the models in the Ladies' Underwear section.
Sear's Wish Book, the Christmas time catalog filled with toys for children, did not have much of a ladies underwear section. To see ladies in underwear, you had to look at the Spring and Fall catalogs.
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I would spend hours upon hours drooling all over...those wonderful toys that my family could not afford!
I wish that can return!!!
Uh, it did return.
We call that Instagram now. Also known as Lifestyles of the Rich and Narcissistic.
I’ve seen this scene somewhere... (Score:2)
Darth Bezos: I’ve been waiting for you, Charles Lazarus. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.
Shows why mbas are destroying America (Score:2)
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adults can do that, your kid with sad puppy eyes won't let you
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I'd tell them beforehand that they were just looking, and if we can find something you like we can buy it later. What kind of parent buys their kid a toy every time they go to a toy-store?
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What kind of parent buys their kid a toy every time they go to a toy-store?
What kind of parent doesn't buy their kid a toy every time they go to a toy-store?
Seriously, kids have zero interest in window shopping. That's an adult pastime. I would never take kids into a toy-store and not buy them something.
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What kind of parent doesn't buy their kid a toy every time they go to a toy-store?
The parent with self discipline, who are training their kids to be just like them.
Seriously kids love to play with toys, even if they know they can't take them home.
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I know which I'd rather be.
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People would just go there, try out the toys to see what they liked. Then go home and buy the cheapest version they can find on the internet.
So put a kiosk in front of it, where you can order it right now and receive it in a couple of days. Discount if you order by kiosk (since they don't need as much local stock)
Or - heck, the brick and mortar could even let you order it from Amazon using a kiosk (with the store as a hard coded affiliate).
But heck, try something. Innovate. I don't think this internet fad is going to blow over ...
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Sears - wont do anything unless someone with a massive amount of capital - enough to probably just start a new chain - steps in Sears is done. They literally could not put product on the shelf they knew they'd be able to sell last Christmas season because they have no-cash and nobody will extend them significant credit at this point.
Sears can't jump on anything - I don't even see how they can escape the debt/death spiral they are in. If I still owned any SHLD - I'd be selling! I already took my losses th
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Which reminds me of the old Sears "Wishlist" catalog that always came out before every Christmas, many years ago. As a child, I'd get to peruse it and pick out things I wanted for Christmas, and that seemed magical at the time (especially since kids are naive and believe all the advertising vs the reality of the stuff). I still have a fond memory of those days, I guess it was the closest thing then to browsing online shops.
They killed the Mom & Pop Toy Stores (Score:2)
Cry me a river.
No they won't (Score:3)
Amazon Will Publish Toy Catalog This Holiday
No they won't. They'll publish it for this Christmas.
Nobody talks like that ... nobody says "this holiday".
If you are afraid to say the name of a religious holiday, fine ... but you just sound ridiculous talking this way.
Or at least say "this holiday season", if you must. But there is no mysterious occasion named "Holiday".
It's as phoney sounding as a TV commercial with some lady chatting with her friend about how she uses "Dawn brand dish liquid (TM) etc.". Absolutely nobody talks like that.
Huh.... (Score:2)
Huh, I didn't notice that until you pointed it out.
Do I care though? Not at all.
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Sorry, but it springs to mind a movie quote:
"Coming to IBC this holiday season...."
From... Scrooged. Filmed in 1988.
People DO and HAVE talked like that for decades, in major movies, and nobody blinked an eyelid.
It's got nothing to do with political correctness either, before you start down that road. Some people, especially in the US, just refer to that time of year as "this holiday", "the holidays", "the holiday season".
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People DO and HAVE talked like that for decades, in major movies, and nobody blinked an eyelid.
It's got nothing to do with political correctness either, before you start down that road. Some people, especially in the US, just refer to that time of year as "this holiday", "the holidays", "the holiday season".
I literally addressed that right in my comment.
Or at least say "this holiday season", if you must. But there is no mysterious occasion named "Holiday".
Ok, I missed "the holidays" variant ... but there is still no "this holiday" outside of contexts where people feel like they have to do such tortured-speak. (such as, the coming attractions announcer guy for the next "holiday" movie)
It's got nothing to do with political correctness either, before you start down that road.
I wasn't going to, but come now, of course it does.
Nobody is running out and buying a bunch of toys and wrapping them up for Thanksgiving. It's a way to avoid saying "Christmas". It's ludicrous to deny that.
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This holiday? Which holiday? (Score:2)
Labour day? Halloween? Thanksgiving? When you replace Christmas with holiday in such a way that the meaning is lost, you've lost it.
Why didn't Amazon buy Toys R Us then? (Score:2)
To get all their toys, stores, etc. :P