In the News
Toys R Bust - Another Victim of Amazon?
19th September 2017
It has 60,000 employees around the world and around 1,600 stores - all busily preparing for the crucial Christmas trading period.
But even that scale hasn't been enough to protect Toys R Us, it seems. The toy-retailing specialist has filed for bankruptcy in the US to provide it with protection against its creditors and huge debts.
Has Toys R Us suffered from strategic drift?
A comment from an industry analyst in this Sky News report suggests it might:
"The past decade has seen a dramatic change in the domestic toy market with new channels, increased competition, and new technology all having a deleterious impact on the sector and traditional toy stores. Unfortunately, Toys R Us has not responded effectively to these challenges and, as a result, has found itself with both a weak balance sheet and falling sales."
The elephant in the room, of course, is Amazon, which now dominates online retailing in categories such as toys.
Burdened by heavy debts and falling sales, Toys R Us simply hasn't had the financial resources to invest in the kind of online sales systems that can compete with Amazon.
Jim Riley
Jim co-founded tutor2u alongside his twin brother Geoff! Jim is a well-known Business writer and presenter as well as being one of the UK's leading educational technology entrepreneurs.
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