In the News
Toys R Bust - Another Victim of Amazon?
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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."
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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.
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