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Amazon Seeks Divorce, $750M from Toys R Us

Posted by michael on from the geoffrey-has-a-dark-side dept.

theodp writes "Responding to a Toys R Us lawsuit accusing Amazon of breaching exclusivity provisions of its $50M-a- year tenancy agreement, Amazon has countersued the giant toy retailer, asking the Court to terminate its Toysrus.com partnership and award it damages of more than $750M, arguing that Toysrus.com's failure to effectively choose top toys and baby products and to keep products in stock leaves Amazon with no other choice but to enable more sellers to sell these products."

4 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. No fun being on a sinking ship by erick99 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Toys R Us is a company that is failing against it's competition, particularly WalMart, and Amazon knows it. Amazon doesn't want to be on a sinking ship so they break/bend the rules and then, when Toys R Us crys "foul," Amazon says, well, uh, "they suck at choosing toys and we have lawyers too...so there." Stupidity versus greed. Good old fashioned contest with no real winners.

    Happy Trails!

    Erick

    --
    http://www.busyweather.com/
    1. Re:No fun being on a sinking ship by man_ls · · Score: 4, Informative

      It has to be a sinking ship because 5 TRU locations I was aware of previously are all boarded up abandon wrecks now.

      I don't know of a single brick and mortar TRU location nearby any more.

  2. Re:Since when does exclusive not mean exclusive? by synx · · Score: 4, Informative

    What did the contract say exactly? "Exclusive" can mean several things. Apparently the deal was to maintain exclusivity in SKU, not product line. I guess Amazon's defense is that they didn't have someone else sell the same SKU, but was in the same category.

  3. Re:Anyone wanna bet by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Toys 'R Us-Amazon partnership started after the 1999 holiday season failure of ToysRUs.com because the .com operation accepted every order attempted and simply sent backorder notices... meaning many parents got caught with orders that wouldn't be filled until after Dec. 25, and as result the company had to rush out gift cards so that parents could pick up something at the retail stores to avoid making a mess of their whole brand in the process.