Toys R Us To Close All 800 of Its US Stores (washingtonpost.com)

Toy store chain Toys R Us is reportedly planning to sell or close all 800 of its U.S. stores (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), affecting as many as 33,000 jobs as the company winds down its operations after six decades. The Washington Post reports: The news comes six months after the retailer filed for bankruptcy. The company has struggled to pay down nearly $8 billion in debt -- much of it dating back to a 2005 leveraged buyout -- and has had trouble finding a buyer. There were reports earlier this week that Toys R Us had stopped paying its suppliers, which include the country's largest toy makers. On Wednesday, the company announced it would close all 100 of its U.K. stores. In the United States, the company told employees closures would likely occur over time, and not all at once, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

Comments

A loss for children. Adults, not so much.

[tgibson]

This is not surprising (Internet, etc. etc.). However, few things can compete with the sheer joy I had as a child when given the rare opportunity to roam the aisles of a Toys R' Us to discover, touch, test, and play with the toys. The "aisles" of Amazon are a poor substitute for a child.

Re:For me it was the Sears and Roebuck catalog

[Strider-]

Sears another old company that is dying ;) Some brick and mortar will survive in urban areas. But the real retail sales numbers will be online sales. Especially in rural America, online sales (Amazon) is the new Sears. Sears could have done it, but they did not see that vision of an online future. Like most entrenched old players. They got to comfortable. An upstart had to come in with a new vision.

The sad part is that Sears should have cleaned up when it came to the Internet. They had all the pieces to become what Amazon is today. Back in the days of yore, they had one of the most impressive computing systems to run their inventory management/prediction/ordering of any retail corporation. They also ran one of the early online services, Prodigy (along with IBM).

And then, they rested on their laurels, and suffered the fate that they have. If anything, they should have converted their catalog system to the Internet, and started to shutter their retail operations. But they didn't.