Amazon Will Publish Toy Catalog This Holiday To Fill Toys R Us Void, Says Report (bloomberg.com)

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.

Comments

Party City is planning to open a toy city

[rsilvergun]

I think this pretty clearly shows plenty of Demand for a toy store. Point being Toys R Us didn't die, it was murdered.

Re:Party City is planning to open a toy city

[tlhIngan]

> 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

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?...

Yes, Amazon and Target and Walmart and others had an effect, But they had an effect on every other store as well.

I Wish For The Sears Christmas Wish Book

[mallyn]

Folks:

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

[Miles_O'Toole]

And when you got a little older, you would spend hours and hours drooling over the models in the Ladies' Underwear section.