These stores, in New Jersey and Houston, another victim of the Corona plague, close another chapter in the story of the toy giant, which began its journey as a crib and stroller store in 1948. According to a company spokesman, the ambition is to open new branches in the US, in places with more active buyer traffic. The epidemic actually did well with toy sales, but mostly online: According to the NPD market research group, sales jumped 16% in the US last year. $ 25.1 billion, as part of parents’ efforts to entertain their children locked up in their homes.
Toys R Us, Times Square Branch
(Photo: Reuters)
The stores that were now closed were about 600 square meters, about one-seventh of the giant stores that characterized the chain at its peak. They were opened by True Kids, which purchased the intellectual property of Toys R Us. The purchase.AEP reporter who reported a visit to a store in New Jersey told of children playing with toy guns and story time, while Jeffrey the giraffe, the network’s mascot, wandered among them.Such experiences could not continue to exist during Corona.
Meanwhile, True Kids continues to operate the Toys R Us website, on Twitter, YouTube and other social networks and is in charge of awarding franchises around the world. According to the company, Toys R Us and Babies R’s stores are still active in 25 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
The story of Toys R Us is the story of one of the most prominent retail giants in the world, the story of an American icon as well as the story of its founder Charles Lazarus. What started as a single store in Washington, D.C. has become a huge chain that has weakened in its heyday to about 1,500 stores worldwide, marketing a huge inventory of toys, dolls, bicycles and electronic toys.
Toys R Us turned the purchase of toys, which until then had been a seasonal event in the United States, into a multi-year pastime. This was done through a huge and expensive marketing machine that distributed the company’s catalog and made extensive use of television and radio. , And so did the flagship store in Times Square, Manhattan. It covered nearly 1,000 square feet and housed a Ferris wheel, which was also one of its symbols. In 2009, the network took over another giant, the big competitor FAO Schwartz. No one seemed to have any doubts then as to the identity of “the most reputed toy store in the world.”
It all started with Lazarus’ gut feeling, the History Channel website recalls. A few years after finishing his service in World War II as a cryptographer, long before “baby boom” became a common term, Lazarus, a Jewish American, felt that something big was about to happen. This something will be related to a new generation of babies who will dictate its fate.
“Everyone I spoke to at the time stated that he was going to get married, have children and live the American dream,” he told Entrepreneur magazine in 2008. “I decided to open a store where my father had a bike repair shop. But instead of a bike I decided to sell cribs, strollers, dining chairs, everything a baby needs. My senses told me the timing was right.”
These senses have turned Toys R Us into a giant that controls the industry and neutralizes its competitors. When Lazarus found out that his customers did not return to him after the birth of their second child, he put cheap toys in the baby products store, and when he found out how popular they were, he added them to stock. The dream arose and with it the decision to set up a store “where every existing toy will be found”. It was established in 1957 under the name Toys R Us.
While most toy stores were family businesses with limited supply, the new mega-store contained thousands of different toys. “Lazarus has well grasped the sense of American abundance that comes after years of war and depression,” Richard Gottlieb, founder of Global Toy Experts and an expert in the toy industry, explained in an interview with the History Channel in 2018.
Gottlieb saw Lazarus as part of a larger wave of entrepreneurship absorbed into the United States after the war: the creators of the modern American toy industry, he said, were Jewish soldiers who had returned from the war. Mattel; and Milton Levin, creator of “Milton Port Farm” which was a hit in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.
While the small stores invested in the design of the branches, Lazarus focused on the supply of toys. Some, like Mr. Potato, Barbie and the Light Baking Oven, have become the most iconic of all time. Lazarus took advantage of the fact that Japan, which focused after the war on rehabilitating its economy, began producing cheap toys, such as tin robots, cars and furry dolls, and purchased huge quantities. This has become what industry historians define as “the first category killer in the industry.” The department stores, which relied on seasonal sales, realized that Toys R Us had created a perennial demand, which only it could supply.
The development of television played in favor of the network, and in 1973 Jeffrey the Giraffe became a familiar television character joined by the giraffe Gigi and their baby Baby G. A happy jingle was added to the happy family in the 80s, starring a child who refuses to grow up.
All of these did the job. Issued in 1978, the company helped a toy industry valued at $ 500 million in 1950 grow to $ 12 billion in 1990. At its peak, the chain sold 18,000 different toys at 1,500 sites worldwide, accounting for 25% of the global market.
But as in the plot of a crime movie, the killer was eliminated by giant networks that were more powerful. Against the backdrop of competition from Walmart, Target and especially Amazon, Toys R Us began to reduce supply and focused on lowering prices.
But once she shifted the focus from the toys themselves to the menacing competition, the magic expired. This has happened because of the strengthening of online commerce, but also because public tastes have changed following the development of online video games. To these were added mismanagement and problematic leveraged sale in 2005 to the Private Equity Bain Capital fund and its partners, Vernado Realty Trust and KKR.
As part of its survival efforts, Toys R Us has partnered with Amazon and signed a ten-year contract under which its site will direct customers to Amazon, which in turn will only market Toys R Us toys. But in the end Amazon allowed other merchants to sell on the site and the partnership ended in a lawsuit.
When it filed for bankruptcy in 2017, Toys R Us was already mired in $ 7.9 billion in debt. Its collapse resonated across the U.S. The picture of Jeffrey the giraffe holding a suitcase in an empty store went viral. Crowds of consumers mourned the lost network they loved as children. From his position as CEO in 1994, he died in March 2018, one day before the company’s liquidation sales began.