Wow. Usually when a retail chain closes I’m all “meh, they should have adjusted for the times” and if it’s an electronics or book chain I might hit them up mid-way through liquidation to see if there are any good deals to be had.
TRU hurts though. They didn’t become massively successful and widespread until I was a teenager (mid-late '80s), but I do remember them as a great source for bargain bin video games (literally in a giant bin in the electronics section) as a teenager and in my 20’s. Then when I had kids of my own TRU and Babies’R’Us were the SOURCE for everything kid related. Half the baby stuff we owned came from there, and the other half probably from Target. For toys there was no better source, and my kids would get all excited in early November when the Toys’R’Us wishbook would appear in the mail or the Sunday paper.
I have a basement full of Imaginext, LEGO, MegaBlox, Barbie, Fischer Price, Hasbro and other toys damn near all of which came from Toys’R’Us. So many great memories of my kids are linked to things that came from that store…seeing it close hits harder than the usual big box store closing down.
I wonder if the Babies 'R Us division is profitable. I would think it was, as I don’t think there’s much competition on the slightly more down market baby superstore (vs. Buy Buy Baby on the higher end).
So my niece is, like many little girls, big into Frozen. My sister tells me to order her a specific Frozen lego set for Christmas (10736 for the curious). It’s $20. But not on Amazon, where Amazon proper has sold out, and all the third-party sellers are selling it for at least $45. This always happens in December with the popular gifts.
Kicking myself for not ordering 10 days ago like I should have, I look around. Hmmm, Target has it in stock for $19.99. So does TRU, but they’re at $21. But, hey, I’m feeling generous. It’s the holidays. Let’s try throwing TRU a lifeline. Why not?
Except TRU won’t ship it to you. You have to pick it up. But none of their stores in a 30-mile radius have it.
TRU UK filed a CVA proposal this week, which is sort of like Chapter 11 except it’s out of court and requires the approval of 75% of creditors. The plan is to shut a bit over a quarter of their permanent stores and “downsize” most of the remainder by half to about 20,000 sq ft. They’re seeking rent reductions of 15% to 50% on most of their leases.
Nah… clothing and furniture among some other things are pretty safe. You need to see and feel the quality or lack thereof in person. Jewelry too. Fortunately those things also can have high margins.
I guess in the future it will be robots making stuff and robots and drones delivering stuff to us, and sooner or later the robots will figure out that if wasn’t for us pesky humans, they could have fun instead. That’s when they will exterminate us and then have a big robot party.
Amazon will never be able to replace real grocery stores in 95% of the country, short of building their own grocery stores everywhere to compete with the existing ones, which doesn’t exactly obsolete retail.
Groceries are, among other things, too urgent for delivery to ever completely replace retail, unless you live somewhere where Amazon can deliver stuff to you twenty minutes after you order it. (To get back on topic, this definitely doesn’t apply to toys, which is one of many reasons TRU is dying!)
There are a ton of places in the country where Amazon can deliver stuff to you twenty minutes after you order it, or will be able to imminently.
Well, maybe not 20 minutes. But certainly in an hour, and I usually measure my need for groceries in days, with fresh stuff being the main reason they need to be delivering from close by. On the other hand I never use Prime Now even though I absolutely could, so they have other issues to surmount before groceries are in danger.
Amazon will be happy to be the middleman and take a cut.
People now can order whole dinners delivered. The local grocery stores in my area are now offering delivery. There’s going to be a shift of some grocery sales to online ordering and delivery, but that doesn’t mean grocery stores are going away. Amazon is going to do their best to get a cut of it all.
I get my weekly food shop delivered by Tesco every week. I preorder during the week and they deliver on a time of my choosing. Cost me £6 a month to do this. Mean I have to go nowhere near the hell that is food shopping
Nice, but who the hell wants to spend 90 mins walking round them with kids when you can order it all online and have someone deliver at you time of choosing. It keeps a record of everything you order over 2 years, has a regulars list, last order and favourites, takes like 10 mins to do.
Also they are always rammed full or people, loads have kids running wild, plenty of ignorant get in the way morons etc, why put myself through that.
To add I was a retail manager for 20 years so it’s not like I appreciate retail I just hate it now days hence working in another field, one with out dealing with too many customers.
Yeah, this is basically me, except its every other week and I usually alternate between Waitrose and Amazon Fresh. As a non-driver, it’s a lifesaver for heavy stuff. There’s nothing urgent about groceries unless you forget something or accidentally run out.
We have four grocery stores no more than a mile or two away so we have never looked at online. We also buy mostly fresh meats and fresh vegetables, so we like to inspect the goods before choosing.
They are crowded on weekends but they are so close we tend to run out during the week a couple of times. It’s never seemed unpleasant or a problem, really.
I have zero sympathy for huge failing corporate retail chains. But the cannibals like Walmart and Amazon should have long ago been broken up by antitrust. The fact that the feds have ignored them for so long shows how corrupt and negligent the system is.
