Toys R Us is back – but you won’t recognize their new stores
A year after shutting all its U.S. stores, Toys R Us is making a comeback. The international chain, which filed for bankruptcy in 2017, is opening two mall stores this holiday season and bringing back its website. But don’t expect the Toys R Us you’re used to. For one, the new locations — at the […]
Former Toys R Us workers to get $20M in hardship fund
Two private equity owners of the Toys R Us chain have set up a fund for thousands of former workers left jobless and without severance.
Toy company CEO leads effort to salvage Toys R Us
Toy company executive Isaac Larian and other investors have pledged a total of $200 million and hope to raise four times that amount in crowdfunding in a bid to save potentially more than half of the 735 Toys R Us stores that will go dark in bankruptcy proceedings. The unsolicited bid faces a number of […]
Megan McArdle: Here’s why Toys R Us is going under
For anyone who grew up in the ’70s or ’80s, Toys R Us was a sort of a magic kingdom, like a candy store in its powers to enchant. So many aisles of delightful things to play with. You could wander there for hours, and many of us did just that. Alas, some magic is […]
Toys R Us, hobbled by competition, will shutter 180 stores
Toys R Us, squeezed by Amazon.com and huge chains like Walmart, will close 180 stores, or about 20 percent of its U.S. locations, within months. One Maryland store, in Clinton, is among those shutting its doors. Hobbled by $5 billion in debt, the company that once dominated toy sales in the U.S. filed for bankruptcy […]
Toys ‘R’ Us slumps
(Bloomberg) Toys “R” Us Inc., the closely held retailer that canceled its initial public offering in 2013, posted a decline in holiday sales for at least the third year in a row. Same-store sales for the nine weeks through Jan. 4 fell 2.7 percent as the chain used fewer promotions to protect profitability, the Wayne, […]
EEOC sues Toys ‘R’ Us under ADA
The case of a deaf woman who allegedly was forced to bring her own interpreter to a job interview at Toys “R” Us in Columbia was so egregious that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission felt compelled to sue the retailer — something it does in roughly 1 percent of the complaints it receives each year, according to a spokeswoman.
Toys R Us gets into the tablet computer game
WAYNE, N.J. — Toys R Us said Monday that it plans to launch its own tablet computer aimed at children called Tabeo on Oct. 21, a low-priced entry into the increasingly crowded tablet business. The news comes ahead of the holiday season, which can account for up to 40 percent of retailers’ annual sales. Toys […]
Toys R Us waives fee for layaway program
WAYNE, N.J. — Toys R Us is making it easier for shoppers to use its layaway program ahead of the crucial holiday season, waiving its service fee and minimum purchase requirement beginning Tuesday. As brick-and-mortar stores face increasingly tough competition from online retailers, chains like Toys R Us, Wal-Mart, Sears and others have been expanding […]
Lotte Plaza coming to One Mile West Shopping Center in Catonsville
The Asian and international market Lotte Plaza will soon help launch a multi-million dollar renovation of a former Toys R Us store in the One Mile West Shopping Center in Catonsville. The result will be a new 46,000-square-foot Lotte Plaza store in the 125,000-square-foot retail development at 6600 Baltimore National Pike, expected to open this […]
Shoppers say ‘ho-hum’ not ‘ho-ho-ho’ to sales
Sale, schmale. Used to be, customers would come running when stores cut prices. But these days, more Americans are becoming blasé about bargains. Jennifer Beasley recently left a Toys R Us in Cary, N.C., unimpressed by the retailer’s offers that day of 50 percent discounts on things like a $150 Sylvania tablet computer and a […]
Retail employees lash out at early Black Friday openings
MINNEAPOLIS — Count your blessings, then get to work. That may be Thanksgiving for more retail workers this year, as stores desperate to pull in buyers on the first weekend of the holiday shopping season push their openings earlier and earlier. Unhappy workers who say it ruins their Thanksgiving celebrations are trying to persuade companies […]