In a follow up to earlier posts here on Frank’s Forum the news on Tuesday is that billionaire Isaac Larian has ditched his bid to buy Toys R Us. The bid would have saved some of the store locations in the once-iconic chain and would have saved some of the several thousands of jobs being lost in the liquidation.
The original offer was believed to be made for around $675 million and the negotiations broke down when the court refused the offer on the table. Larian also found out this week that his bid to purchase the mammoth toy maker, Mattel, has also failed.
The toy industry is bracing for a U.S. industry landscape that does not include Toys R Us, which averaged $11 billion in toy sales which is a 50% market share of the $22 billion domestic toy business. Mattel and Hasbro have both seen tremendous losses in value since the announcement of the liquidation of Toys R Us.
Hasbro spent money in recent days to purchase the Power Rangers brand name and retail rights. The other toy manufacturers are quickly adjusting their distribution patterns and working with brick and mortar retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Target, which are both increasing their toy orders.
The emergence of toys in other more obscure regional chains will increase as well to fill the void left by Toys R Us. The major players mentioned earlier and Amazon will also be working together to grab larger pieces of the pie in the industry space.
Meanwhile, the last of the Toys R Us store locations are winding down their operations to close in the next few weeks. The future for the Toys R Us brand is completely unknown at this point, if there is a future at all. The bid from Larian was the only major bid for the business that is even known to be out there and that has fallen apart. The entry of another group of investors is certainly plausible but the amount of capital it will take to reinvent the brand and create a significantly better customer experience are two big mitigating factors in my view which could doom the brick and mortar presence of the brand.
The one viable potential opportunity for Toys R Us to get a reboot is if it is purchased by one of the major toy brands, such as Hasbro. The major toy makers have a great deal to lose in the reality of Toys R Us leaving the U.S. toy industry space. Mr. Larian, as I previously wrote about believes that the toy industry will collapse without Toys R Us. These toy makers have a big stake in the situation and could decide to try their hand at rebuilding the brand.
The other alternative is that Toys R Us will be purchased by another entity to be used as an online only retail presence. In my perspective, I have felt since this news broke on the liquidation of the once-dominant chain, that this route was the most likely scenario for the future of the brand. The shifts in the retail space toward the online shopping experience could make a lot of sense to an investment group or private equity group.
The Toys R Us name still has a value and a consumer visibility that would translate well into a strictly online presence. The potential investors would be far more likely to go that direction than to take on the significant costs of rebuilding a brick and mortar chain. The sad reality is the loss of jobs, and that is why I was rooting for Mr. Larian to be successful in his bid.
The next five to six weeks will be critical to the future of the Toys R Us brand, in that time period another bid could emerge, or the business may be sold off in pieces until there is nothing left but the memories most of us have from our childhood. It is a sad narrative that those memories could not be passed on to future generations.