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The story
Toys ‘R’ Us Japan filed for corporate rehabilitation proceedings with the Tokyo District Court on October 1, and was placed under a preservation order and court supervision. Headquartered in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, and led by CEO Peter Lodewijk Schat, the company is reportedly the largest toy-retailer bankruptcy on record. On 5ch’s hardware/industry (“Geha”) board, many posters noted the déjà vu of the US parent company having already collapsed, pointing to the falling birthrate and the shift to online shopping as causes, while others voiced regret over the loss of a long-running toy chain and discussed reports of the business being handed over to retailers like Don Quijote.
It’s because none of you ever buy anything
Toys ‘R’ Us Japan files for corporate rehabilitation — the biggest toy-retailer bankruptcy ever
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The Toys 'R' Us near my place closed down over a decade ago as it is.
It's because you trash Geha-board lifers don't have kids that things ended up like this.
The US side folded ages ago already, right?
Feels like Don Quijote's gonna wreck all of that.
My image of it was always this store with way too much floor space and overly wide aisles — felt like such a waste of space.
Figured Japan would follow sooner or later too.
So you're saying games were the only thing propping it up this whole time?
RIP.
And they probably pulled in like ¥350,000 a month for that.
Must be nice.
Some stores do carry it in person.
At least I saw it there until pretty recently.
They just weren't displaying the actual units though.
Lazy parents raising spoiled brats.
Remember the "Zarasu Festival"?
More like "simmered fish," lol (seems to be some kind of in-joke/pun, reference unclear)
The ones with zero self-control were genuinely awful, huh…
Game retail spaces were always destined to end up like this, one after another.
Never knew that in 50 years.
I contributed a ton to the scalper market, you know?
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/9aa49030678ce04e5801cf7be89f03eb4f4fa9ab
Guess they'll file for rehabilitation, sort out the debt restructuring, and then renegotiate from there?
Japan has way too many companies for its population — more of them should fail.
Most of the standalone stores are probably on leased land anyway, and the mall-tenant locations can't just be turned into a Don Quijote, so they'll likely just pull out.
Unless Don Quijote launches some new store format, I guess.
Would the abbreviation be "Sweat"? (a pun blending "Square Enix" and "Toys 'R' Us" into something that sounds like the English word "sweat")
Since this is the Geha board, this made me think of Neo Exdeath: "Erase every toy store… and erase myself too! Forever!" (riffing on the Final Fantasy V villain's famous line)
Like, even after walking the whole store and deciding not to buy anything today, the only way out led straight past the checkout counter.
Made me swear I'd never go back.
Toys 'R' Us was originally the one smashing Japan's existing retail customs to pieces, you know.
Buying direct without going through wholesalers, selling direct, and discounting heavily because of it.
Back when selling at suggested retail price was the norm and toy stores relied on mutual arrangements to adjust stock for peak seasons, this struck real fear into the industry — it even got called the "Toys 'R' Us Shock."
That said, the game side had already developed a new business model where whoever discounted early and bought in bulk won, so it wasn't hit as hard.
Game-specialty franchises kept popping up one after another too.
So maybe you could say it beat the toy stores, but lost to the game stores.
Background and Key Points of This Story
Unlike bankruptcy liquidation, corporate rehabilitation proceedings aim to keep a business running while rebuilding it under court supervision, so filing for the process doesn’t mean every store shuts down immediately. In the thread, posters also recalled how Toys ‘R’ Us Japan originally upended the industry by buying direct without wholesalers and offering steep discounts — a price disruption dubbed the “Toys ‘R’ Us Shock” — a reminder that it was once the company reshaping the industry’s structure, not the other way around. This time the company enters rehabilitation after going insolvent twice, and many posters pointed to the déjà vu of its US parent having already collapsed, along with factors like the falling birthrate and the shift to online shopping. Some posts cited reports about the business being handed over to Don Quijote or Aeon, but it’s worth noting that, as of this article, that information is not confirmed.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [“Geha”]) thread “[Sad News] Toys ‘R’ Us Goes Bankrupt.”
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