ToysRUs UK & US bankruptcy & closure

[Raider]

And yet you can't deny it is a factor. Population growth in the Western world is at a serious low right across the board - of course that's going to affect the primary demographic of the toy market for all companies and all properties when there are less kids compared to, say, a generation ago. Why does stating a simple matter of fact like that offend you so much?

The problem with the article, as far as I am concerned, is not the point about the decrease in birth rate hurting the industry, but rather what appears to be an attempt to attribute blame to millennials as well as women. The article starts off, not be merely point out declining birth rates, but by specifically mentioning millennials being the cause for this.

Why not go a step behind and argue that the reason millennials don't have as many kids is that we are all working our back sides off to get jobs and hopefully one day have enough of a deposit to buy a house but in the mean time pay huge rents to baby boomers. So, if baby boomers stopped being greedy and accumulating more wealth and taking up more costs through welfare, then millennials would have more time and less stress and could have more kids.

I am not saying that I agree entirely with what I have just said, I am just pointing out the bias underpinning that writer's article.

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

^^^ It does seem a little bit like that whole 'Why aren't millennials buying diamonds?' thing from a year or two back.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

And yet you can't deny it is a factor. Population growth in the Western world is at a serious low right across the board - of course that's going to affect the primary demographic of the toy market for all companies and all properties when there are less kids compared to, say, a generation ago. Why does stating a simple matter of fact like that offend you so much?

I disagree here, I solely place the blame on the baby boomers for having so many kiddies to blow the population out in the first place.

Also on a non jokey note, (yes, above was a joke before knickers get in a not), after just skimming through the first 3 or so paragraphs of the article, if TRU's sole business plan was based on population growth and they don't have a strategy if population growth declines, then they are a very stupid company.

What a trashy article

[bowspearer]

I disagree here, I solely place the blame on the baby boomers for having so many kiddies to blow the population out in the first place.

Also on a non jokey note, (yes, above was a joke before knickers get in a not), after just skimming through the first 3 or so paragraphs of the article, if TRU's sole business plan was based on population growth and they don't have a strategy if population growth declines, then they are a very stupid company.

What a trashy article

I disagree. The trap was always going to be with a megastore, that it requires a certain customer base size to sustain itself. Plan B would literally involve downsizing stores which requires sourcing new premises, but more importantly all new fitouts in those new premises. That in and of itself can be an incredibly costly exercise, depending on what fittings you can use and what fittings you need to acquire.

It's one thing to do that with larger premises when you're expanding, like what I imagine happened as Toys'R'Us grew from its origins in 1957; it's another thing to do that when you're cutting a loss. In fact, considering that they appear to have gone down the "express" route with some of their US stores, I imagine that they looked at the widescale downsizing option a while back and decided it was just too costly.

So if you're going to say that they should have had a Plan B, practically speaking, given that there was really no way out form the megastore model if things went bad, what you're really saying is that there should have been a Plan B back in the 1980s. The question then becomes, could anyone in the early 1980s in the toy industry have been reasonably able to foresee this current population trend. On the balance of evidence back then, the fair answer would have to be, not really.

[bowspearer]

The problem with the article, as far as I am concerned, is not the point about the decrease in birth rate hurting the industry, but rather what appears to be an attempt to attribute blame to millennials as well as women. The article starts off, not be merely point out declining birth rates, but by specifically mentioning millennials being the cause for this.

The problem is that if you're going to talk about declining birth rates, it's millenials who are currently in the age bracket who are responsible for producing most of the kids in society - with xennials taking up the tail end of that. Gen X at this point are in their mid-late 40s or older so their child-rearing age bracket days are well and truly coming to a close. Meanwhile Gen Z are really only starting to form the front end of that child-rearing age bracket. They're specifically mentioning millenials, because it is millenials who are the ones who, if birth rates were higher, would be rearing and raising the majority of kids in society. When birthrates aren't happening, it's because we're not having kids.

Likewise, many women are putting off kids til much later in life (in fact you're starting to see the odd regret story about women who missed the window and now regret it), which likewise is going to lower the numbers of women who aren't having kids.

No matter which way you slice it, those are the reasons kids aren't here.

Why not go a step behind and argue that the reason millennials don't have as many kids is that we are all working our back sides off to get jobs and hopefully one day have enough of a deposit to buy a house but in the mean time pay huge rents to baby boomers.

Because the article is about "What is a major reason Toys'R'Us is citing for loss of business?" not "Why aren't millenials having children at the same rate of previous generations?"

Is that a possible response article? Not really. The reason is that if you were going to truly look at those reasons, I'm not sure a mere article would be long enough to do an exploration of those issues justice.