Yotsuyasan wrote:If this guy is at all serious, instead of croud funding a "Save Toys 'Я' Us" campaign offering token crap rewards to people he is asking to invest in his business venture, why not strike a deal with the people trying to bring KB back? Think how much easier it might be if they combined efforts, bought up TRU locations, and rebranded them? And then it will be done with real business partners rather than trying to get thousands of average people to invest in their business in exchange for a bumper sticker or a pin.
The KB Toys deal isn't anything to get excited about. It is certainly not a Toys R Us replacement as it is currently being discussed. It's more or less going to be the Halloween pop-up store equivalent except with toys. The Chicagoland area had some of these 2 or 3 years ago around Christmas time where it was just overpriced leftover stock from the past 5 or 10 years with really unfriendly pop-up store employees. The locations I was aware of in the northwest suburbs simply moved in after the pop-up Halloween stores moved out. It was my assumption that it was the same organization, which I thought made a lot of sense (to go from Halloween products to Toys and Christmas products).
One of the articles I read where the guy was talking about the pop-up stores made me realize that this is nothing special at all. What it seems he wants to do is purchase the leftover toy inventory, I'm sure at bargain prices, from Toys R Us warehouses or from toy makers like Mattel, Hasbro, Lego, MGA, etc who need to find a home for upcoming products they already made for Toys R Us prior to its collapse.
As toy collectors, we will most likely have already purchased these products by the time these pop-up stores "pop up". Just putting it on the record that the KB Toys that we might have some possible fun memories of will be very different from of these leftover merchandise pop-up stores that we'll potentially see later this year. From my experience, the products were way over priced and were still over priced even after the blowout clearance prices which began after Christmas that year. For those of you in the Chicagoland area, there is a similar store to the pop-up toy store that is open all year round in the old KB Toys location inside the Golf Mill mall in Niles, IL. This store also carries a lot of KO products as well as leftover retail stock (again at very high prices).
If you carefully read the articles about KB Toys and look past all of the fluff, you can figure out what the guy wants to do with these pop-up stores, and it's not what it sounds like on the surface. There are more articles out there like this one, but I think the CNN Money one sums up all you need to know. Having seen these pop-up toy stores here in Chicago, I can assure you that this is definitely NOT what it seems. It is definitely NOT KB Toys as we remember it from 10 or so years ago.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/20/news/co ... index.htmlCNN Money wrote:"My assumption is that there's about half a billion dollars worth of toys that have been produced for Toys "R" Us with no place to go," said Strategic Marks president Ellia Kassoff, in a phone interview with CNNMoney. "That's a big, big void that we're hoping to fill up."
Kassoff said he's been in contact with Hasbro Inc. (HAS) and Mattel, Inc. (MAT) and up to 200 smaller toy suppliers who are looking for new brick and mortar retailers. He said he plans to take advantage of a glut of toy manufacturers that have inventory but no place to sell it.
To get a quick retail footprint, Kassoff said he's working with companies that specialize in holiday and pop-up retail, like Spencer Spirit Holdings Inc., Go! Retail Group, and Party City Holdco Inc. (PRTY)
I'll repost this in the KB toys discussion as well.
No different than Bain Capital.
