In five pages this paper examines Toys R Us in a marketing consideration of its decline and the current recovery it is now experiencing and the reasons for it from a management perspective. Eight sources are cited in the bibliography.
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holiday shopping season just past, Toys R Us gave us delightful broadcast ads featuring a giant giraffe calling competitors on the telephone. The giraffe asks, "Do you have X?
No? [laughs] Well, we do!" The commercials assured all potential shoppers, both those looking for a specific "hot" item and those who remember - or worse,
got caught in - Toys R Us problem of several years ago, when it accepted more online orders than it ever could hope to fill before Christmas.
Today, the company is trying to recover from the downward spiral it unwittingly entered several years ago. It struggled well for a while, but today
it is a $4.1 billion company, down from $11.7. billion 2000, when it had more than 1,500 stores compared with todays 1,208 (Toys R Us, 2002; Toys "R" Us Holds
a Pioneering Position, 2000). Today, it seeks to regain lost ground. The Companys Early Growth Founded in 1948, what is known as
the worlds largest toy store today began as a retailer of baby items in Washington, D.C., founded by Charles Lazarus. "Toys "R" Us proved that toys could be more
than a seasonal business. Many now-familiar big-box concepts--pet supplies superstores, sporting goods supply superstores and the like--took their inspiration from the Toys "R" Us formula" (Toys "R" Us Holds a
Pioneering Position, 2000; p. 42). Lazarus noted in the 1950s that if shoppers were willing to pull their own merchandise from shelves in the grocery store, then they likely
would do the same when shopping for toys. "At Lazaruss Baby Furniture and Toy Supermarket stores, the discount business became truly cash and carry. Customers packed their own merchandise