Toy World

Specialty Toys, Inc., sells a variety of new and innovative children’s toys. Management learned that the preholiday season is the best time to introduce a new toy, because many families use this time to look for new ideas for December holiday gifts. When Specialty discovers a new toy with good market potential, it chooses an October market entry date.

The purpose of this memo is to document and evaluate the business risks faced by Toy Central Corporation (TCC), as well as audit risks, accounting issues identified, and management assertions affected.

Toys R Us is the world's largest children's specialty retailer. The company operates toy stores throughout the world and is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. In this paper I will give a brief company history, cite where the competitive environment is coming from, strategies that were attempted, and where they stand today.

Organizational Hierarchy Structure- Toys R Us was a decentralized organization, which had a leadership type setting from country to country. This type of structure was difficult because all the leaders from different countries were not communicating effectively. The company knew they had to make some changes to the system, if they wanted to be successful. Therefore, after careful consideration, the company decided to move to a more centralized structure. This change was needed to strengthen their business with regards to their compatibility amongst countries and creating a more efficient workplace in the United States and abroad. In the company’s business in Europe, instead of their being different leaders across the continent, there will

ToyWorld, Inc. was founded in 1973 by David Dunton. Before that, he had been employed as production manager by a large manufacturer of plastic toys. Mr. Dunton and his former assistant, Jack McClintock, established Toy World, Inc. with their savings in 1973. Originally a partnership, the firm was incorporated in1974, with Mr. Dunton taking 75% of the capital stock and Mr. McClintock taking 25%. The latter served as production manager, and Mr. Dunton, as president, was responsible for overall direction of the company’s affairs. After a series of illnesses, Mr. Dunton’s health deteriorated, and he was forced

1. From early 1990s to 2004, the Lego Group, a long successful toymaker with a world-renowned brand, fell into the edge of bankruptcy. Compared with the highest revenue in 1999, the revenue in 2014 decreased by 35.6% while the net profit was negative, seven times less than that in 1999, the lowest in the past ten years. Its net profit margin and ROE were also the lowest. The gross margin and inventory turnover were all lower than its competitors. The strategic moves in the two main periods “growth period that wasn’t” (1993-1998) and the “fix that wasn’t” (1999-2004) lead to its poor performance.

John Sortino founded the Vermont Teddy Bear Company (VTBC) in 1981 by selling handsewn teddy bears out of a pushcart in the streets of Burlington, Vermont (Wheelen & Hunger, 2004). Mr. Sortino's motivation for making the teddy bears in the United States cultivated while playing with his son, Graham, and after noticing his son had many stuffed animals that were made in other countries (Wheelen & Hunger, 2004). Since its inception, the company's focus has been to design, manufacture, and direct market the best teddy bears made in America; using quality American materials and labor (Wheelen & Hunger, 2004).

Through studying the entire retail toy industry, we have been able to understand the complexity of the industry in which Toys "R" Us operates. Upon completion of the analysis, we realized that the industry is growing stably,

just building blocks.  Due to the different segments that make up the toy industry, buyer power is

There are many barriers to new organizations in the toy industry, making the threat of new entrants low. Lego and other big toy companies like Mattel benefit from economies of scale. An economy of scale is achieved by lower costs through large volume production (Textbook glossary). Economies of scale can occur in many departments within the organization including production, marketing, research and development, and finance. Some manufacturing of Lego products was shifted to Central Europe and Mexico in order to benefit from lower wages and to shorten product supply chains (p. 13 of case). The management of Lego additionally holds expertise on production, distribution and customer needs; which are absent in a new organization. To enter the toy sector a potential entrant needs to calculate the start of production at a level that will give a competitive position and production costs lower than the market.

This paper researched the fact that the Toys “R” Us Company was displaying a weakness in financial related issues due to the lack of proper strategic planning. This made the company susceptible to many threats in the industry’s competitive environment. The research has shown that its main competitors Walmart, Target, and Amazon are functioning successfully in the industry while Toys R Us heads for bankruptcy. This research emphasizes the fact that Toys R Us has not taken steps to strategize its operations properly which resulted in a loss of revenue and opportunities in their environment. If the company does not take steps to better its strategic planning, the company will not

Toys R Us is one of UK’s leading toy and game retailer. This report conducts an academic research focus on Toys R Us (UK) in toys and games retailing sector. In the first part of this report, we will discuss the toys and games industry background and the overview of Toys R Us. Then, the research will focus on Poster’s Five Force Model and Porter’s Generic Strategies. In the next parts, this report will concentrated on the potential strategies which Toys R Us might pursue in the future. Conclusion and recommendation will be mention in the final part of this report and the recommendation will be covered the best strategy for Toys R Us which can be used for the future competitiveness.

From Figure 1, we know that the critical path is Activity 1-2-5-7-10-13-15. It is because if there is any change of time in the Activities on the critical path, the whole progress time of the project will change. Therefore, we choose to crash the activities on the critical path with the lowest crash cost in order to lower the time used with minimum additional cost. Activity 7 has the lowest crash cost within the Activities on the critical path. So, we choose to crash Activity 7 first.

As their name and ideal, Lego has been beloved by the children as well as the parents for decades. Not only as plastic toy bricks, but also effective educational tools, the LEGO Company enjoyed continuous growth and broaden the global brand value. The LEGO brand moved to third place in 2002/2003 with only Coca-cola and Kellogg having greater respect among families with children. Even though as the overall toy market faces challenges, LEGO’s revenue and profits are increasing rapidly, especially since 2005. This profitability didn’t change even in the current recession in the global market. The LEGO Group achieved record-breaking profits in

Conclusion: The entry of Toys “R” Us would shake the traditional Japanese toy business, however the cracks appearing in the retail structure points towards the need for transformation in the Japanese market. Hence Toys “R” Us potentially is a good prospect for the Japanese markets.