Toys, R, Us, Inc.

This paper will summarize the ERR articles from the bulleted topics and issues. This paper will also include summaries on toys that may encourage violence and aggression, toys that may promote pro-social behavior, gender stereotyping in toy selection, and cultural stereotyping or, lack of cultural awareness in toys.

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 play quite an important role in children’s lives, along with their socialization. Kids spend a vast amount of time playing with toys, alone and with their peers or parents. In todays age when it comes time to buying gifts for children everything is color coded. There are many boundaries that separate

Toys R Us founder Charles Lazarus opened the first Toys R Us store in Rockville in 1957. The company went public in 1978 and evolved into a powerful international toy vendor, with Kids R Us, Babies R Us and Toyrus.com. It operated 638 stores in the United States and 579 outside the country.

second largest toy market. A “category killer” that enjoyed phenomenal success in the United States

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

After analyzing the IT infrastructure and traditional filing system of PlayOn Toys, I have concluded what is crucial to improve and how the system can benefit from the improvements. My goal through this report is to expose you to how transitioning your system to a Database Management System and present you with an Enterprise Resource Planning System can benefit not only in the short term, but in the long term. As PlayOn Toys continues to progress in sales and growth as a company it will be inevitable that an inadequacy will occur within their traditional system. PlayOn Toys processes and outputs information with a traditional filing system; they are at risk and faced with various dilemmas such as, limited data sharing, duplication of data, and program data dependency. The issues will be examined and explained in the following section to understand the benefits of having a database management system implemented for PlayOn Toys.

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,

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.

In the past, the toy business was just an annex of the publishing industry. Little effort was invested in toys which were not even mentioned strategic plans. Now the toy industry is the second-highest profit maker in Marvel, generating over $20 billion in sales in 2003. The toy business is very promising in the future. However its percentage in revenue will still remain stable or slightly decrease, just as publishing will do, because licensing has such a strong possibility for growth. In addition, while the toy industry competition is too fierce to permit further achievements.

Mr. Brandon, CEO of Toys R Us, Inc. stated “There is simply no reason to go somewhere else-our focus is kids and families every day of the year-unlike some of our competitors who only play (pun-intended) a few weeks a year” Toys “R” Us Inc.,2017, Oct 24). Another innovative way the company has gained competitive advantage recently is by introducing Play Labs nationwide. Play Labs are a free reality application which includes AR games and play experiences that children can play on their smartphone or tablet devices while they are in the stores shopping. Toys R Us is now more than just a place to shop, they have created experiences which bring their stores to life with their interactive games that the kids highly enjoy playing (Toys “R” Us Inc, 2017).

Hasbro conducts business within the Toy, Game and Doll Manufacturing industry. They have strong, brand portfolio that they utilize in a wide variety of entertainment mediums. Hasbro categorizes their brands into four categories which they call their brand architecture: franchise, partner, gaming mega, and challenger brands. Their franchise brands are owned by them and they currently make most of their revenue from these brands. However, their partner brands are quickly becoming more important to their business as a majority the company’s growth recently has come from new ones. In addition to the brand architecture, they report the financial performance of their brands by grouping them into four different categories: boys, girls, games, and preschool. Boys and games has been a majority of their business mostly, but that is beginning to change recently as their girl brands are beginning to grow. (10K and Hasbro quarterly reports).Hasbro is a global company that has sales around the world. They report their sales in four segments: US/ Canada, International, Entertainment and Licensing, and Global Operations. The International segment is further segmented into Europe, Latin America, and Asia/Pacific, where they directly operate (10K). Within these segments and brands, it is difficult to identify which toys and games are their core items because they have almost 2,700 individual products that they currently sell in addition to their non-toy items, digital games,

Woolworths was the biggest toys and games retail in UK, after the collapse of Woolworths in 2008, Toys R Us, Argos, Disney and other online retail such as Ebay and Amazon became the major players in toys and games industry. In 2009, Argos has 24% market share which are top one in UK toys and games market. Toys R Us has 17% market share and Disney only has 3% market share (MINTEL 2010). Figure 4 shows the outlet, sales, positioning and evaluation of those major players in toys and games industry in 2010.

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.