Toys R Us Canada maintains it’s still business as usual, even as its U.K. counterpart announced it would shutter all 75 locations in the country.It’s the same message the company repeated last week when it was reported that Toys R Us would liquidate its U.S. operations after filing for bankruptcy.
Toys R Us Canada’s vice-president of marketing and store planning Clint Gaudry says its 82 Canadian stores will remain open for business and the company will continue to honour its existing customer policies and baby registry, gift card and loyalty point programs.
The Canadian arm filed for creditor protection in September, a day after the U.S. division filed for bankruptcy.
In January, Toys R Us announced it would also close 180 stores in the U.S. in the coming months.
Toys “R” Us is the latest brick-and-mortar retailer to struggle amid growing competition from online merchants and changing consumer preferences, after Sears Canada filed for CCAA protection in June.
The 70-year-old retailer is headed toward shuttering its U.S. operations, jeopardizing the jobs of some 30,000 employees while spelling the end for a chain known to generations of children and parents for its sprawling stores and Geoffrey the giraffe mascot.
Toys R Us had dominated the toy store business in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it was one of the first of the “category killers”– a store totally devoted to one thing. Its scale gave it leverage with toy sellers and it disrupted general merchandise stores and mom-and-pop shops. Children sang along with commercials about “the biggest toy store there is.”
But the company lost ground to discounters like Target and Walmart, and then to Amazon, as even nostalgic parents sought deals elsewhere.
