Goodbye TRU?

[Deception]

Lol well this explains all those goddamned price hikes

[Scrapper6]

Originally Posted by timcrook

Updated news.
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business...tion-1.4296274

"The company ... announced late Monday that it was voluntarily seeking relief through the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond — and that its Canadian subsidiary would be seeking similar protection through a Canadian court in Ontario as it seeks to reorganize."

WHAT? If they are a separate entity why is Canada TRU also filing for Bankruptcy protection? They shouldn't even be in the same boat as TRU US... I don't understand.

[positivelyken]

This happened with HMV too -- the Canadian franchises were supposed to be independent from the UK ones, but they still closed all the Canadian stores in the end.

[Transbot90210]

My worry, if we do lose TRU, is that all Canadians will have left is Walmart. Oh what a nightmare. My real world hunting days may end with TRU

[mrluthor]

They are overpricing the toys they sell, most of us wait for a sale. The fact that they have too many stores there is like 16 stores with in 25km area in the Toronto area. They could cut that number in half. I visit Detroit often and they have stores that hardly have any customers in the store when I visit. Before TRU came to Canada we had Dominion Playworld and Toys and Wheels. These smaller stores were in malls like the Toys R Us Express stores they had a few years ago. They need to close the under performing stores. Maybe make seasonal pop up stores like Calendar Club does near Christmas time in malls. They could also do pickup point type stores similar to Consumers Distributing. They need to offer pre orders for toys online that don't sell out as fast as they list them. They need to focus on toys, video games and bikes not baby stuff and groceries (US stores). The Transformers section is small. I have seen Walmarts with more shelf space for Transformers. If TRU closes we as collectors and parents are forced to go to Walmart since all the others have closed and that sucks.

[positivelyken]

I will say this: Outside of exclusives and big ticket items, I've found more mainline Transformers figures available at Walmart, and sooner, than at TRU this past year. TRU's sales haven't done a lot for me with the exception of knocking a few bucks off of Trypticon and MPM-03.

[Scrapper6]

Originally Posted by positivelyken

This happened with HMV too -- the Canadian franchises were supposed to be independent from the UK ones, but they still closed all the Canadian stores in the end.

Ouch, that does sound bad, but honestly the HMV stores were a completely different kettle of fish compared to TRU. At least as far as presence, business and customer bases are concerned. A lot of people don't really buy music anymore, they go for online Ipads and stuff, and movie prices at HMV sucked comparatively to other places.

I really hope that TRU isn't about to die, because I can't, won't go to Wal-Mart for everything, especially when they don't even bring in their own exclusive Star Wars merchandise, and those are pretty big sellers IMO.

Not to mention TRU is the only online retailer I frequent that accepts Paypal payments. You can't do that on Amazon, Wal-Mart or anywhere else aside from retailers like Indigo/Chapters.

[Darth Cylon]

I stopped buying from TRU long time ago. I think my purchase was MP Starscream.

[Pascal]

If you buy the stuff on sale, TRU is by far the cheapest option in Canada. Walmart never has anything on sale.

[joshimus]

Originally Posted by mrluthor

They are overpricing the toys they sell,

Are they though? I mean, most of the time a toy is 12.99 at TRU and 12.97 at Walmart. I never saw walmart as cheaper, just more of a hassle to buy from. I need to really NEED/WANT the item to stay in Walmarts lines.