Toys“R”Us has been planning an IPO for quite some time, if media reports are to be believed (as a member of this hegemonic Media, I assure you that they are). Reasons as to why the ubiquitous toy and game retailer has not launched its IPO have failed to surface.
Owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Bain Capital, and Vornado Realty Trust for more than five years now, Toys“R”Us.
Toys R Us store in Times Square (Image credit: Getty Images North America)
“[People are] just so enraptured with how cool it is that they can order anything and get it brought to their home.”
People are indeed enraptured. Whether its eBay, with more than $4 billion in annual sales, or Amazon, founded in 1994 and now with almost $50 billion in annual sales, the masses do seem to enjoy a bit of online shopping. While online sales at Toys“R”Us represented only 7% of total sales last year, according to the report.
Storch went on to explain that shoppers will grow wary of the environmental impact of e-retailing, and then this whole sitting-down-and-shopping-from-the-convenience-of-your-own-home-without-having-to-deal-with-other-people thing will surely blow over (I’m paraphrasing here). Bricks and mortar are here to stay!
While Storch’s dismissal of something that was created 20 years ago and is now deeply entrenched in American society may seem a bit silly and certainly shows why Toys“R”Us is struggling to go public, his reasoning has gone from silly to preposterous.
The Toys“R”Us CEO’s main environmental concern of e-retailing is that a delivery truck, with its engine spouting off thick diesel particulates everywhere it goes, is surely a more damaging brand of transportation than one pokey little car bringing the same solitary package to a single solitary house.
This reasoning does not take suburbia into account at all, with one delivery truck stopping at multiple homes, streamlining the entire delivery process over 25 cars going to 25 houses. Or the fact that a single, massive brick-and-mortar store uses up large energy resources on its own.
And perhaps most damning of all for Toys“R”Us and Mr. Storch, is the bet that American consumers will care so much about their environmental impact that they will abandon their beloved convenience. Again, the numbers tell it all.
The number of times climate change was mentioned in the 2012 presidential debates, when most of America was watching?
Zero.
Michael Ballaban covers consumer and retail and can be reached at michael.ballaban@mergermarket.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MergerMike.
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario