Friday, March 23, 2018

Blind Items Revealed #4

March 16, 2018

This former A+ list politician who is running again for yet another position he has not held before is trying like crazy to keep his name out of the fact that he is now at least partly responsible for the two largest toy chains in the US to go under and this time around 33K jobs.

Mitt Romney/US Senate/Toys R Us & KB Toys

32 comments:

  1. KB Toys was the best part of going to the mall as a kid.

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  2. Bain Capital strikes again.

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    1. bane
      bān
      noun
      noun: bane; plural noun: banes
      a cause of great distress or annoyance.
      "the bane of the decorator is the long, narrow hall"
      synonyms: scourge, plague, curse, blight, pest, nuisance, headache, nightmare, trial, hardship, cross to bear, burden, thorn in one's flesh/side, bitter pill, affliction, trouble, misery, woe, tribulation, misfortune, pain
      "scurvy was the bane of these seafarers"
      archaic
      something, typically poison, that causes death.
      Origin

      Old English bana ‘thing causing death, poison,’ of Germanic origin.

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  3. Toys r us had much deeper problems than mitt romney. Consumer buying habits,(i.e. online shopping) has buried more than one brick and mortar buisness platform.

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    1. Anonymous9:59 AM

      Republicans are dirt bags? Because you said so? Beautiful false equivalency. You must be the pride of the logic club.

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    2. When the logic club comes together, it’s not called a pride. It’s a gaggle.

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    3. It's a good thing the military took over the country then.
      Shhhh.

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  5. Apparently they still had about 20% of the toy market in the US, there were still a viable company but the vultures at bain had other ideas. I feel sorry for their hard working staff and hope they find new jobs soon.

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  6. I am no Mitt fan but how is this Bain's problem? The internet with Amazon is taking down brick and mortar stores.

    Who on CDAN doesn't have an Amazon Prime membership?

    Sears is closing stores, Macy's closed stores, Nordstrom is struggling. All over the country, the malls are half empty.

    It is a change in the way we make our purchases. Blame the internet and easy one click shopping. Blame the internet when you shop from your sofa at 11pm. Blame the internet when you can purchase something on your break from work without getting in your car.

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    1. Even I have accepted this Mark of the Beast.
      Immanentize the eschaton.

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  7. I don't want an Amazon Prime membership.
    The next 2 victims on Bain Capitals list should be Burlington Coat Factorynow known as Burlington and I <3 Radio which honestly would be absolutely no loss since they bottom feed the radio listeners with complete shit on a daily basis in a way to save money after buying 1200 radio stations.

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  8. No worries. Trump will just claim he added the 33,000 jobs.

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  9. I don't doubt that Bain had some shady dealings, but Toys R Us? Bain was the least of it. I have 2 young kids, but haven't set foot in a Toys R Us in years. Of the 2 within driving distance, both were always dirty and understaffed. I always left feeling like I needed a Silkwood Shower. Add to that the fact that you could always get a better price at Amazon or even Target. I'm surprised they lasted this long, tbh.

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  10. I have never walked into a "dirty" Toys R Us, and i have been in many across the country, as a military wife i have lived in many locations. I took my son every other week when he was small, it was an amazing and magical experience that Amazon and online retailers can not match. Same used to be said for Toy King and KB Toys.
    My son would light up, and he and I would wander up and down the aisles seeing and interacting with toys we had never even thought of. It was the experience and his delight that made the extra few dollars something may cost worth it.
    I take my grandkids there now, whenever they are here to visit, it is still an almost disney like excitement.
    The same could be said for many of the storefronts. Sure, I have amazon Prime, because I live in the city, do not drive and have pets with special diet needs that Amazon makes easy. I rarely buy anything more there, unless there is something I can not find locally.
    Living in an urban area with a great little collection of eclectic shops is where I spend my time. There is nothing like walking into Midnight sun for their collection of Crystals and boho clothing , from the amazing smell to the welcoming of the staff. Sure I could get the same items from Amazon, probably cheaper, but I would not get that experience.
    THat is the problem with today, no one EXPERIENCES things anymore.

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    1. I can direct you to two dirty Toys R Us locations in my city. My kids are 14 and 15, so it's been a few years, but they were dirty and understaffed a decade ago and I don't imagine they've gotten better.

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  11. So basically, if you have grandkids, it means your son is about my age...and yes, back then, Toys R Us was great. The last time I went, about 4 years ago, I ended up stepping in a puddle of urine, which was NOT fresh and looked to have been there for at LEAST 8 hours. I love "experiences" and would happily spend an entire day in Target, or a cool boutique. Wandering around a store looking for an employee and stepping in dried up sticky piss might be an "experience" you enjoy. Not me.

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  12. I don't have Amazon Prime.

    Also, if you do your research into Mitt's co, they did bury this co along with others.

    Mitt like tRump is not a great biz man, but a trust fund baby.

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  13. Yes - who doesn't love making a 45-minute trip to the mall only to find they don't have what you (or your kids) want? No thanks. Online shopping is the absolute best. It's not for everything (I prefer brick-and-mortar stores for clothes and shoes) but it's great for a lot of things. Toys 'R Us should have been able to keep up but they had some major challenges.

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  14. Bain, like any other Private Equity (hedge fund) buyout, uses the company as collateral, saddling it with debt service. Not to mention the "mgmt fee" they tack to do the acquisition. A company that once generated regular cash flows and profits now has to put all that cash into debt payments. Bain either breaks it up, sells it to another hedge fund or declares bankruptcy. But they make sure to get their management fee regardless.

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  15. Sorry people are losing their jobs, but I hate Toys R Us. Every store I have ever been in was filthy and the prices were not very good. Don't blame Romney for this one.

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  16. Not only amazon but Walmart. They carry the top selling toys and video games.

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  17. We have two Toys R Us/Babies R Us stores locally. One is awesome - clean, organized, knowlegeable AND helpful employees. The other, not so much.

    I don't know about the not so much store, but the good store has employees who have been their for 10+ years who are now out of a job. It's a sad situation.

    I don't know enough about their financing to weigh in, but will say that their website has sucked for a long time. Whoever was/is in charge of that is largely responsible for that company's demise.

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  18. Msn wrote yesterday that the weather channel was sold for 300 million, the last sentence was, it was bought by bain several years ago for 3.5 billion and that bain had no comment on the sale.
    I think part of the reason for toy store demise is we are in a baby bust.

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  19. Never been in a dirty, shitty Toys R Bust? Lucky you! I've been inside of PLENTY over the decades. What was once a magical store went to hell in a handbasket back in the late 90s, maybe early 2000s. Sure, the old FAO Schwartz flagship location in Times Square is all prim and proper, but the other locales have been anything but over the past decade or two.

    I can tell you all about almost all if not every single location in greater L.A.

    Check out the shithole "LA prime store" on La Cienega, in the old massive strip mall that used to also have a Circuit City (RIP). This location has been a shithole for at least 2 decades, although I do like big box chain stores in the ghetto because they usually have the best inventory of rare/valuable loot. Although funny enough, since it's been the only Toys R Us that really services the LA basin (i.e. without having to go into either of the valleys, the ghetto-adjacent Culver City location, or the effing south bay), ran into David Beckham shopping for his brats there a while back.

    Used to shop at the Burbank location back in the day, and it went from amazing in the 80s and early to mid 90s to shithole by the end of that decade.

    I even vaguely recall there used to be one in SaMo a couple blocks east of 3rd Street Promenade, but I think it closed down back in the late 90s. There used to be a Circuit City out there too.

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  20. Toys R Us might have failed anyway but Bain stripped their employees of all their benefits and saddled the company with enough debt to make it profitable to Bain, only.

    Bain is vulture capitalism at its finest - does absolutely nothing for society nor makes any sort of product. It manufactures and organizes failures for itself alone.

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  22. No idea what Romney has to do with this blind. I would point my finger at the aisles and aisles of unsold Star Wars toys they were forced to stock by Disney. Those bastards ruined the franchise and I cant wait until the next movie comes out because you are going to see a meltdown amongst the execs at Disney like you never seen.

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  23. Romney had already left Bain when the buyout of Toys "R" Us happened. What a bullshit item.

    Don't get me worng, Romeny did plenty of bad deals at Bain and hurt many companies but this was not one of them.

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  24. Romney created the paradigm of Bain and is still a major stockholder. He is probably still on the board as well (though I don't know for sure.)

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  25. Bullshit. KB is coming back. Another bullshit blind.

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  26. Maybe we should blame Al Gore since he 'built the internet".

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