Apparently a few days ago, the higher ups at the corpse of a company that is Toys R Us made a statement claiming that “millenials not having kids” is what killed their company. Not just that, but quite a few news agencies and “reputable” business sites are repeating this narrative in what seems like a never ending war against those born in the mid to late 80’s and early 90’s.
What a complete and utter load of bullshit.
The argument is basically this – “Millenials” (for the record, I bloody hate that term) are not having children at rates like previous generations, and that has resulted in lessened sales overall in baby and children oriented products. I’m heavily paraphrasing, of course, but as it stands I don’t want to waste more time than necessary reading the absurd anti 25-35 year old drivel coming from the oligarchy that is big business.
The basic premise is somewhat true – birth rates have been reportedly dropping in the U.S. with 2016 being one of the worst years for this. So sure, we’re popping out fewer kids, and often waiting till 30 and above to have children.
Toys R Us says millennials not having kids hurt the company — and it could be because of a looming ‘demographic time bomb’ https://t.co/nh8a0dEpr5 pic.twitter.com/blnII7yZji
— Business Insider (@BusinessInsider) March 19, 2018
So fucking what?
People still have kids. Often, and constantly. I know people who are barely 22 and have 3 kids already. I have friends at my age who have no kids, and some who have 6 kids. Shit’s strange, but the fact remains people are popping out kids at a fine enough rate, I’d say.
Weird, I thought what hurt Toys R Us (and dozens of other retailers who went under) were leveraged buyouts by private equity that saddled them with billions in debt they could never hope to pay.
But no, I'm sure it was those darned millennials again. https://t.co/55dVqVnKV9
— Nash, Now With Flavor Crystals (@Nash076) March 20, 2018
Business is supposed to scale to meet demand – if people are having fewer kids, alright, that’s fine, you scale the business down accordingly. Maybe, if you have to, close a store here or there, or cut back on inventory to compensate on sales that won’t happen.
Still, this on a per-store basis would be a tiny change, but on the grand scheme would work out fine. Hell, in some areas rates are still increasing fine and to that end the stores would still be operating at normal sales rates, or increasing on a whole!
The Toys R Us story is pretty incredible. A majority of the headlines are about blaming millennials or Amazon.
Company made major mistakes before Amazon was even 5% of the marketplace. Its debt was garbage and they didn’t update the experience.
Finance tweet of the day
— Russillo (@ryenarussillo) March 23, 2018
That’s not considering the options people have in purchasing baby stuff, and toys and the like. Toys R Us was late to the internet sales market, and failed to compete. This is well known and has been cited as a death bringer to many businesses, and has been cited before as a major issue for Toys R Us itself in lost profits.
But still, none of this really matters in the long term. Lessening sales isn’t what killed Toys R Us. It was the owners, and them failing to have a goddamned bit of actual business sense enough to pay back the loans they took out to buy the company outright, which they did back in 2005.
What they bought was a company that was already faltering, failing to adapt to the changing market of the new millennium. How could my generation be responsible for this if we were just then becoming adults? When we were teenagers the company was already going downhill thanks to competition with stores like Walmart.
https://twitter.com/DavidUzumeri/status/976434886155227136
It’s not my generations fault the company finally died off – it’s been on life support for almost 2 decades now, because of failure to adapt. Hell, many of us shopped there ourselves because the stores sold collectables, and we sure as hell bought those. Where do you think most POP figures come from?
To say that my generation not having kids somehow is to blame is especially idiotic in my personal experience considering for the 3 years I worked at one of the Memphis stores it stayed busy with people getting ready to have children all the time. Sales were good in both baby items and in general toys. Profits were good, for what the stores goals were. We never had enough work force to actually help everyone because the company was too busy trying to penny-pinch to compensate for the fact that it had been in debt by billions of dollars and was making just around enough to keep afloat – which would be fine were the company not in such debt.
Ignore that and things would have been pretty average, it wouldn’t have been a growing company but it would be able to stick around and at least have a chance to adapt and grow, rather than be so in debt that there was no fucking way it could come out of it, and live that way for nearly 13 years.
To blame us is absurd.
https://twitter.com/frankysgirl00/status/977247485625282560