Haven’t seen anyone else comment about this but one of the reasons we stopped shopping at Toys R Us was the ridiculous pricing. Even with discounts, coupons, or sales, they were always more expensive than buying from Target, Walmart, Amazon, or just about any other stores. To the point that it wasn’t worth it because the pricing was always higher on almost every item we ever tried price checking against.
If they want to survive the come back, the pricing needs to be more price competitive with other convenient solutions.
I think they can never win on price. Their stores create too much overhead. I read somewhere that like 80% of their sales were during the two weeks before Christmas.
If I were them, I'd rent dead spaces in malls for Nov, Dec and Jan (returns, liquidation). I'd also demand that Lego or Hasbro or whomever give them several exclusive toys for the season you can only get there. Make all the money in one quarter without maintaining expensive stores the rest of the year. Anything else is folly outside of 20 stores in the 20 biggest markets.
Not to mention the atrocious service. Locations were always understaffed, and attendants were invariably bored or irritated teenagers who could barely operate the registers.
If they want to survive the come back, the pricing needs to be more price competitive with other convenient solutions.