Did Toys R Us Have the Right Brick & Mortar Strategy?

On this MarketScale Industry Update, Voice of B2B Daniel Litwin sits down with Melissa Gonzalez, host of MarketScale’s Retail Refined and founder of The Lionesque Group, to give analysis on Toys R Us’ final wave of closings. After being brought under the Bain Capital umbrella and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and then reviving its store operations with a smaller and more experiential footprint, Toys R Us is shuttering its final two US store locations.

When Toys R Us brought its stores back post-bankruptcy, it opened a New Jersey location and a Texas location, scaling back their big box approach to be smaller and more focused on letting kids interact with their toys before buying. As Gonzalez explains, this strategy was working well for the retailer until the pandemic hit.

Toys R Us claims the closures are due to COVID, telling the AP they “made the strategic decision to pivot our store strategy to new locations and platforms that have better traffic.”

Gonzalez helps give some context on whether or not the closures were completely COVID-related, if this reveals any more fundamental flaws in their strategy, and how experiential retail fits into big box retailers’ strategies as the pandemic continues.

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Twitter – @MarketScale
Facebook – facebook.com/marketscale
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/company/marketscale

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

Radar
Physical Retail’s Next Infrastructure Layer: Item-Level Intelligence with Radar
June 4, 2026

Physical retail is under pressure to become as measurable and responsive as e-commerce. While retailers have spent years optimizing digital channels with real-time data, store teams have often had to make decisions with incomplete inventory visibility and delayed operational signals. That gap matters because stores still account for 80% of U.S. retail sales, making…

Read More
Healthcare in Pakistan
From Institutional Excellence to Population-Level Access: How Pakistan Can Bridge Its Healthcare Divide
June 1, 2026

Healthcare systems are under pressure almost everywhere, but the strain is especially visible in lower-resource settings where demand is rising faster than infrastructure. In Pakistan, that pressure is playing out across a system that has to serve more than 250 million people with limited public investment. Public health spending remains below 1% of GDP,…

Read More
Engineering
Scaling Experiential Learning in the Curriculum: How Iron Range Engineering Transformed Engineering Education
June 1, 2026

Engineering has transformed nearly every part of modern life, from the phones in our pockets to the systems powering global industry. But the way engineers are educated has often moved far more slowly than the profession itself. Employers are asking for graduates who can navigate ambiguity, communicate across teams, and contribute meaningfully from the…

Read More
vascular surgeon
When Geography Meets Purpose: How One Move Reshaped a Vascular Surgeon’s Career
May 28, 2026

Medicine isn’t what it used to be—not for the people practicing it. Independent physicians are becoming the exception, not the norm, as more doctors move into hospital systems, corporate groups, and academic networks. At the same time, the pipeline of specialists isn’t keeping pace with growing patient needs, particularly in complex fields like vascular…

Read More