How to Kill a Toy Store in 10 Easy Steps — The Private Equity Way

How to Kill a Toy Store in 10 Easy Steps — The Private Equity Way

Step 1: Buy a beloved American brand like Toys R Us.

Step 2: Sell the land under every store… to yourself.

(Technically, to your “sister” real estate firm. But same difference.)

Step 3: Lease that land back to Toys R Us at sky-high prices.

Congrats! The company now has a crushing expense it never had when it was profitable.

Step 4: Liquidate their warehouses.

Sell off their backstock—the stuff that helps companies survive rough economic times.

Sell the warehouses too—maybe back to that same “sister” real estate firm. Lease them back, of course.

Step 5: Gut every bit of infrastructure that made the company resilient.

It took 100 years to build. You torched it in two.

Step 6: Oops! Toys R Us can’t pay the bills.

Time for bankruptcy.

Step 7: Fire sale!

All that’s left is the intellectual property—logos, trademarks, the Geoffrey the Giraffe costume, whatever.

Step 8: Buy the IP for pennies on the dollar…

through your other “sister” private equity firm.

Step 9: Flip the IP to Macy’s so they can slap the logo on a holiday pop-up store.

Nostalgia is free marketing, after all.

Step 10: Buy Macy’s.

Rinse. Repeat.

TL;DR: They didn’t just kill Toys R Us.

They harvested it.

And now they’re hungry for the next one.

Capitalism.exe, but make it cannibalism.