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Staving off bankruptcy til after Christmas makes sense for all involved; they can get rid of inventory and have more money to pay creditors with on the way out.
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Sep 20, 2017 06:29
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Solkanar512 posted:There was an interesting bit on Marketplace talking about how debt pushed onto the company (not sure exactly how this works) by hedge fund who invested in them prevented significant spending into the online arena. that hedge fund? Bain Capital!
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Sep 20, 2017 07:48
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Solkanar512 posted:There was an interesting bit on Marketplace talking about how debt pushed onto the company (not sure exactly how this works) by hedge fund who invested in them prevented significant spending into the online arena. It's called a Leveraged Buyout and basically it means that Bain, KKR and Vornado leveraged the company up to its eyeballs and issued themselves a nice dividend instead of using the borrowings to improve the business in order to show their investors quick returns on investment.
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Sep 20, 2017 10:03
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Horseshoe theory posted:It's called a Leveraged Buyout and basically it means that Bain, KKR and Vornado leveraged the company up to its eyeballs and issued themselves a nice dividend instead of using the borrowings to improve the business in order to show their investors quick returns on investment. That's kind of the opposite of what happened. The leveraged buyout from the 3 private equity firms was to take the company private, so they could have 100% control over running it. They buyouts and dividends they paid were to outside investors and not bain investors. What you are referencing is that Bain still paid itself back during their ownership, but the initial leveraged buyout was not hostile and not a massive windfall for the new owners. Private equity firms usually make money even if the business fails because they often prioritize their debt payments first and they own the company now, so they can make that the company's priority too if they feel that it is not long for this world.
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Sep 20, 2017 14:07
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Horseshoe theory posted:It's called a Leveraged Buyout and basically it means that Bain, KKR and Vornado leveraged the company up to its eyeballs and issued themselves a nice dividend instead of using the borrowings to improve the business in order to show their investors quick returns on investment. Leveraged Buyouts where the company that was purchased ends up owning the debt should probably be made illegal. It creates a "Heads I win, Tails you lose" scenario.
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Sep 20, 2017 14:08
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The same Marketplace report also asserted that Toys R Us spent wildly on things that didn't improve the business; one example was their new headquarters which cost them 10's (100's?) of millions of dollars to build. It also mentioned the break-away from a partnership with Amazon crippling their online initiative.
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Sep 20, 2017 14:10
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Baronjutter posted:It does though help to cut down on the bills since most parents are poor as poo poo and buying every dumb fad or trend a kid "has" to have is expensive. I have a 3 month old and my current plan of attack is "be too poor to afford a tablet so the kid can't easily watch YouTube". I actually have a few friends with kids in the 2-6 year old range who have been raised with minimal tablet/phone exposure and seem pretty well adjusted. In both cases the parents simply don't own a tablet, and aren't phone junkies. I mean, they still watch (streaming) TV and whatnot. It does seem to be possible to keep the exposure reasonable without going full Luddite Homeschooler. I have other friends who have phone stealing/tablet addicted kids as well. But their parents are tech hounds themselves, so I wonder how much of it is an access and learn-by-example thing.
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Sep 20, 2017 14:29
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the old ceremony posted:this is hilarious I worked with a woman who found a redemption slip on the ground for the CoinStar machine and promptly cashed it in. Too bad for her, it belonged to some little kid who had lost it. She was immediately fired but she kept insisting she'd done nothing wrong by doing what she did, lol. Another employee was arrested and fired for stealing people's change and cash back that they'd left behind at the self checkouts. Geniuses
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Sep 20, 2017 14:52
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A lot of kids get hand-me-down phones and tablets, much like how they used to (and may still) get their parents' obsolete computer or laptop. It's functional, educational and completely expendable.
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Sep 20, 2017 14:52
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LogisticEarth posted:I have a 3 month old and my current plan of attack is "be too poor to afford a tablet so the kid can't easily watch YouTube". iPads are really fantastic automatic babysitters, dunno what we'd do without one. Suffer, probably.
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Sep 20, 2017 15:19
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Cicero posted:That's pretty drat poor, have you seen how cheap some of Amazon's tablets are, even new? Well, realistically we could afford one, but I'd rather put it towards something else since my wife and I don't see any real utility from another device. I try and keep our budget tight enough so that we'd still be able to keep the lights on if my wife had to stop working. I make about $50k/yr, and my wife about $37k, in a moderate cost of living area. With daycare thrown in there, even something as small as $50-100 does make a difference. We've gotten by very well by skimping out on a lot of those small purchases like that, and using tech until it breaks. And of course, adding a tablet into the mix opens up another avenue for a slew of small $1-5 electronic purchases. We'll see how we do, but as I said we've got several tablet-less friends who seem to do OK. It's a bit more work, but you just bring the kid along and do stuff with them. My parents ran a side business as beekeepers, and had me out in the workshop "helping" (ie. playing with a toy workbench) when I was two. I plan to go a similar route. Likewise, our friends have their kids out backpacking, gardening, cooking, etc. Again, it's not so much "Don't show the kids any technology, ever!", as much as it is just having alternatives.
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Sep 20, 2017 15:57
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Xae posted:Leveraged Buyouts where the company that was purchased ends up owning the debt should probably be made illegal. They chain this poo poo too. The first time is : I can squeeze some blood from this puppy, leverages and restructures. The the next time goes to : I can squeeze some blood from this turnip, leverages and permanently defers nessusary maintenence and cripples future growth. Then it gets into: I can squeeze some blood from thus turd, leverages then sells company (sometime to itself!) kicking it out of the nest like a fledgling not able to fly.
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Sep 20, 2017 16:20
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anonumos posted:The same Marketplace report also asserted that Toys R Us spent wildly on things that didn't improve the business; one example was their new headquarters which cost them 10's (100's?) of millions of dollars to build. It also mentioned the break-away from a partnership with Amazon crippling their online initiative. They were in a partnership with Amazon and then Amazon screwed them by letting other affiliates undercut them on toy prices. They were expanding online and they made the mistake of trusting a company like Amazon.
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Sep 20, 2017 16:26
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I mean the tablet market has been having ever dwindling sales for over 3 years now. Being a family without a tablet is not really rare but a tablets also hardly the only way to watch any of the content that'd be on one in the first place.
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Sep 20, 2017 16:32
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LogisticEarth posted:Well, realistically we could afford one, but I'd rather put it towards something else since my wife and I don't see any real utility from another device. I try and keep our budget tight enough so that we'd still be able to keep the lights on if my wife had to stop working. I make about $50k/yr, and my wife about $37k, in a moderate cost of living area. With daycare thrown in there, even something as small as $50-100 does make a difference. We've gotten by very well by skimping out on a lot of those small purchases like that, and using tech until it breaks. And of course, adding a tablet into the mix opens up another avenue for a slew of small $1-5 electronic purchases. Pretty much. And it's been the same as long as there's been neglectful/busy parents and things that keep the kids quiet and in one spot for a while. The old joke about how the Nintendo 64 showed more affection than your mother did is awfully true for some people, and should explain a lot. Freemium games are the work of the Devil's lazy Canadian knockoff, keep them away from your kids as you would drugs, alcohol and celebrities.
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Sep 20, 2017 16:38
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fishmech posted:I mean the tablet market has been having ever dwindling sales for over 3 years now. Being a family without a tablet is not really rare but a tablets also hardly the only way to watch any of the content that'd be on one in the first place. Tablets (and phones) seem to be the preferred kid-friendly access. Of course, you have YouTube on your TV now, but from what I've seen that a bit more controllable. You can't take your TV on a car ride or stick your kid in front of it at a restaurant, for example. If you don't plan on getting your kid a smart phone, it's fairly easy to avoid "easy" access.
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Sep 20, 2017 16:50
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LogisticEarth posted:Tablets (and phones) seem to be the preferred kid-friendly access. Of course, you have YouTube on your TV now, but from what I've seen that a bit more controllable. You can't take your TV on a car ride or stick your kid in front of it at a restaurant, for example. If you don't plan on getting your kid a smart phone, it's fairly easy to avoid "easy" access. It's rarely the case of actually getting the kid a smartphone (unless you're particularly rich), as much as it just is that when you upgrade one of the parents' smartphones you're not going to throw it out if it still works. And it's not like the tablet or old smartphone in the car or a lot of other places is going to have any network access unless you're paying the extra cost for them to have their own data service or one of the parents explicitly turns on tethering on their own device. What the kids end up doing is not much different from having a DS or Game Boy or those little LCD dedicated game devices of the 80s.
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Sep 20, 2017 17:07
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LogisticEarth posted:I have a 3 month old and my current plan of attack is "be too poor to afford a tablet so the kid can't easily watch YouTube". ha haaa, your plan of attack will crumble in the face of your child's persistence if you regularly use your phone near your child it will end up in their clutches
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Sep 20, 2017 17:50
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boner confessor posted:ha haaa, your plan of attack will crumble in the face of your child's persistence Dumb babies are easily fooled by a fake phone to chew. Toddlers... are not.
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Sep 20, 2017 18:09
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You'll at least want something for long trips if nothing else. You'll want to get a cheap tablet that is theirs vs letting them borrow you phone since on the tablet you can turn off it's access to the internet. At that point they're limited to the (hopefully educationalish) games you put on their yourself and any in-app purchases are shut right down.
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Sep 20, 2017 18:18
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fishmech posted:It's rarely the case of actually getting the kid a smartphone (unless you're particularly rich), as much as it just is that when you upgrade one of the parents' smartphones you're not going to throw it out if it still works. As I said we typically use our stuff until it breaks or just doesn't work. I've been laughed at by more than one cell phone salesperson when I showed them my old phone when it came time for a replacement. Now that cell phone providers seem to have switched away from the "free upgrade every two years" to a "zero percent finance over two years" model, where your payment goes down after the phone is paid off, we have even more incentive to keep them till they bite the dust. As for games, that's one thing, but it doesn't have quite the same issues with YouTube product placement/unboxing video sadness that we were talking about. Plus, I still have my old Gameboy stashed away somewhere. They can have that instead.  Anyway, I'll report back to the thread in 3-5 years to let you know how it all goes.
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Sep 20, 2017 18:23
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LogisticEarth posted:As for games, that's one thing, but it doesn't have quite the same issues with YouTube product placement/unboxing video sadness that we were talking about. Plus, I still have my old Gameboy stashed away somewhere. They can have that instead. You can strongly curate what they watch. Amazon and Netflix are in bare knuckles brawl over which has the best quality children's programming right now. Tumbleleaf and Puffin Rock are example of good programming that is out there right now. Also PBS, learn to ride that dinosaur train.
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Sep 20, 2017 18:31
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LogisticEarth posted:As I said we typically use our stuff until it breaks or just doesn't work. I've been laughed at by more than one cell phone salesperson when I showed them my old phone when it came time for a replacement. Now that cell phone providers seem to have switched away from the "free upgrade every two years" to a "zero percent finance over two years" model, where your payment goes down after the phone is paid off, we have even more incentive to keep them till they bite the dust. i troll my kid by handing her my ancient dumbphone when she gets too persistent about watching youtube lol
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Sep 20, 2017 18:32
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Pretty much every child/baby store near us is going out of business. Giggle just announced they are closing everything due to "online pressures". Before that another cute store closed here, another one that was around on the UWS closed after 18 years. It's happening!
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Sep 26, 2017 20:59
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particle9 posted:Pretty much every child/baby store near us is going out of business. Giggle just announced they are closing everything due to "online pressures". Before that another cute store closed here, another one that was around on the UWS closed after 18 years. It's happening! this is probably because of secondhand stores. babies and young children grow out of shoes and clothes so quickly that you can get very lightly used stuff at thrift stores or even from people you know who have boxes of that poo poo sitting around in their house. every couple months my wife takes a box of stuff to the local thrift store and swaps it out for the next size up
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Sep 26, 2017 21:02
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boner confessor posted:this is probably because of secondhand stores. babies and young children grow out of shoes and clothes so quickly that you can get very lightly used stuff at thrift stores or even from people you know who have boxes of that poo poo sitting around in their house. every couple months my wife takes a box of stuff to the local thrift store and swaps it out for the next size up Baby stuff is very easy to online shop, and baby registries encourage this. Plus, when you are 8 months pregnant you don't really feel like trailing round a mall.
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Sep 26, 2017 21:15
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BarbarianElephant posted:Baby stuff is very easy to online shop, and baby registries encourage this. Plus, when you are 8 months pregnant you don't really feel like trailing round a mall. sure, but instead of buying new stuff at full price either in a store or online it's so easy to get secondhand stuff at half price that looks like new because it was worn maybe twice. thrift stores for children are a whole different arena than thrift stores for adults simply because of how fast kids grow out of their clothes or get bored with their toys. like amazon can't even compete with my local thrift store or, even better, once you know other parents they'll just give you boxes full of clothes and toys for free that their own kids don't need anymore
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Sep 26, 2017 21:25
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boner confessor posted:this is probably because of secondhand stores. babies and young children grow out of shoes and clothes so quickly that you can get very lightly used stuff at thrift stores or even from people you know who have boxes of that poo poo sitting around in their house. every couple months my wife takes a box of stuff to the local thrift store and swaps it out for the next size up Thrift stores aren't a new thing though. Why is this happening now?
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Sep 26, 2017 21:26
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Badger of Basra posted:Thrift stores aren't a new thing though. Why is this happening now? i looked up the store "giggle" the goon mentioned anecdotally and it looks like they only had a handful of retail locations in prestige spots ( west side of manhattan, wilshire blvd. santa monica, what looks like a rich part of denver, and presidio heights san francisco) so i'm guessing this particular organization gambled on how much they could sell super high end baby stuff to wealthy yuppies. which is not a great idea because people will literally give you boxes of baby poo poo for free. i have some high end $900 danish stroller which is super great but we got it for free from a friend of a friend who just didn't need it any more e: over a thousand dollars lol https://www.bugaboo.com/US/en_US/strollers/bugaboo-buffalo boner confessor fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Sep 26, 2017 |
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Sep 26, 2017 21:30
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Rich people, especially the conspicuously rich, do not want hand-me-downs, they want it brand new.
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Sep 26, 2017 21:36
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Bird in a Blender posted:Rich people, especially the conspicuously rich, do not want hand-me-downs, they want it brand new. I live in a pretty well-off area and the folks here are swapping bales of baby clothes same as anyone. The difference is you get the occasional designer label, sweet.
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Sep 26, 2017 21:38
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Bird in a Blender posted:Rich people, especially the conspicuously rich, do not want hand-me-downs, they want it brand new. not if it's a hand me down no, but what if you call it upcycling also like the poster above me said, if you have other wealthy friends then you get second hand designer baby clothes
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Sep 26, 2017 21:38
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Bird in a Blender posted:Rich people, especially the conspicuously rich, do not want hand-me-downs, they want it brand new. No one in this thread can ever agree upon who they mean when they say "rich." Lots of people who make above-average household incomes are perfectly comfortable with second-hand children's gear, and even use it as a status symbol in subcultures where belonging to the local wealthy-neighborhood parenting group is a big deal. In places like Manhattan you can find literal billionaires participating in kid gear swaps. Not every rich person is a paranoid nouveau-riche tackmonster leaving the price tags on everything.
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Sep 26, 2017 23:34
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particle9 posted:Pretty much every child/baby store near us is going out of business. Giggle just announced they are closing everything due to "online pressures". Before that another cute store closed here, another one that was around on the UWS closed after 18 years. It's happening! Well what were the name of the other 2 stores besides the small chain? I mean really, small time single-location places close all the time, especially in an expensive retail market like Manhattan.
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Sep 26, 2017 23:43
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Not every rich person is a paranoid nouveau-riche tackmonster leaving the price tags on everything. #NotAllRichPeople ?
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Sep 26, 2017 23:47
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:No one in this thread can ever agree upon who they mean when they say "rich." Lots of people who make above-average household incomes are perfectly comfortable with second-hand children's gear, and even use it as a status symbol in subcultures where belonging to the local wealthy-neighborhood parenting group is a big deal. In places like Manhattan you can find literal billionaires participating in kid gear swaps. Not every rich person is a paranoid nouveau-riche tackmonster leaving the price tags on everything. A rich person is someone whose consumption patterns I disapprove of.
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Sep 27, 2017 00:22
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[quote="“Badger of Basra”" post="“476798376”"] A rich person is someone whose consumption patterns I disapprove of. [/quote] The same sort of person who would frivolously throw away 10 dollars to post on an Internet forum, perhaps?
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Sep 27, 2017 00:29
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Hot Dog Day #82 posted:The same sort of person who would frivolously throw away 10 dollars to post on an Internet forum, perhaps? Rounding up SA has cost me 0.005 USD a day. It's a steal for content, he said halfway into reading the whole weird fanart thread.
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Sep 27, 2017 01:19
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LogisticEarth posted:I have a 3 month old and my current plan of attack is "be too poor to afford a tablet so the kid can't easily watch YouTube". PBS has apps for kids if you don't want them watching commercials, though they do have sesame street episodes on youtube if you want to pay for them
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Sep 27, 2017 02:45
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So I just wached a quick video explaining why Toys R Us is going under and what a leveraged buyout is. WHY THE gently caress WOULD ANYONE DO THAT!? WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD loving IDEA!? 
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Sep 27, 2017 02:49
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