Toys-'R-Us appears at first glance to be a victim of Amazon's data honed selection and fulfillment efficiencies, but on deeper inspection into the Toys-R-Us story, it was more of a victim of a ridiculously high leveraged buy out by the vulture capitalist group KKR, who bought the company with money borrowed by the company, monetized the severable assets of the company (to get money), laid off all of the talent within the company (to shift money), and refused to invest money to modernize or even maintain the business of the company (to save money).

Why save money? To service the huge interest payments on the borrowed money to buy the company, while the assets were mined and the talent was drained. The same vulture capitalist group pulled the same trick on Nabisco. Remember Nabisco? We grew up on Nabisco. And our kids grew up on ToysR-Us. No more. KKR has claimed other household brand names as well, buying them with borrowed money and burying them into the ground servicing the debt load of these highly leveraged buyouts.

The tool division of Hitachi is one of KKR's more recent victims. It will be combined with Metabo, erasing the Hitachi tool brand altogether, and Metabo likely will suffer a long drawn out death that will ultimately be blamed on the marketing effectiveness and retail entrenchment of the DeWalt and Milwaukee brands. But really, behind the scenes it is just business. Bad business for many, but good business for a select few.

 

Yeah, I never really follow all that stuff. My comment was an uneducated slam at Amazon. Not that I dislike Amazon, I wish I bought more of it when I did. And back to my original post regarding Google Express. I was wrong. Their website doesn't really give many technical details on the part you ordered - in my case a power window motor for the wife's never working correctly '05 Equinox. The part was fulfilled by Walmart, and was the wrong part, so a wasted effort and now I'm back to getting it from Amazon, where I know it'll be correct.