Toys R Us Reopens: New Store Opens In Time For Thanksgiving 2019 Shopping

The upcoming opening of two Toys R Us stores -- one in New Jersey and the other in Houston -- will mark the resurrection from bankruptcy of what was once the largest and most popular toy retailer in the United States in its heyday.

Tru Kids Brands, which owns Toys R Us and rescued it from bankruptcy when it went into Chapter 11 on Sept. 18, 2017, said the first new stores will be small-format but permanent. The stores are located at the Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, New Jersey while the second is rising at The Galleria in Houston owned by the Simon Property Group. The New Jersey store will open Saturday -- just in time for the Thanksgiving weekend -- while the Houston Toys R Us store will open in early December.

Toys R Us in Paramus has an area of 6,000 square feet. It will be staffed with roughly a dozen employees trained to test toys with kids and their parents. These "toy pros" will also help shoppers order items online which they don’t see in the store.

These first two stores mark the return of the popular Toys R Us brand to bricks-and-mortar retail after a painful bankruptcy that saw it close its entire chain of stores.

“We wanted to make sure that everywhere you turned in the store there was interactivity,” said Richard Barry, president and CEO of Tru Kids. “We have an amazing number of digital experiences throughout the store, but we also have good old analog (experiences). ... Take the products out of the boxes and kids will be able to get their hands on them.”

Tru Kids is re-opening its new stories with b8ta, a retail-as-a-service company based in California with a chain of retail stores that serve as presentation centers for consumer electronics and other innovative products.

Tru Kids Brands has promised to again open Toys R Us stores throughout the United States. It will open 10 more Toys R Us stores in 2020, which will include its huge New York flagship. Barry said the standard new Toys R Us stores will have a floor area of more than 10,000 square feet per store.

“We believe that Toys R Us was renowned, and customers really saw us as the experts in the space,” said Barry. “And we want to make sure we deliver on that, but in a very different way than we were before, because this is a ... high-touch, experiential store.”

Toys R Us went bankrupt due to $5 billion in debt, the bitter fruit of a 2015 leveraged buyout. Private equity firms Bain Capital and KKR and real estate investor Vornado Realty Trust took over Toys R Us and loaded it with debt it was unable to pay.

Groaning under this massive debt and interest payment load, Toys R Us shut its stores in the U.S. and the U.K. in March 2018. Former Toys R Us executives and creditors re-opened the company under the name “Tru Kids Brands." Tru Kids Brands will be the parent company of the future new Toys R Us.

Barry, who was the former chief merchandising officer of Toys R Us, said several former Toys R Us executives have been running Tru Kids since January 2019.