It been reported the Toys R Us are shutting down all their stores, even though and investor as trying to buy up the stores. The short answer what went wrong is in a down trending market, Toys R Us decided to go private and over leveraged its self with debt used in the buyback The problem with leveraged buy outs is they do not work. Toys R Us soon found itself unable to service it debt and eventually went bankrupt.
One may ask what does this have to do with Sanrio and Hello Kitty. Toy R US has to do with Sanrio grand plan to rely big box stores, post closing all of their retail stores. The plan worked for a while, big box retail stores like Target, Best buy had carried Hello Kitty items, that is until the retails stores dropped Sanrio and gave the shelf space to the next big thing. That left Toys R Us as the only reliable seller of Hello Kitty, even though I felt it was a lower quality that what Sanrio stores carried. Now with the sinking of Toys R Us where that leaves Sanrio in the United States? Perhaps Sanrio can admit they made a huge mistake.