Express & Star

Last-gasp effort to save Toys R Us

Last-gasp efforts were still being made yesterday to save the UK chain of struggling toy seller Toys R Us.

Published
The Oldbury store in its heyday

It is facing going into administration with yesterday also the deadline to meet a £15 million VAT bill.

An attempt to save electronics retailer Maplin, which has 200 shops, is also underway. It needs to find extra cash to pay debts and avoid administration.

Toys R Us employs 3,200 at its 84 stores and 21 concessions across the countty and unless a rescuer comes in to inject millions of pounds of emergency cash into the business it is set to enter administration with Moorfields, which worked on the administration of Blockbuster, standing by to oversee the process.

It is already in the process of running down 25 of its sites with a closing down sales having started this week and empty shelves in many of those including Shrewsbury, St Andrews Retail Park in Birmingham and Tamworth.

They were among the stores lined up for closure as part of a restructuring plan ahead of a poor Christmas and new year sales period..

The planned company voluntary arrangement, first announced days before Christmas, would be overtaken by the administration which would put the other sites including Birchley Island at Oldbury, intu Merry Hill at Brierley Hill and Queens Retail Park, Stafford – which only opened last year – and all the jobs at risk

Maplin, which employs 2,500, has shops in Brierley Hill, Cannock, Kidderminster, Stafford, Walsall and Wolverhampton.

Edinburgh Woollen Mill is in talks to buy the business but wants the current owner, Rutland Fund Management, to retain a stake and have a say in how Maplin is run.

The Toys R Us shops with closing down sales have up to half price off everything,

Toys R Us was founded in the UK in 1985 with the opening of five stores and grew rapidly, specialising in huge out-of-town toy warehouse sites.

Its bankrupt United States parent is already in the process of closing hundreds of stores across the US.