If I recall correctly, Toys-R-Us had something like 40% of the toy market even in its final years, and so I am not certain that it was a lost cause. Introduce a few people with the parasite as a business model, and there you go.
The whole KKG model, yeah I hate those people. They are why I have never worked for a publicly traded company, and never will.
When you sell your company off to investors whose sole purpose is to "enhance shareholder value", you can kiss your ass goodbye in terms of taking care of employees and customers. It all becomes "stock price" at that point.
The ToysRUs situation, IIRC, was due specifically to what I stated - the profit that could be made from selling all inventory would be less than operating costs + replacement inventory, so it was a lost cause.
It doesn't matter your revenue if the margin generated doesn't cover cost + operation. At that point, you can't replace inventory, so you end up selling yourself out of business. It's all about cash flow at that point - I have had clients that went bankrupt selling 2x their projections due to poor cash flow ( no one listens to me until they are scared shitless - the joys of the job.)
so what could have been done to save Toys-R-Us, given the generally available information
seems like something could have been done.
a Partnership with Amazon?
I don't know . . . .
I'm glad you brought up retail - that is my milieu. Spent 17 years of my 25 year career doing retail big box stores.
When this happens (been through 3 of them myself - totally NOT my fault, I swear!!!!) it is because the store group itself can't replace inventory due to owing vendors more than the profit of the new inventory costs. So, the store operator is paying $X to operate stores (lease + operation + labor), and selling all the inventory in the store would generate < $X dollars. Therefore you close. It's a no-win situation. You can't reorder replacement inventory, because your vendors are now requiring pre-payment terms (Cash upfront) and by selling it all off, you can't buy new.
IN terms of Windmills - they do have residual value - the leases are worth $$ reselling, the material itself has value, but bringing them down costs $$, so material value < cost to dismantle. Cheaper to sell lease and existing property and refurbish than build new + new lease + new investigation of virgin land for exploration.
The issue I have with the story is that businesses will simply "walk away" and you will have all these collapsing turbines. There is always a buyer. And as a Finance person, ANY $ value is greater than $0 is worth selling, as sunk costs DO NOT MATTER. Only a non-financial person would make a sunk cost decision, and this author seems to adhere to a sunk cost theory of business. I guess that is my biggest contention. Never let an asset go without milking every last dollar ot tax break out of it.
As an adviser to najor finance players in some multi-billion dollar operations over the past two decades - I see this as a possible windfall AND a business opportunity over a possible liability. If nothing less, it would be a chance for consolidation, and f I have learned anything - consolidation and concentration of operation is always a benefit - to the company