Read till the End

*What can we learn from Toys R Us bankruptcy?*

It would be easy to see it as just another casualty of the decline of retail. But that would miss the true story…

Remember the story of Kodak inventing the digital camera and then doing nothing with it?

The story of Toys R Us is 10x worse. Because they had the chance to lead all online toy sales from the very beginning and were on the path to doing so, but they threw it all away.

It began in Christmas 1999, in the middle of the dotcom boom, when the Toys R Us website was so successful it was flooded with toy orders and couldn’t ship to all customers in time, leading to a $350,000 fine from the US Federal Trade Commission.

So they decided to get serious about their online sales.

Within two months, by February 2000 they had secured a $60 million investment from SoftBank to grow online, and a few months after that announced a deal to be Amazon’s exclusive toy supplier.

Within the first year, the partnership with Amazon led to ToysRUs being the world’s top toy site.

So far so good! What happened next?

The world turned from competition to collaboration.

Soon after they announced their partnership, Jeff Bezos launched Amazon Marketplace, which allowed anyone to sell anything on their site. To the winner-takes-all mentality of companies like Toys R Us, this was a shocking strategy.

Other retailers began selling toys not available in Toys R Us, giving customers greater choice. Toys R Us CEO, John Eyler, flew out to meet Jeff for an emergency meeting to force him to stop them.

Jeff said “someone ought to be able to find everything” on Amazon - and that by giving more choice to the customer, everyone wins. He pointed to the ongoing increase in Toys R Us sales as a result, and said they hadn’t broken their exclusive as none of these new toys were available on Toys R Us anyway.

Jeff added, if they wanted more control, why not increase their product range? Amazon would then happily make them the exclusive seller on all of the new products they offered as well.

Instead, Toys R Us sued Amazon for beach of contract. John testified “We are at a point in the relationship with Amazon where we have no trust whatsoever in dealing with this organization.”

He got a restraining order to try and prevent Amazon selling any other toys on their site. Amazon countersued for “chronic failure” to carry stock of the toys customers wanted.

The court case dragged on for five years and eventually Amazon settled with a $51 million payment to get out of the fight.

Toys R Us took their toys and went home, trying to compete with Amazon (and the rest of the Internet) with their own exclusive site, and raising $6.6 billion in a buy-out the year after the court case began, in 2005.

How did that go?

Amazon sales went from $2.78 billion when the Toys R Us deal was first struck, to $8.49 billion when Toys R Us sued, to $136 billion last year, making it the fastest company in history ever to reach $100 billion in sales.

Toys R Us flat lined on $11 billion in sales in 2016 - the same level of sales they had ten years earlier.

Saddled with $5 billion in debt, this week Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy.

What set the two companies apart? It wasn’t that one was online and one was offline. It was that one was willing to change, and one wasn’t.

Jeff Bezos says: “We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.”

Imagine if Toys R Us had embraced the same “customer first” philosophy as Amazon?

Imagine if instead of suing, they had listened, experimented, and worked together with Amazon?

We are living in a world where the rules have changed. Where it isn't Amazon or Toys R Us that wins. It's where the customer wins.

Throwing the toys out of the pram isn’t the best solution.

As Jeff Bezos says:

“What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you - what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind - you have to lean into that and figure out what t ao do because complaining isn't a strategy.”

P/S : do share what did YOU  learn ?

Pengajaran dari Sindiran

Kopi peng👇🏾

Audit diri☺
"Tan Sri P. Ramlee lebih bijak dari seorang profesor.."
40 tahun dulu dia dah tahu apa akan jd pada anak anak sekarang yg dididik oleh golongan cerdik pandai berbanding ibubapa kampung....itulah 'anakku Sazali...'

Kisah & Luahan Perasaan Ibu (Zeeda Aziz), Anak Darjah 3 Ditampar Kuat Guru Sekolah

Anak aku darjah 3. Pernah ditampar kuat oleh cikgu. Dia tak cerita pun. Hanya selepas beberapa bulan, itupun sebab aku tanya samada pernah tak cikgu tampar atau pukul, barulah dia mengaku. Aku tanya, kenapa tak cerita kat mommy? Jawabnya, takut mommy marah.

Good! Ini betul2 anak mommy. That is how you learn about life, my son. Not every single thing nak mengadu pada mommy. Kalau jatuh calar pun mommy akan cakap “Alaa, sikit je. Not that bad.”

Anak-anak aku lebih takut aku dari guru mereka. Knowing that his teacher once slapped him, I hired her to be my kids private tutor. She meets my requirement. Tegas. Old school teaching method.

Kita hidup dalam dunia yang mencabar. Sekolah adalah tempat persediaan untuk menghadapi dunia akan datang. Jika setakat dirotan tampar pun nak mengadu dengan mak, nanti bila dimarah bos, merajuk berhenti kerja, balik kampung duduk dengan mak. Dasar tak boleh kena marah.

Aku tanya Danish hari ini, cikgu mana yg dia paling suka/admire. Without hesitation, Danish jawab, “My English teacher.” There you go. Hanya satu tamparan, meninggalkan kesan ke dalam diri dia, dan itu membuatkan Danish sangat berminat dengan kelas Bahasa Inggerisnya.

Ada ibubapa berpendapat hubungan anak dan ibubapa sepatutnya jadi seperti bff. Benarkah ada hubungan bff di zaman ini? Ibubapa balik rumah pegang smartphone, sibuk ber’whatsapp’ dan ber’facebook’.

Siapa bff anak? TV? Tablet? Siapa yang mendisiplinkan anak? Upin & Ipin? Permainan anak2 yang bersepah dikemaskan bibik. Siapa yg mendidik anak supaya menjadi lebih bertanggungjawab?

Beban ini kemudiannya ditanggung oleh guru-guru di sekolah. Pelajar menjadi nakal kerana tidak dipedulikan di rumah. Namun, bila pelajar menerima hukuman, ibubapa bertindak seperti panglima perang datang menyerang. “Usah jentik anak aku, sebab aku sendiri tak pernah marah anak aku di rumah”.

Exactly!

Anak yang melihat kuasa ibubapa menekan guru mereka, mula rasa ego mereka mencanak naik. Guru dilihat seperti orang suruhan ibubapa mereka. Ada ibubapa mengherdik guru, mengatakan duit gaji guru adalah hasil dari pembayaran cukai ibubapa ini. Besar sekali lagak ibubapa. Semakin besar kepala anaknya nanti.

Jika kamu tak setuju dengan pemikiran aku, itu bukan masalah bagi aku.

Pada aku, tak semua orang mampu menyandang profession sebagai seorang pendidik. Sedangkan kamu seorang yg terpelajar pun, hantar anak ke tadika untuk belajar ABC, 123. Kenapa tak mengajar sendiri? Sukar bukan?

To all teachers, you have my respect. Dan aku akan cuba pastikan anak2 aku tetap menghormati dan mengingati jasa guru2 mereka supaya mereka sedar, tanpa guru, mereka tak akan jadi orang yg berilmu dan beradab.

“Bapak yang bersalah.. Bapak yang membesarkan Sazali dengan penuh kasih sayang dan kemewahan. Segala kemahuan Sazali bapak turutkan. Segalanya sudah terlambat” – Anakku Sazali

4 PENGETAHUAN AM yang wajar anda kongsi

Perkongsian dari FB Dato' Dr. Fadhilah Kamsah:

1. Tersedak makanan,
2. Kram Kaki,
3. Salah Bantal,
4. Kaki Kebas @ Semut2

In Shaa Allah pengetahuan ini berguna untuk kita & menolong orang lain.

Caranya adalah seperti berikut:
1. Jika tersedak makanan
Hanya perlu “mengangkat tangan”.

2. Kram kaki
Ketika kram kaki kiri, angkat tangan kanan tinggi-tinggi, Dan ketika kram kaki kanan, angkat tangan kiri tinggi-tinggi, segera akan terasa lebih selesa.

3. Salah bantal
Kadangkala ketika bangun tidur, kita dapati telah tersalah bantal, iaitu merasa sakit di sekitar tengkuk & belikat. Apa yang harus dilakukan ketika salah bantal? Ketika merasa salah bantal, kita hanya perlu mengangkat kaki shj, kemudian tarik ibu jari kaki dan picit dengan memutar kearah atau berlawanan arah jarum jam.

4. Kaki semut2 @ kebas
Ketika kaki kiri semut2, goncang @ ayun telapak tangan kanan dengan sekuat tenaga, ketika kaki kanan semut2, goncang @ ayun telapak tangan kiri dengan sekuat tenaga.

Jangan simpan saja info ini. Siapa tahu kita mungkin dapat membantu orang lain. Semoga bermanfaat..