Toys “R” Us announced 120 new stores this week. It took a day for it to really sink in what that meant to me.
Babies “R” Us is the retailer that really launched BooginHead. In 2008, I had a 6-month feature at Target that was about to end. I had just given birth and was on maternity leave from Microsoft when I took those six months of Target sales to the Babies “R” Us buyer and asked for a permanent spot on the shelf. That yes is what turned BooginHead from a side project into a real business. Everything after it, Walmart included, came because of what we proved on those shelves first.
Then the company that built us went away. When Toys “R” Us filed in 2017, we were still shipping to them. We lost about $250,000 in receivables, we were holding inventory built for their stores with their item numbers on the packaging, and we lost the revenue we had planned around for years ahead. It was a massive hit.
The part I don't usually talk about is the last few weeks. I was on the phone with FedEx pulling trucks back before they reached their warehouse. At the same time, I was trying to honor commitments to a buyer I'd built a real relationship with over a decade. Be a good partner, or protect your company. I didn't have a lot of information to go off of, so it was a gamble either way, and I was doing both at once and doing neither well.
I would do a lot of it differently now, and here's what I'd hand a founder whose biggest account is starting to wobble.
Never let one retailer be a share of your business you couldn't survive losing. Have a plan for what you'll do when a retailer starts to decline, before it happens, because you won't think clearly in the moment.
Get receivables insurance. It's not expensive relative to what it covers, and it would have changed this story for us.
Stop shipping sooner than feels comfortable. The relationship will survive a hard conversation. Your company might not survive the alternative.
I'm happy to see the brand back. I'll walk into one of those new stores this holiday and it will feel good. And I'll remember what it cost to learn all of that.
Retail is my superpower.