Toys R Us has ended an e-commerce partnership with Target launched 10 months ago in favor of fulfillment through Amazon.
Forbes confirmed with both Toys R Us and Target that the agreement had expired, and item descriptions on the Toys R Us website now include the phrase “Sold and shipped by or fulfilled through Amazon.com,” and buying links redirect to Amazon.
Toys R Us filed bankruptcy in 2017 and closed all its stores in 2018, but the brand was resurrected last year by Tru Kids Inc., a company led by Richard Barry, a former Toys R Us executive.
In October 2019, Tru Kids announced that Minneapolis-based Target would support the relaunched ToysRUs.com website, managing content, online sales and fulfillment.
Target.com also was tapped to power online sales in two new Toys R Us experiential retail stores in Houston, Texas and Paramus, New Jersey.
"Our U.S. strategy is to bring back the Toys R Us brand in a modern way through a strong experiential and content-rich omnichannel concept," said Richard Barry, CEO of Tru Kids, said at the time, adding, "Target is the ideal retailer to support a new Toys R Us shopping experience, which is designed to provide families with endless ways to discover, play and enjoy toys. Target will help us deliver on that experience with its toy assortment, digital strength and ability to deliver orders to shoppers in a matter of hours."
It’s not the first time Toys R Us has worked with Amazon. In 2000, the toy retailer announced a $50 million per year, 10-year deal to have Amazon run a Toys R Us site within Amazon.com after it struggled to run a website on its own during the 1999 holiday shopping season, facing shipping delays and site glitches.
The relationship ended in 2005 after Toys R Us, which said it thought it had exclusive rights to sell toys on Amazon, was granted the right to end the deal. Amazon also paid Toys R Us $51 million in damages, per Forbes.
