Hasbro To Lay Off Almost 20% of its workforce Amid Continued Slumping Toy Sales

[JayC]

It is being reported that Hasbro is planning on laying off 1100 employees which accounts for almost 20% of it's workforce amid continued slumping toy sales.

“We anticipated the first three quarters to be challenging, particularly in toys, where the market is coming off historic, pandemic-driven highs,” Cocks said. “While we have made some important progress across our organization, the headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year have continued into Holiday and are likely to persist into 2024.”

CEO Chris Cocks announced the layoffs in a memo earlier today to it's employees. Some workers will find out if they are laid off this week while the rest will be laid off over the course of the next 6 months.
 

[Jeddostotle7]

Oh great, more layoffs.  Never feasible for the CEO and other execs to, iunno, take a smaller paycheck for a while to weather bad financial storms, noooope, gotta snip hundreds or thousands of peoples' livelihoods to keep the company afloat.  There's simply no other way!

[BriGuy]

Of course people have less money to spend on toys when groceries/literally everything have inflated as much as they have in the last year (which has time and again been linked to corporate greed and capitalism). And of course corporations are laying off workers instead of cutting CEO pay because, surprise, corporate greed and capitalism.

[Legender]

In our case, you can feel the tireness of the Marvel team with the latest waves, this year all of them were "meh" only one or two interesting figures, i.e. Puff Adder Wave, of course that brings lack of interest in the market.

I start to think maybe the days for Marvel/Hasbro dupla are coming to an end, hope at leats they do fan service to close on a high note.

[Air-Walker]

Ick, no politics here please. Asking nicely. 

As for Hasbro laying off their employees, that is a tough break. I wouldn't even know where to begin to assess that, but in whatever way shape or form it must take, Hasbro has to get kids back into collecting toys too (I know, uphill battle and complex this day and age). 

[JayC]

This is a warning to all. Posts about politics will be removed.

[Emnems80]

Always sad when you hear about layoffs. Hopefully all those employees will be able to find something else as soon as possible to help support themselves and/or their families.

[leokearon]

Typical, the workers get thrown under the bus while the execs keep their big paychecks and bonuses

[Faust]

How about they get rid of 2 executives? That should cover the loses. Ridiculous! Corporation jack up their prices after the pandemic and sales slump. Well DUUUUUUUH. That is why in the UK Smyth's toys battle's with Mattel and Hasbro to keep prices low. The WWE Elite figs are still at £20, they know that's the cut off point for buyers and it's why Marvel legends are rarely stocked because of the price hikes. 

[Hyperion]

It must be those greedy corporations & CEOs. It couldn’t possibly be the causes of inflation doing it. Nope, no way

[Typhis]

So Hasbro is losing money/sales are down.. so the plan is to get rid of 1100 workers... How about the CEOs and other big wigs take a pay cut,,,or even better lower prices on products and stop the overpriced price gouging figures that shouldn't cost as must as they do and stop doing so many repaints/repacks ..and maybe sales will go back up... I guess the "speaking with our wallets" thing didn't really work out as thought, people are losing their jobs instead of lowering the price of the products.

[since83]

The move from 20 dollars ( which is high already) to 23 then 25 in such a short span is the definitely a factor. I know I wait for sales and am a bit more picky than I used to be. I can't see non hard-core collectors picking up more than their favorite few characters. The over saturation isn't helping either. Sooo much more comes out in a year. Plus the D&D addition didnt seem to make much, if any, money. They are branching out in unnecessary ways. Like Marvel should focus on Legends and a cheaper line for kids and chill on the deluge of garbage on the shelves that no one is buying. Not that long ago Legends was an 800 dollar a year habit. I am currently in denial about how much I dropped this year, even while waiting for sales when I could. Of course, the biggest issue is that money is tight for most, and toys are low on the needs list. But we all know they won't just tamp the prices back down to a reasonable price. Just like D+'s answer to a drop in profit is just to charge more. It's gonna cause a backlash of cancelations instead.

[Sidewinder]

I’ve thought about these topics off and on for a while now.  I’m not an economist or a sociologist, so the solutions are not clear cut to me.

1) Kids not interested in toys. My son is 11 years old. He has never really been into action figures. He has no interest in comic books and doesn’t usually like watching movies. (All prime methods historically to lead kids to purchase toys). Over the last year he has slowly gotten into Star Wars thanks to The Bad Batch, Ashoka, and reruns of Rebels.  That has sparked his interest in Star Wars figures, but he doesn’t play with them or anything. He just has them on a shelf.  His friends are all into next-gen gaming systems, watching YouTube, and cellphones.  He would probably play games on an iPad for the rest of time if we would let him. How do you get kids to play with toys?  I don’t really know.

2) Inflation.  Money sure isn’t worth what it used to be. Also it seems from what I’ve read that everything costs more to manufacture.  I’m not sure how we fix that. From the histories of other places in the world, I know that printing more money isn’t the solution.

Hasbro is facing a lack of interest in their products from their core demographic (children) and the average person has less value in their money to purchase items.  It’s a terrible conundrum.

I have thought that Hasbro could shift more of its business to focus on collector/adult market. But I don’t think that’s as large as the kids market.  Also once the generation of 40-60 year old collectors pass on, I don’t see any evidence that the next generation has any interest in collecting toys (they more than likely didn’t grow up with them). So the adult collector market will eventually dwindle.

I have also thought about the value of Hasbro’s IPs.  Certainly Hasbro themselves have thought for a while now that they could make money licensing out their IPs.  The issue I see with that is a lot of those IPs may reduce significantly in value as time progresses.  I love G.I. Joe ARAH, but once my generation is gone, will anyone actually care?  Transformers I believe will always have a value.  The concept of something turning into something else is compelling and understandable regardless of time or knowledge.

It’s an interesting problem to think about, but not one I feel can easily be solved. 

[BuckyRatt]

Just over a year ago, Chris Cocks stated his plan to increase profits 50%.  I think this is more a case of "profit-lation" than inflation.

https://investor.hasbro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hasbro-announces-plan-grow-profit-50-over-next-three-years

 

[AndyL]

This really sucks. Especially for the ground level folks because we all no they have nothing to do with terrible decision making and marketing.

[Atlantis]

Actually this is a sign that people are indeed speaking with their wallets. Because they're who they are, the CEOs and co. can't admit their failures and tone deafness, but money talks. So of course they put other heads on the chopping block first, before the company truly make meaningful change. I've said this before: hasbo is not your friend, and they're not even friends with the people that work for them (they're there to do business, and its cool, we get that). But brand loyalty is a fool's errand, when there is no customer loyalty. 

To expect fans to keep paying higher and higher prices for less and less quality, accuracy, and value, is to invite disaster. Their "exclusive" scheme, their lack of production, their lack of distribution, all the price hikes, the bizarre decisions in making figures, just turn fans off.  Offering products that are not what they say they are (adaptoid comes to mind), price gouging (like the EOV) and then inexplicably sabotaging figures (Luke Cage, Blade, Cannonball, Dormammu) is not a sustainable model. Its just dang unfortunate that the ones getting fired likely arent the ones who made these calls.

[TheArrow]

Throughout my 40+ year collecting career, I've bought from darn near everyone, but Hasbro has garnered the lion's share of my purchases----mostly because what they have made is aligned with my interests and........they've mostly done it well.  I don't expect that to change, but........hey, we'll see if it does.

[tarot]

People keep bringing up buying the figures cheapers in sales, but I hate to tell you that doesn't influence Hasbro profit much. They have already sold the figures to retail stores like Walmart, Target and even Pulse. They are still getting the money to the figure already at the cost of the figures. When you buy it from those stores as a cheaper, the money isn't going toward Hasbro, it's going towards the store. If anything you should be blaming the stores for the raise in costs as they have more say, then you think (especially Walmart and Target as they have shares in the company).

Now that is not to say it doesn't affect Hasbro outright. The less stores sell of a certain wave, the less likely the stores are going to order more of that wave or other waves. The less they sell in bulk, then that hurts their profit. It's the reason many waves see a least wide spread release and one of the reasonswhy many many figures use the same mold over and over again. 

[RobertD]

On 12/13/2023 at 11:20 AM, tarot said:

People keep bringing up buying the figures cheapers in sales, but I hate to tell you that doesn't influence Hasbro profit much. They have already sold the figures to retail stores like Walmart, Target and even Pulse. They are still getting the money to the figure already at the cost of the figures. When you buy it from those stores as a cheaper, the money isn't going toward Hasbro, it's going towards the store.

So, that's true for sales, but when items have to get clearanced out, the manufacturer actually does get stung, having to refund the difference. 

[tarot]

On 12/13/2023 at 5:54 PM, RobertD said:

So, that's true for sales, but when items have to get clearanced out, the manufacturer actually does get stung, having to refund the difference. 

no, they don't have to refund it. The only time they must refund it is if they are sent back to the manufacturers, Ie unsold product or defects. It's up to the stores to handle the loss they make. If they continue selling them at less then they cost of the figure, then that really their own fault and really doesn't effect Hasbro in the long run. They reason Hasbro sales are lower is because they aren't selling more to stores in bulk. Less orders from stores means the less Hasbro sells. If a store buys a huge amount of product from Hasbro, it's up to the store to sell it themselves. All Hasbro does is supply it to them.

[RobertD]

On 12/13/2023 at 12:20 PM, tarot said:

no, they don't have to refund it. The only time they must refund it is if they are sent back to the manufacturers, Ie unsold product or defects. It's up to the stores to handle the loss they make. If they continue selling them at less then they cost of the figure, then that really their own fault and really doesn't effect Hasbro in the long run. They reason Hasbro sales are lower is because they aren't selling more to stores in bulk. Less orders from stores means the less Hasbro sells. If a store buys a huge amount of product from Hasbro, it's up to the store to sell it themselves. All Hasbro does is supply it to them.

Sorry, I literally reversed what I meant to say.  Manufacturers have to reimburse on sales, not clearance. 

[tarot]

On 12/13/2023 at 6:39 PM, RobertD said:

Sorry, I literally reversed what I meant to say.  Manufacturers have to reimburse on sales, not clearance. 

again no they don't. once a store buys it, it's their product, not Hasbro. it's up to the store to take the loss or not. Hasbro only reimburse then when they are sent back, which is essentially buying back the product they sold to the stores. The reason why waves are going to Ollie and the likes is because they sold their remaining bulk to them at a lesser cost. 

[RobertD]

On 12/13/2023 at 12:44 PM, tarot said:

again no they don't. once a store buys it, it's their product, not Hasbro. it's up to the store to take the loss or not. Hasbro only reimburse then when they are sent back, which is essentially buying back the product they sold to the stores. The reason why waves are going to Ollie and the likes is because they sold their remaining bulk to them at a lesser cost. 

Not super interested in going back and forth on this, here you go:

 

 

[tarot]

dude I have been working in retail for nearly 20 years. I know more about it then some youtuber.

[RobertD]

On 12/13/2023 at 1:50 PM, tarot said:

dude I have been working in retail for nearly 20 years. I know more about it then some youtuber.

I mean, he's a verifiable former brand manager at Mattel with a 20+ year career working in Toys.  I'm going to guess he's got a handle on something as basic as how contracts with big box stores are structured.