Deal Editor's Note: This offer is valid In-Store only at select locations. While we cannot confirm in-store pricing/availability, we are promoting this deal to the Frontpage due to comments from forum members reporting success in finding these prices available locally.
Select Costco Warehouse Locations have for their
Members: 1363-Piece LEGO Icons Tranquil Garden Building Set (10315) on sale for
$89.99. Offer is
valid in-store only at select locations.
Thanks to Community Member
kwikside for sharing this deal.
Note: Availability for sale price and stock may be limited and varies by location. Please check your local warehouse for availability of this deal.
About this product:
- Based on a traditional Japanese garden, this buildable model includes an arched bridge, stream, koi carp, lotus flowers, trees, rocks, stone lanterns and a pavilion with a detailed tea-ceremony room.
- Slots in the base of the Zen garden model make rearranging easy, so you can create different configurations for display in the home or office
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Top Comments
Lego in 2022 had revenue of 9.5 billion dollars.
But please tell us more about how children don't play with LEGO.
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But the biggest thing that destroyed Toys R Us was being taken over by Bain Capital (run by Mitt Romney) in a leveraged buyout. A quick search verified this, 22% of companies taken over by Bain Capital went bankrupt. The biggest issue was the 2005 Bankruptcy act revisions, which put Derivative Type contracts ahead of all other debtors, including unpaid salaries. There were changes prior to this that let companies strip employee pensions of assets, and then when there was not enough money to pay promised benefits, dump them on the Federal Government and taxpayers.
Also changes were made in the investment rules for employee pensions. "Reasonable and Prudent" has been redefined to include things like bundled investments in films (you have five films and you purchase an interest in them), cryptocurrencies, ad nauseum. The standard exploit is the company underfunds the pension, strips that money to pay advisor fees, performance "bonuses", stock buybacks, etc. If the speculation pays off, they can reduce contributions even more, and sooner or later the retirement system is underfunded. Under federal law they get to then dump it on the taxpayers.
Toys R Us was a triple target. Money in it's retirement system, low stock valuations due to a recession and having trouble adjusting to unequal enforcement of sales tax laws, and competition from large, monopolistic companies (can you say Walmart), Plus it's own management was struggling to adjust to this, and was paid absurd bonuses while the company foundered (admittedly Edward Lampert was even more brazen, he is the investor who stripped Kmart and Sears of all value).
They also abused trademarks. Their patent on the original minifigs expired several decades ago. But Lego then filed it as an Artistic Copyright, and back in the 2000's under European rules received a 3D Trademark on the shape. Now most basic brick shape patents have expired, and Lego's attempts to Copyright and Trademark them failed. If you want to see a pseudo-free market, look at the plastic Brick market in China. Go to Aliexpress and search for the sets.
Of course in the US most of these companies have had mediocre to awful reputations for quality and customer service. Yet Megabloks was able to compete, and was bought out by Mattel in part because they needed protection against Lego Group's very aggressive litigation strategy. Unfortunately, even though they had developed under the Mega Construx nameplate excellent bricks, even sometimes better than Lego (but their instruction manuals, while a strong second best, were still not up to the Lego brand quality), Mattel got hammered in the 2008 recession and Mega has never regained it's former quality.
That is how monopolistic policies work. Lego has had some horrible missteps, but due to their long-term management style, quality, and aggressive use/misue of courts and IP - they have been able to recover. Mega Construx was doing everything right, but was having major expenses fighting the Lego Groups use/abuse of IP. The larger company they ended up part of, in part as a perceived increase in financial resources and protection against predatory use of the courts - ended up pretty much gutted.
They weren't the only one up against a sales tax loophole, if you want to call it that. It basically also allowed much smaller companies to compete against them too, not just their next biggest competitors. They also weren't the only one with stock values in the tank that others survived their acquisition to fight another day.
The leveraged buyout was taking it from a publicly held company, too, which meant that people(shareholders) voted on it and when the buyout happened, they got market value plus 8% for their shares paid for buy the buyout companies. And it wasn't just Bain in the buyout, but nice namedrop there.
The bankruptcy act modifications had more to do with the company when it finally failed. (And most pensions by the mid 2000s weren't taking on new depositors, the pension system in general had been falling out of favor with companies since the early 90s, so any changes made were affecting long-standing and shrinking bases of obligations that were paying out more and more proportionally.)
No, the company actually could have stood a chance in all of that, even the bullshit parachute bonuses for the execs not getting in the ass by the door on their way out, if their core business strategy hadn't failed and adjusted with the times. Pretty much all national toy stores didn't survive either. Lionel was arguably one of the first to go and the trend didn't end with Toys R us (who bought some of their competition out too), and there was clearly still a demand for SOME kind of toy store if they were still making $11 billion in sales when they went bankrupt.
Even then, there's no rule that says a company should last forever. 60+ years is a pretty good run.
A lot of good sets actually.
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