Well...
I received an e-mail today from George's Trains that they will be shutting down the Mount Pleasant Rd. location in Toronto and moving everything up to the "newly expanded" Markham Store.
They will also no longer carry the Thomas The Train line.
I can hardly say I blame them. With the way the The City of Toronto is taxing everyone or seemingly charging a fee for just about everything these days, I'm not surprised that more news like this doesn't come about more often. :|
Ouch!!
Shame, but it's about the same here.. The closing of the store will save them some cash. Thomas and Friends are probably not that profitable, I think the markup/profit isn't that high to begin with...
Sad news.....
I suspect that the problem with trying to sell Thomas in a hobby shop is direct competition with "big box" toy stores like Toys-R-Us getting much bigger discounts for buying in volume that the lhs can't even approach. My lhs carries the Lionel Thomas set because Lionel has gotten so expensive that it is almost not something that you would buy for children anymore. The little cheap wooden Thomas and battery powered Thomas are inexpensive enough that Toys-R-Us probably sell them for about what the lhs would pay for them.
Quote:I can hardly say I blame them. With the way the The City of Toronto is taxing everyone or seemingly charging a fee for just about everything these days, I'm not surprised that more news like this doesn't come about more often. :|
Here it is the same with the car dealers. There used to be car dealers on every street corner until the taxes kept going up. They decided it was cheaper to move out of the city limits and erect new buildings rather then pay the higher taxes. Now all these buildings and property sitting empty generating nothing.
Loren
tetters Wrote:Well...
I can hardly say I blame them. With the way the The City of Toronto is taxing everyone or seemingly charging a fee for just about everything these days, I'm not surprised that more news like this doesn't come about more often. :|
The Toronto tax-man has a long arm, too. I was recently in St. Catharines (about 65 miles from Toronto) to renew my driver's license. The was a posted notice that all drivers with a Toronto address would still be subject to the latest surcharge from the City of Toronto when purchasing the renewal stickers for their license plates. They call it a "registration fee", and it is $60.00 annually - this is on top of the Provincial charge of $74.00 for the plate renewal stickers. In my opinion, the Mayor of Toronto and many of the Council members are out of control - the City already gets a disproportionate amount of money from Provincial coffers, and yet can't seem to offer budgets that reflect the current economic climate with which many citizens are faced.
Wayne