Who's the boss?
Regional managing director Pieter Schats.
How many staff?
Around 45 people in the regional office in Hong Kong and more than 200 in the seven stores in Hong Kong.
Another 400 staff across the region.
Marketing responsibilities?
Driving store traffic, boosting customer loyalty, enhancing customer experience, creating the 'wow'factor, and managing the Toys R Us brand across the region - Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan.
Who's the competition?
In Hong Kong and Singapore, toy sections of department stores; in Taiwan and Malaysia, toy sections in supermarkets, hypermarkets and department stores.
In all countries, some small, specialised boutique toy outlets.
How do you get a job there?
Recruitments at all levels are co-ordinated by the human resources department at Toys R Us, which draws upon job websites, recruitment agencies and press ads.
Recruitments at senior levels usually go through the regional managing director.
Department or office transfers?
Yes. Transfers usually happen between store operations and office and sometimes also between countries. Some of our senior-most managers started life as store sales staff.
Any training offered?
Store operations go through regular, formal training.
In other functions, it is mostly on-the-job learning and knowledge transfer from Toys R Us worldwide.
The best training in our business is to spend as much time as possible in our stores and to also go around the market checking out what other retailers are doing.
Pay and perks?
Competitive with the market.
An additional perk is that you get to be surrounded by toys and kids - a happy state to be in.
Long hours?
Yes. Particularly in marketing, merchandising and store operations.
Gets longer at peak times like Christmas.
Business travel?
The regional management team travels very frequently across the four markets, to the extent that we all know the best local bars in each country.
Argha Sen is head of marketing and CRM at Toys R Us Asia.
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