Toys R Us is expected to start closing stores and making staff redundant as early as next week, as hopes of finding a buyer for the ailing retailer fade.

Toys R Us collapsed into administration at the end of February. Moorfields, which is handling the administration, said at the time that it would conduct “an orderly wind down of the UK business” but that all of its stores would continue trading until further notice.

Much of the stock, it said, would be subject to clearance discounts and other special promotions.

Moorfields also said at the time that it would make “every effort to secure a buyer for all or part of the business” but the Press Association on Friday reported that a deal looked unlikely in what has become a highly challenging environment for high street retailers.

The agency said that Moorfields would likely start by shuttering at least 26 of the group’s loss-making stores. Toys R Us, which was founded in 1985, has more than 100 stores nationwide and over 1,500 stores worldwide across 33 countries.

It’s one of a slew of high street names to have been hit by a cocktail of rising inflation, increasing business rates, a hike in minimum wages and the surging popularity of online competitors such as Amazon. Maplin also recently went into administration and New Look this week announced that it was cutting hundred of jobs.

Many of Toys R Us’s small stores have proved relatively resilient in recent years and the company’s online performance has been robust too. But the bigger, warehouse-style outlets, opened in the 1980s and 1990s, have become expensive to run placing a heavy burden on the balance sheet.