5 minute read
Indie Opinion - Diary of a Toy Shop by Amanda Alexander, owner of Giddy Goat Toys
Diary of a toy shop
Columnist Amanda Alexander (left) with Gina Adams from Galt Toys at London Toy Fair
Amanda Alexander, owner of Giddy Goat Toys in Didsbury, Manchester, is forward planning for the year ahead, booking trade show trips, and co-opting her sons to help out with her new orders
2022 has started off well for our little Manchester toy shop. We had a cracking Christmas with online sales coming in up until December 18, after which it was actually quite nice to just focus on our in-store customers without picking online orders around them and printing off shipping labels.
Online sales have now dropped off a cliff, but shop customers have returned in the form of children with Christmas cash to spend and parents buying for parties. For us, that’s the big difference in trading compared with the past two years. Party presents have always been our bread and butter (until March 2020), with an average basket value of around £18 comprising a gift, card, and a sheet of wrapping paper - often with a plea to wrap said gift as the customer was on their way to the party!
This has picked up again, so I’m feeling positive about 2022. I hope this heralds a return to normality for all the kids who have missed out on parties - and brings a boost to sales for all the toy shops that parents rely on when they suddenly realise their child has a party to attend the following morning!
As I write this, I’m planning visits to Toy Fair and Spring Fair and thinking of what product gaps we have. Children’s jewellery is one of them and Spring Fair can be great for finding gifty things. We’ve got a sale going at the moment in a desperate attempt to reduce the number of things to count in the much-dreaded annual stocktake at the end of January. I’m avoiding buying anything until after stocktaking, but hate looking at gaps on shelves, so I have to sit on my hands!
In terms of preparing for the year I won’t take my foot off the gas, as “ you can never take your business and your customers for granted. So I’ll be on the lookout for new products, new suppliers, new dropship
ahead, it’s obviously important to reflect on previous years and think about what worked for us and what didn’t. Staff-wise we were fine, though like many indies, I probably did way too many hours myself - especially if I think about the hours spent at home adding products to the website or ordering stock. But I have a great team of part-timers who are happy doing one or two half-days a week but will do extra as we go into Q4 or when I’m on holiday, so that works well. My two main members of staff both asked to not be furloughed again when we went into the third lockdown last January, which is not only a reflection of their work ethic but also an indication of how important workplaces are for people; not just to earn an income but to socialise and get a sense of achievement.
Product-wise we have a few lines that I overbought for Christmas and by the end of December our LEGO shelves looked tragically empty, but generally I feel we pitched our buying levels about right in terms of amounts, variety, and different price points. But I’m still looking forward to viewing new lines (just not the process of adding them to our epos). My eldest son, who is at university, has been asked to help with this process but I fear the siren call of the student pool hall he and his friends have discovered is way too tempting.
Keeping it in the family, my youngest son is being drafted in to help unpack and price up deliveries though. My boys might not be able to advise me on what the hottest new toys are any more, but I think it’s important for them to do a bit of work for me. It might not be as much fun as when they were little and would test how much play value certain toys had and how fun and robust they were, but I still insist on us trying out new board games: Cheatwell Games’ Host Your Own Family Quiz Night was our post-Christmas dinner ’none-ofus-can-move-for-an-hour’ treat. My Diary of a Toy Shop columnist counterpart, Hazel McCarthy at Toy Corner in Galway, who has just had a baby - congratulations by the way to you, Hazel - has all this ahead of her: the chance to try out the lovely products in her shop with her new arrivals.
Trade shows and trade magazines like TnP are therefore more important than ever for me for finding out about new toys, with my other sources of information being my customers and my social media guru Jo, who has a boy and girl aged seven and five, respectively. She has become invaluable, not merely for her amazing enthusiasm and understanding of the difference between ‘stories’ and ‘posts’ but for suggesting new toy ideas and taking samples home to try out with her children. (Suppliers take note: the occasional sample goes a long way in encouraging us to try specific new lines…).
So, as far as forward planning goes, there are no big plans. Like many indies, I’ve bought an epos system and become an omnichannel retailer. I dealt with the shop being closed by jumping to online selling, and coped with reopening under restrictive conditions and the uncertainty of what was going to happen month on month.
I won’t take my foot off the gas, as you can never take your business and your customers for granted. So I’ll be on the lookout for new products, suppliers, dropship partners and sales channels. But given that the past two years have been a rollercoaster, keeping the fairground analogy I hope 2022 is like a go on the teacups, followed by a walk on the beach with a bag of fresh, sugary doughnuts.
