RETAIL INTERVIEW Argosy Toys
Ringing the changes Clare Turner chats to Paul Wohl, CEO of Essex retailer Argosy Toys, about trading through the pandemic, new products and being proactive
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rgosy Toys has been open continuously since 1947, making it one of the oldest independent toy shops in the UK. Based in the Essex town of Westcliff-on-Sea, the business was bought by CEO Paul Wohl’s parents back in the 1980s. Paul has been working in the store for 34 years, since he was 14 years old. He recalls: “I helped out after school, on Saturdays, and during school holidays, and became more and more involved every year. Then I went to college and started working in my own business doing something else. But in 2000 my dad said to me, ‘mum’s got to go into hospital for an operation - you couldn’t give us a hand in the shop for
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a week, could you?’ I said: ‘Of course I can.’ And I’m still here!” Like He describes Argosy Toys most of us as a traditional toy shop. “We little toy deal with Hasbro and Mattel shops, we’re and do a lot of business with Melissa & Doug, LEGO and Galt completely - the companies that are the stuffed to the ‘safer bets’, I guess,” he says. rafters with “Obviously, we do ‘go modern’ product 365 but I don’t like to go too far out on a whim. I try and stay days a year away from very low margin products because I don’t know if we necessarily have the turnover to handle them very well. By the time you’re the same price as the majors, you’re on 15% or 20%, and that doesn’t work for us little guys.” Other key brands stocked
Guess what… Argosy Toys is spread over two floors: 2,000sq ft downstairs and 1,200sq ft upstairs. In 1947 the store was opened from the front room of a shop that had previously traded as the Gas Light and Coke Company until 1939. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s the shop was extended forwards, backwards and upwards and had a climbing frame showroom and dolls hospital upstairs. The upstairs closed in 1985 and was used as a stockroom until July 2020, when Paul reopened it as a showroom for bicycles, LEGO, Micro Scooters, roller-skates, Trybike 3 in 1 balance bikes, helmets, Games Workshop, Meccano, Airfix, Hornby, Scalextric, Gravitrax, Geomag and skateboards.
MAY 2021
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are Gibsons, Galt, Depesche, Ravensburger and Brio. “Like most of us little toy shops, we’re completely stuffed to the rafters with product 365 days a year,” Paul says. “I don’t look at how much is in stock - ever - because it probably would give me a heart attack! If we sell it, we get some more.” His product categories are education, outdoor, collectables, creative & science, LEGO & build, plush, role play, small worlds, baby & preschool, books, and games & puzzles. He describes his core performers as construction, baby & preschool, education, craft, and wooden (“we do loads of wooden railways”). Argosy Toys is a member of the Toymaster buying group, “so we’ve got access to about 150 suppliers, but we deal with 70 to 80,” Paul says. “There’s a couple of suppliers that we deal with direct as well, such as Micro Scooters.” So how has trading been over the past 12 months? “We’re very fortunate because about five years ago we set up an all-singing, all-dancing website,” he says. “For the first couple of years, it didn’t make us a single penny. In fact, it probably lost us money. But more and more customers were saying, ‘I looked on your website before I came here and you had this, so I’ve come to get it’. So I thought, well, the website is worth keeping,
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