Photo Credit Viktoriia Novokhatska
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OPINION
The magical vanishing
toy shop? John Ryan explores how the evolving role of hybridisation in retail could bring opportunities to toy traders
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ould the reason that there are, relatively speaking, so few toy shops be that they’re either not wanted or needed? Time was when most small towns had a toy shop. These were places you went to as an adult to treat your children, or maybe as a kid; they were sources of wonder and delight. Yet now they are thinner on the ground. Toy shops may be part of a chain (and there are very few of these) or exist in splendid isolation as one-offs, but there just aren’t that many around. There are several factors that could be contributing to this and it’s actually quite hard to assign a single reason to what looks like a slow decline, but at the top of the list is probably retail hybridisation.
Creating destinations Hybridisation is the process by which categories come together to form something that you won’t find elsewhere to create destinations. Examples abound, whether it’s pet shops appearing as shop-in-shops in supermarkets or the slow, but seemingly inevitable, appearance of cafés in convenience stores. Convenience stores in fact provide a lesson in the shifting retail landscape and the gradual evolution of the hybrid. In days gone by, these were shops you went to because you’d run out of something and were frequently referred to as ‘corner shops’. That was some time back, and today the convenience store is likely to be a place you visit to grab a latté and get ingredients for your evening meal, while at the same time buying a snack to see you through the afternoon. And in the better ones, there will be a café with seats. All of which means that the idea of a convenience store has undergone considerable modification. So it goes, perhaps, with toy shops. Quite aside from the fact that for young shoppers the web is a very considerable commercial distraction, these days a shop that sells ‘toys’ is likely to offer stationery and gifts and, very possibly, a café as well. On the latter point, selling coffee in a hybridised toy shop is likely to offer a very good return on investment. Once you’ve learned how to froth some milk and found a decent supplier of coffee beans, the
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Photo Credit hopeist
mark-up on a hot beverage is such that it could provide a better yield than almost anything else you have in your store. So why not just sell coffee? The answer to this is that there are those who do so already - and they do it pretty well. In terms of persuading potential customers to spend more time in your store, however, a few seats and some arabica is about as good as it gets when it comes to offering something that will make a difference to your turnover.
How is trading for you? But what about the rest of the shop? How to strike a balance between toys for grown-ups and toys as might be understood by the toy shop owner of old? This is where gift fairs come in. And what else? Books: recipe books, travel books and a smattering of modish fiction (and a young readers’ offer as well, you never know!) can be used to plug gaps and make a store feel more homely. So where does this take the hybrid toy shop and where are we heading? It seems probable that the outcome of all of this will be a retail format that will appeal to adults as much as children. There may well be fewer toys on display but that does not mean losing out, as your skills when it comes to selection will take care of this. What seems likely is that as well as children inspecting the merchandise, there will be a good number of adults too. Should all else fail, they’ll be sat enjoying a cup of something while being grateful that they don’t have to stand around while their offspring test-drive the stock. This is a hybrid toy shop and the fact that it doesn’t necessarily just stock toys should not be a cause of particular concern. Whatever label is applied to this piece of retail bundling, the whole should be considerably better than the sum of the parts… assuming a degree of know-how and competence. The obvious question in all of this is whether there is a future for the toy shop pure and simple? Very possibly, but if you have the option of getting a greater number of different customer types across the threshold, what are you going to opt for? Retail is about choice and choice features as much in the eyes of the shopkeeper as it does for the customer.
Retail is about choice and choice features as much in the eyes of the shopkeeper as it does for the customer
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John Ryan is Stores Editor of business magazine Retail Week. He has worked for the title for more than a decade covering store design, visual merchandising and what makes things sell in-store. In a previous life, he was a buyer.
John Ryannm.indd 1
02/09/2021 17:29
