Games, Playthings and Plush

From the Classics (From page 87) tive of toy store owners. Drappi said the group has been helpful when it comes to learning about the latest and greatest toys of all kinds: “They help find new products for us. That’s how we learned about Kids Against Maturity. I also find out about a lot of games from our customers, and I’ll order them because of their interest.” Drappi is seeing single-player game sales increase. “Some parents are working or trying to get kids off screens, so they seem to be trending a bit,” she said.

Displaying games and puzzles can be a challenge because of limited space versus the size of the items’ boxes. At Silverton Pharmacy, Danielak said puzzles are on a spinner rack and games are on the store shelves in their 8,000-square-foot space. Feimster said at Big Smile Toys, “we find that if you have the space, it is best to face the boxes out, rather than having them on the shelf showing the box sides. We display games by age, which makes it easy for customers to find an appropriate choice. Puzzles are displayed by piece number.”

Kozhevnikova said, “Customers can see every title. We rarely have boxes facing sideways. On every puzzle, you can see the picture. We have a big aisle of kids’ puzzles that go from older to younger kids. We have a table in the store where we’ll put out new games so customers can play. We can explain the game, they can play it. We have around 30 titles on the game tables. We change them up now and then. Certain games stay on the table, others we switch around. This year, a lot of companies raised their prices. We have to watch. We trying very hard to find discounts to keep prices low for customers.”

Drappi said games and puzzles each have their own section in Island Treasure Toys’ 3,000-square-foot flagship store. “Nothing too creative [in merchandising] at the moment. Before the pandemic we had a big table in the game section—we had a lot of games out for people to demo. It’s much harder to demonstrate how games work when they’re in the box. Right now we do more explaining than showing.” She said they used to have a Team Game Night for the team members at all four of their locations to bond and try out new games.

Morgan said, “I am a hardware store, so everything is on shelves. You have to keep it looking full, fresh, and always changing. When it gets stagnant, you’re stuck with what you have. Over the last few years, it would get stagnant because I just couldn’t get things in. We had to work with what we had. We would keep rotating them and moving them around. Customers understood.”

As niche retailers continue to explore new offerings and toy stores evolve their inventory to meet customers’ requests and stay current with trends, games and puzzles will likely remain popular with children and adults alike. ❖