Company Profile - Toynamics

Having a corking good time at Toynamics

Toynamics UK & Ireland, part of the Hape Holdings Group, continues to enjoy strong growth and this year welcomes a new sustainable range unlike any other in the toy market. Rachael Simpson-Jones paid a visit to managing director David Allan and EU Brand & Campaign manager Emma Damerell at the company’s Leicestershire office to find out more about the company’s latest developments.

Toynamics is a subsidiary of the 37-year-old Hape Group. Headquartered in Germany, the group’s owner, Peter Hanstein, is known within the toy industry for his keen eye for business opportunities and unrelenting hunger for growth and expansion. This approach has turned Hape Group into a global multi-milliondollar company with a presence in 60 countries - and a subsidiary in 30 of them. The majority of these subsidiaries also act as distributors and are known as Toynamics, allowing the company to leverage its strengths and turn its offices across the world into one-stop-shops for a huge range of toys and kids’ products. For Toynamics UK & Ireland, that strength also manifests in European distribution – one of the appeals that landed it the Skip Hop portfolio of thoughtfully-designed baby and nursery products back in 2020.

Hape Group also owns its own factories (three in China and another on the way) in which its wooden and plastic ranges are made, plus a bamboo forest complete with a hotel. With Peter at the helm, there’s no such thing as mission accomplished. Instead, he’s constantly seeking new opportunities: in July, he was touring Europe to assess potential distribution and manufacturing opportunities owing to changing rules and Covid-regulations in China. As a wooden toy specialist – Hape is the biggest wooden toy manufacturer in the world, both white-label and own-brand - it makes sense for Hape Group to locate its manufacturing close to where its renewable, sustainable timber suppliers are.

The Hape range spans a wide range of categories: Baby, Music, Railway, Bath, Outdoor, Walkers & Ride-Ons, Educational, Arts & Crafts, Role-Play, Push & Pull, Junior Inventor, Kitchen, Dollhouse and Quadrilla, the STEAM-leaning, physics-powered marble run brand. What has long struck me about the Hape range is that none of these categories feels undernourished: all contain beautiful, thoughtfully designed toys such as the Railway Bucket Builder Set, which comes contained in packaging that turns into part of the track. Another best-seller is the Hide-and- Seek Periscope from the Nature Fun range, a line of explorative toys and accessories that foster a love of the outdoors. Nature Fun products are made from bamboo grown in the forest mentioned earlier, making this a strong option among eco-minded consumers. The company is utilising bamboo in more and more of its Hape products, as well as other, even more novel, sustainable materials – but we’ll come back to that.

The Hape brand is enjoying much greater awareness nowadays, in large part, according to David, thanks to Emma’s dedicated marketing efforts. Toynamics UK & Ireland keeps a very close eye on emerging wooden toy brands, of which there has been a sudden influx over the past year, though Hape’s huge growth and sales figures bear testament to its good standing among consumers. Emma, meanwhile, also notes that consumers are increasingly seeking out high-quality toys and toy brands that will last a good amount of time.

“Having Emma as our head of marketing has much a huge difference,” explains David. “Our marketing is so much more polished now: Emma has reconfigured our whole strategy and Hape is far more recognisable and in-demand than it’s ever been before. And it’s not just our retail customers we’re seeing come round to the brand more and more: consumers actively look for it now too.”

Emma adds: “It’s been beneficial to the Hape brand to look at it from a 360-degree perspective. We’re supporting retailers with theatrical displays – play tables, railway-themed FSDUs, eye-catching CDUs - and events. Our sales team can cater to pretty much any retail request, and shoppers want and expect these things now. At the same time, we’re also promoting to end consumers with brand partnerships, social media, influencers and much more.”

Baby Einstein, one of Hape Group’s joint ventures, comprises wooden toys (Hape’s input) with tech elements (Kids2’s input) that bring them to life. The Magic Piano is a best-seller – Emma shows me a very sweet Instagram Reels video posted that morning by an influencer of her daughter happily playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on one - as is the Strum Along Songs Guitar Dave is holding in his picture. Nebulous Stars, an aspirational arts & crafts and stationery brand which aims to promote mindfulness and wellbeing, has recently been joined by DinosArt, which (as the name suggests) is a range of dinosaur themed creative kits – painting, colouring, figure decorating – plus stationery and notebooks ideal for school.

A new brand owned by Peter’s sister, Sabine, Beleduc is also launching this year. Primarily made from wood - and centred upon the belief that children learn because they play, not play to learn - the range comprises puzzles, games and educational products, covering topics and themes such as the human body, animals and their habitats, music and more. And then of course there’s Nanoblock, the range of microconstruction sets, and the aforementioned Skip Hop distribution line of ‘must haves, made better’. One of my favourite upcoming launches, however, is Korko. This creative and educational

Hape ownbrand offers products made from 100% Portuguese cork, grown sustainably in well-managed forests. Korko is a prime example of a toy brand that’s doing pretty much everything right from the word go. It’s not just carbon neutral but carbon negative, which remains highly unusual even with all the toy industry’s sustainability efforts. The packaging is plastic-free and recyclable, and – like Hape’s bamboo - the cork itself is a renewable resource. The trunk and branches of cork oaks are carefully stripped in sections. The cork grows back within around nine years, while the tree itself continues absorbing carbon from the atmosphere and providing food and shelter for wildlife.

Korko launches this year with three SKUs: Small Architects (20 cork blocks), Tall Architects (40 cork blocks) and Giant Architect (60 cork blocks). These construction blocks come in a range of shapes and sizes, are coloured with food-safe dyes in a variety of naturalistic, aesthetically pleasing colours, and have been specially developed to be light and safe enough for kids aged 18m+, yet too tough to bite chunks out of. The margins are excellent too - and David says feedback from retailers has been very positive. Consumers, as we keep hearing (and I keep writing) really do want eco-friendly toys and kids’ products, and one of the many nice things about Korko is that it will sit perfectly alongside other, greener toy options made of more traditional materials such as wood or recycled plastic - because no one else is making toys out of cork. New launches will follow in due course, I’m told, which will expand Korko outside of the Construction category. The brand has also designed its own cute and friendly ambassador, Coco the Owl. Coco’s job is to educate children (and the parents buying Korko) about the toys, cork and sustainability. He’ll play a big role in the brand’s marketing plans as Korko attempts to reach two core consumer groups: enthusiastic parents that don’t know much about sustainability but are keen to learn, and parents who are pretty clued up, but may not know much about the use of cork as a toy material.

“The Korko brand aims to create a connection between kids and nature from a very early age,” explains Emma. “Amorin Cork, which we’re working with on Korko, is actually the world’s largest manufacturer of wine corks and is always looking at new and innovative ways to work with this material. Korko was a natural next step for Hape Group. And it’s a great gifting product – the blocks look gorgeous around the home.”

In-store, Korko stockists big or small can make use of a full suite of display solutions designed to grab shoppers’ attention and communicate the product’s

USPs. The large POS display holds 16 small, eight Tall and eight Giant Architects sets, while a Try-Me platform on the top lets purchasers interact with the blocks. The compact Try-Me Display, meanwhile, will sit nicely on shelf in the middle of a product range, which can then be bookended by shelf strips, wobblers and flags. As a Hape-owned brand, Korko has also been able to tap into the group’s enviable design and marketing teams to create stunning photography that can be used on headers and side boards made to bespoke measurements.

“We try and offer as much flexibility and tailoring to our retail partners as possible,” adds Emma. “We know that a single solution won’t work for everyone, which is why we’re happy to work with everyone to find a solution just for them.”

It’s hard to overstate the lengths Toynamics UK & Ireland goes to in order to support both its brands and its retail partners. In our increasingly fragmented retail landscape, with kids and purchasers now consuming content everywhere and in every way, from print and TV to the metaverse and TikTok, diversity is key. Influencers are used for both brand and retail partnerships, while in-store and social media competitions continue to raise awareness of brands and drive footfall to stockists. Smaller retailers, according to Emma, particularly benefit from the competition prizes and online content Toynamics can offer: both ease the pressure on small teams and small marketing budgets. Toynamics can also assist retailers with audits that highlight areas for improvement on eCommerce websites and provide bespoke banners and graphics for online display. At certain times of the year, Toynamics also runs seasonal campaigns that push shoppers to chosen retail partners, usually nationals. ‘Gift with purchase’ incentives, meanwhile, have helped drive in-store sales – everyone loves a freebie, after all. And there’s so much POS to choose from, Toynamics is actually launching a dedicated catalogue this year to help retailers choose what works for them.

Although she’s only been with the company a year and a half, Emma’s been doing such an excellent job, David tells me, that her remit has already been expanded to cover Europe in addition to the UK & Ireland. As a result, she now heads up European campaigns for Hape and Baby Einstein, working to bring campaigns across the regions into alignment in time for Christmas. Seasonal campaigns will run across all touchpoints, reaching consumers wherever they are with a consistent, recognisable message.

“These are exciting times, and the company is in a very strong position at the moment – we’re up over 30% YOY versus 2021,” David enthuses. “Yes, there are challenges caused by inflation and the cost of materials, but when you’re in toys you’re insulated from that. There will always be Christmas and birthdays and other celebrations, and there will always be money for toys, as long as it’s the right toy. Toynamics has all the right toys, backed up with a full marketing package that will ensure they are a success at retail. We’re always looking for new ways to support our retailers; if you’re reading this and you want us to help you and your business, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’ll support you through the entire consumer journey, from shoppers arriving in your store to making that sale, and everything in between.”

For more information, contact sales@toynamics.co.uk.