Viewpoint - Dave Middleton

Dave is an independent toy retailer with three successful stores under his belt: Midco Toymaster, Midco Toy Planet and Freak Treats. In what little spare time he has outside of work, he enjoys professional wrestling and not eating his peas.

Toy companies - let’s level the playing field

When it comes to product launches, we need to level the playing field between indies and nationals.

The UK’s indie retail sector is amazing. There are hundreds of toy shops up and down the country, run by knowledgeable, passionate, hardworking men and women that live and breathe toys and games seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. We’ve got engaged, loyal customer bases, we’ve got our fingers on the pulse of what’s going on across the entire trade, and the support of fantastic buying groups such as Toymaster to ensure products sell – and sell well.

Yet despite all this, certain suppliers are regularly offering bigger ranges and first-to-market exclusives to nationals (often one in particular) and it’s not helping anyone: not them, and certainly not toy retail as an industry. By the times indies get these toys, they’ve languished on-shelf with thousands of others for weeks and a lot of the time have already been marked down, devaluing the brand. They’re barely given time to bed in. Recently, a licensed toy range from a major supplier was marked down before I’d even received my stock. When the indie sector is already up against it as it is, that kind of thing makes me want to bang my head against a brick wall.

Everyone should know by now of the power of social media. Kids see toys they want online before anything else. Take Chewbacca Mask Lady as an example. One silly viral video, literally her just cracking up in a car, was all it took for that Hasbro product to sell out almost overnight. Every major trend over the past few years has been born at the indies: Loom Bands, fidget spinners, popppers. Good indies have the power and the passion to make your toys go viral on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter – we can make your toys rockstars online - but we’re barely being given the chance.

The very best social media content is often completely organic and doesn’t require any marketing budget to create; in fact, most indies are usually more than happy to product content for free, in their own time, to help raise awareness and boost sales. I post products on Facebook all day long and regularly make videos with my team that my customers really enjoy, and they genuinely drive people to my stores.

If suppliers started giving indies new launches even a month ahead of the nationals (or at a bare minimum, at the same time), they’d see much better sales straight out of the gate and would be much more likely to support the brand going forward. It wouldn’t negatively affect the market like the alternative does.

Why not try seeding a new product with 20 carefully selected indies in addition to the nationals, and see what happens? Maybe it would even be an idea for suppliers to maketheir marketing teams available to indies ahead of launches so both sides can collaborate on marketing efforts. We might not place the biggest orders – the one thing we can’t compete on with the big guys is spending power and shelf space – but we’ll get behind those products like the big guys won’t and whatever order we place, we’ll sell it for you one way or another.

It’s fair to say trust has been eroded on both sides over the years. Suppliers arguably feel they don’t get proper support from the indie sector, and the indie sector doesn’t see why it should support suppliers on new launches when nationals keep getting them first. I know a guy whose entire business hinges upon specialist action figure toys (and no, it’s not me) but a major UK chain was getting a really popular line two months before he was. These types of toys are time sensitive, and he badly needed a point of difference, so he requested exclusivity from the supplier on just two ranges. After a year of negotiations, a really small allocation of one of them arrived compared to what he’d been told to expect. The next day, that line appeared in the big national. And the same happened with the second range, only that one showed up at a different national. Understandably, he's gutted.

Never mind elephants – indie buyers don’t forget. Year after year, toy companies big and small and everything in between will usually be dealing with the same person at an indie retailer, whereas buyers at nationals and grocers tend to come and go. The turnover rate is arguably much higher. We’re interested in forging long-term relationships, some of which will last decades, and getting burned by a supplier lingers in the memory.

We need to find a way forward that actually works for everyone. There are so many awesome upcoming launches out there that we’d love to get at the same time as the nationals: toy fairs and previews continue to make it clear there’s no shortage of great toys to go round. I have to give credit to Wow! Stuff, which is doing a launch window with me for its Wednesday range. That’s a toy company that gets it, and I know there are others out there equally capable of offering that same level of support. Character Options has arranged for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume characters to come to my store and meet kids wanting the new Playmates toys. It’s going to be awesome. I want to see more of that, and I’m not alone.

The indie sector has always been here, long before the likes of Amazon and Argos. To be fair, indie retail is what the whole toy sector was originally built on, not the grocers and nationals of the world. We’ll still be around long after those guys are gone, selling toys 365 days a year (unless you close on Christmas day). But right now, nationals have a 100-yard head start. All we’re asking for is a fair race - we’ll see who’s best at the finish line.