Talking Shop

Shoppin’ around the Christmas tree

It’s December and that means tills are ringing, but our indies took a break from their busy shop floors to speak to Suzie Sparkes and Sam Giltrow about pre-Christmas trading.

Robert Gliddon - Gliddons Toymaster, Sidmouth

have brought in all the stock that we are going to need for Christmas already, which feels good - we are in a much better position than last year when we had to contend with all kinds of stock problems and delays with containers in the run up to Christmas.This year, customers are behaving more cautiously. They are no longer just jumping in and buying things, instead they are coming in and having a look, then going away and thinking about it very seriously before they make their decisions. There is much less impulse purchasing than usual for this time of year. We’re a well-established toy shop offering a wide range of toys in a traditional, fun setting. We were very grateful to receive the Toymaster 25 Year Award recently, but it did shock me how quickly these things come around and whether I should be thinking about retiring! Traditional products sell well for us; games such as chess, draughts, snakes & ladders as well as all kinds of jigsaws. Lego, and Sylvanian Families continue to be really popular, and Pokémon always sells through quickly. Sales on these ranges don’t really change from one year to the next and it’s encouraging to know we can rely on them. In Lego, we are seeing sales from most ranges and Lego City sells particularly well all year round. Once the holiday makers arrive, we find the kids want the newer Lego sets, this means we carry practically the whole Lego range. As we are a seaside resort, there’s an increase in footfall during the summer and in the school holidays, but the locals are very loyal and support us throughout the year, with sales picking up again in November and December. Our trading pattern doesn’t really vary from year to year, although I’m very happy with that - my accountant always says that there is no such thing as continual growth, and those who set out with that aim will end up failing. The important thing in these turbulent times is to keep your cool and not panic. It’s crucial not to start dramatically dropping prices if products don’t sell; at the end of the day, margins and profit must be kept front of mind. I believe it’s important not to slash prices as all that does is to devalue the market, and when you do come out the other side of the recession, people won’t accept prices going back up again.We have a Facebook page that we update when we receive new products, which our local customers find useful. We don’t sell online as the shop keeps us busy enough. October half term was a very strong week for us, as it always is, boosted by holiday makers coming into the shop. It wasn’t our best one ever, but it certainly wasn’t our worst. We no longer sell fireworks, which traditionally made up a good portion of sales at half term, but even without them turnover was encouraging. Pokémon sold phenomenally well all week. Pokémon aside, we don’t sell much of what I consider ‘hype’ products. Customers can get these elsewhere and the traditional market is good and steady. With hype products, the market moves so fast that if you get it wrong, it can have a significant effect on the business, which is why I like to stay very traditional. I am also reflecting our local demographic – in Sidmouth, 70% of the population is aged over 65. We sell a lot of adult jigsaws, which are a massive part of our range – even more so since demand increased during the pandemic and it hasn’t really dropped off. We have expanded the range accordingly, which has proved to be a highly successful move. The typical demographic of people buying jigsaws has expanded; as well as the traditional older, retired generation, it now includes younger generations as well. I think when people were working from home, they may have had a jigsaw on the go to help them pass the time - they enjoyed that and have stuck with it. Gibsons, Ravensburger and Falcon (from Jumbo/James Galt) are the top three suppliers of jigsaws that we stock, as well as a few smaller ones. We have been promoting our Christmas savings club in the window; a few regulars use it and are very grateful for it. Our Christmas window went in just after Armistice Day. We change it round to make it a bit different from year to year and get everyone in a festive mood. I am hopeful for a good Christmas, and I would say to anyone, don’t expect growth right now, just keep your cool and ride it out.

Adam Marshall - The Collector’s Universe, Leeds

Trading has been encouraging since we opened on 22nd October. I decided to open the shop after being made redundant from my warehouse job two years ago. During the first lockdown I was put on furlough, so I started buying and selling Funko Pops! to earn a bit of extra money and to keep myself busy, but I ended up making good money out of it and so it became my full-time job. I would buy and sell on eBay and social media and then started buying and selling signed Funko Pop! collectibles, along with signed photos and sporting memorabilia. Now, in the shop, as well as Funko Pop! and Tees, we stock Funko’s Loungefly range of bags and wallets, Hot Wheels cars and Squishmallows from Jazwares, as well as other smaller lines. With Squishmallows, most of our sales come from the small and medium-sized plush, though we do stock the larger 20-inch range too. The range is incredibly popular and I’m expecting it to be in high demand this Christmas. Currently, the most popular licences across collectibles for our customers are Stranger Things and Star Wars, especially for Funko Pop! The feedback from customers has been amazing and we have had shoppers who have travelled from York, Sheffield and Nottingham, spanning a wide age range - from young kids through to adult collectors in their 60s. They are delighted that we have opened because they are finding a lot of the Pop! figures that they can’t find anywhere else. Although we only operate a brick-and-mortar store at the moment, we are working on a website, and, if this Leeds shop does well, I also hope to eventually expand and look at opening additional premises in York and/ or Sheffield. We had returning customers in the first week of trading and once people know where and who we are and what we stock, I’m sure we will do even better. Our location in Central Arcade is proving to be a good one and although there is another collectibles shop nearby, Geek Retreat, they stock different products. In fact, it has worked very well for us both as we send customers to each other’s shops.

John Testori - Bambola Toymaster, St Helier, Jersey

It’s been an exciting time for us as we opened a new hobby shop in October, next door to our existing shop in Don Street, which has been trading for 18 years. We recently closed our other store in The Parade, which had been open for 61 years, and though this caused sadness among some customers, it was offset by the positive reaction we have had to the new store. Customer feedback has been great, with people saying they like the product offering and the brightness of the new store, and we are extremely happy with trading so far. We wanted to make use of both the units in the building which we own, but we didn’t need two toy shops next to each other, so it made sense to go more into the hobby side on the second one. Since Covid, we have had an older, more adult, customer base and this has continued growing. They are two very different shops. The existing one is our core toy shop catering for younger children, whereas the new one is more of a hobby shop, aimed at older children and adults. The new 900sq ft shop is dual aspect, being on the corner of Don Street and the busy Waterloo Street. This has been great for footfall, showing an improvement compared to our The Parade store which was on the outskirts of town. In the new shop we stock a large range of hobby-based products including 500pc to 4,000pc jigsaws from suppliers such as Ravensburger and Gibsons, collectible figures from Banpresto and slots cars from Scalextric and Carrera. In our core toy shop, Lego is selling well, particularly the Minecraft sets, and sales of the Lego Toymaster exclusive, the Mercedes AMG set, have been phenomenal. If we can have another one like that next year, it would be very nice.

Gabby’s Purrfect Dollhouse has also been in high demand and we noticed a surge in sales as soon as our Christmas Toymaster catalogue went out. Pokémon is also still huge for us – in fact, it’s the only range that we sell in both shops, as I think it appeals to both customer bases. Jazwares’ Squishmallows is also still going strong, and I predict that one of the biggest sellers this Christmas will be the Fisher-Price DJ Bouncin’ Beats, which I think has Toy of the Year potential. It’s phenomenal – I remember seeing it at this year’s London Toy Fair and it put a smile on my face. We have Toymaster branded window displays for this Christmas, as they tie in with the front cover of the Toymaster catalogue. Across the two shops, we now have 105 feet of window frontage so there’s a lot to fill. Lego has provided some display assets, so we have a very nice display. I am confident we will have a good Christmas trading period. Here in Jersey, we are a little more fortunate than the UK as our energy costs haven’t increased much and although fuel has, we don’t use much being on a small island. A lot of people in Jersey earn high incomes, so we aren’t feeling the pinch as much as many other places. I’m not saying the early part of next year might not be tougher than usual, but we are ok for now. As always, I think it will be a challenge getting customers through the door after Christmas and if we get a cold spell it will be even harder. Now we have opened the fresh, new Don Street store, the existing shop looks a little tired in comparison, so we will start planning a revamp the for the new year. We already have a few ideas and will implement them after Christmas; then as the year moves on, we will pick a time to empty the shop and make it look as smart as the one next door. After having such a good 2022, I am equally hopeful that we will have a good year in 2023. You’ve just got to get your new stock in and hope for the best.

Mike Slocombe - Watkin Toys, Taunton

Initially, we ordered as much stock in for Christmas as we felt we would need and we’re now topping that up little and often. It’s difficult to predict how sales will develop, and we’re hoping there will be more stock available from suppliers if we need to reorder again. Being a Toymaster member certainly helps, and we were thankful to have received the 25 years award last month, so thank you to ToyMaster for that. It’s nice to be recognised in this way, although we are now actually celebrating 28 years - we missed the anniversary at the time because of the pandemic. There has definitely been a change in consumer spending these last few months. Most customers who come into the shop are spending relatively low amounts, although some do spend more and tell us that’s another Christmas present sorted. The pattern of consumer behaviour isn’t the same as it usually is at this time of year – we’re still finding that a lot of people are ‘just looking’. In all my 60 years of trading, I have honestly never witnessed consumer caution like I’m seeing at the moment. Normally, families come in with the children, who look to see what they might like for Christmas and within minutes of the family leaving the store, one of the parents is back in to buy the items. That is happening less often this year. A lot of retired people live in the area though, and they are still spending on toys - obviously buying for their grandchildren. Maybe the parents who come in and let the children look around are then reporting back what the children are after. Hopefully the grandparents will be responsible for buying the gifts. We had a very busy half term with lots of footfall, but sales didn’t quite match what we would expect. We also had a lot of holiday makers who were coming in for a good look round. Lego is still selling well, but usually I can rely on steady sales from ranges like Playmobil and Sylvanian Families too. But at the moment, sales on these classic bread and butter lines have noticeably dipped. However, it’s certainly not all doom and gloom - I am nearly 80 years old and I’m still trading! We are grateful to those customers who are choosing to come into the shop and spend their hard-earned cash. Here in the West Country, people are being impacted by the cost-of-living crisis, it’s not as affluent as everyone perhaps thinks. I have spoken to several other toy shop owners over the last week or so and we all seem to be in the same boat – quiet but hoping business will pick up soon. We will just have to see how things pan out, but I am hopeful people will be back in to buy what the children are after for Christmas.

indie viewpoint

Mark Buschhaus and Stephen Barnes - Toy Barnhaus

Tidings of comfort and toys

We are well into November trade as we write this, and everything seems to be encouraging so far. October finished strongly with a good half term week; early November has held up well against strong figures from 2022. Last year, the figures did tail off towards the end of the month and into December, as the Omicron Covid variant hit footfall. So, we are hopeful that this time round, the final few weeks of the year will be better.

The lines contributing to our strong sales performance will come as no surprise to most of you out there – Pokémon TCG, Squishmallows, Lego and clearance lines have made up the bulk of sales. There are a couple of current lines that are selling particularly well, two of them in the Dream Toys list: Gabby’s Dollhouse from Spin Master, and Character’s Heroes of Goo Jit Zu Goo Shifters. And we’ve also seen strong demand for the Queen Elizabeth Ty Beanie Baby, Paddington Bear and stretchy Mr Bean.

A line that always sells well at Christmas every year is Fart Ninjas from Funrise, and we’ve seen lots of additional sales from lower priced pick-up lines including (don’t laugh), clearance Push Poppers (thanks One for Fun), Fidget Spinners and Loom Bands. Apart from that, there is no one line that is really standing out this year, although with the cost of living impacting everyone’s finances, the big box value lines are really starting to move.

Our bricks and mortar business is now fully back after Covid, and it does feel like footfall has finally returned to levels matching those before the pandemic. Our online business is performing well too, and sales are growing, despite all the Royal Mail strikes. This gives us a nice mix between different channels, and means we have different options to move stock – for example, something that has had sluggish sales in the store can often sell a lot better online.

As if we did not have enough going on, we continue to invest in our business. We made the decision to relocate our Horsham branch into a larger shop in a prime location. It was always going to be tight to complete everything and open in November, but we managed to move over all the stock and remerchandise the new store in just five days. Although we are biased, we think the new store looks great. It had a fantastic opening weekend, and the customer feedback has been very positive.

As mentioned in previous articles, our main focus remains on stock control and trying to manage it effectively going into the new year. A big part of that is our Black Friday sale, which started a week before Black Friday itself. Thanks to the many good offers coming from suppliers, as they too look to clear down stock levels, we picked up some great deals. We’re also thinking ahead and planning to feature more of these lines in our January sale, which is the next key event.

We are trying to stay positive with everything going on, but do expect the first quarter of 2023 to be quite challenging, with people’s budgets being squeezed over the winter. We are managing our stocks for the first quarter very carefully to leave us in as strong a position as possible.

We are also already starting to plan our Toy Fair diary for January. We have our lunches booked and cannot wait to get back into seeing new product, especially Mark, who missed this year’s show due to an incident with a ladder.

Fingers crossed that when you read this, England will still be in the World Cup. It will be interesting to see if it will have much impact on trade at all – we’ve never had a winter tournament before. However, Stephen’s happy as it means Arsenal are top of the league for at least six weeks.

Happy trading everyone, and Merry Christmas to you all!