Talking Shop

Retail therapy

As the madness of Christmas 22 and January 23 starts to fade, our Indies this month reflect on festive trading and tell us how this year is going so far. Suzie Sparkes reports.

Helen Bellenie - Toys N Trends, Whitstable

We enjoyed a busy December with a bumper finish right up to Christmas Eve, which was an all-time best for us. People were still buying online in November but once December started, the postal strikes had a huge impact; more people decided to shop local, they were able to physically find what they were looking for and buy it straight away, without the stress about whether it would arrive in time. Some customers also hadn’t been able to get the goods they wanted online at all. The situation was good for brick & mortar trade, as well as reminding people of all the different shops that are available to them in their town - and what a nice day out you can have when you actually go shopping!

Footfall was up, and the mood was lovely; festive and encouraging with a good mix of customers from the young to the elderly. We were delighted to see how many customers came in for guidance to help find their perfect gift – and at an affordable price. We had many customers coming back several times, which was lovely as we felt we had built up a rapport and those customers trusted us.

We have a lot of families coming in as well as grandparents, and we also had a lot of children buying for their friends and siblings. Lego, Pokémon and Squishmallows continue to remain our top selling lines and these dominated sales in the run up to Christmas. Board games and travel games, particularly the Purple Cow range from University Games, proved to be excellent stocking fillers. Other top sellers over the festive period included plush from Ty, X-Shot Skins from Zuru and Hot Wheels – Monster Jam. I understand there was a Monster Jam event going on at the O2, so no doubt that fuelled the popularity.

The Tonies audio box and stories enjoyed incredible sales. Families were buying the Starter Sets as presents and then sending grandparents or other family members in to buy the individual Tonies to be used with the Toniebox. It is an amazing product that we have done really well with, and the bonus is all the fabulous link up products that can be added to it. We don’t normally order much at this time of year, but I placed an order for more Tonies just yesterday, to ensure I have additional stories for all my customers who bought the boxes for their children at Christmas.

Licensed plush, in particular Pokémon plush, sold really well, along with our range of puppets. Rather than focus on big-ticket items, we mainly stock middle/lower price range items, which suits our clientele and means we can offer a healthy mix of product. The overall stocking filler winner had to be Eugy by Brainstorm.

We remained busy in the week between Christmas and New Year, busier than normal for that week. Lots of children came in with their Christmas money and gift vouchers. We sell a lot of gift vouchers, and we also donate them to local schools and charities. Footfall was a good mix of local customers and visitors who were enjoying a day out. Most of the stock we brought in for Christmas sold through, so we were very happy.

After the Christmas and New Year rush, we tend to lay low for a while and enjoy getting our breath back, before trips to the London Toy Fair and Spring Fair in Birmingham and planning for the rest of the year. I know for some January and February can be dull, but we love it as it is such an exciting time in the toy industry. Before the new ranges come in, we concentrate on ensuring we keep good stock of our core products, such as Lego, Ty, Tonies, Pokémon and pocket-money lines, and will forward plan upcoming events and competitions.

Over the next couple of months, bearing in mind the cost-of-living crisis, we will endeavour to purchase good value products, retaining quality to fit a budget price point. We are particularly conscious of helping parents with the many birthday parties school children attend, so we will keep in stock a good selection of product in the £10-15 price range, with gift wrapping and local delivery available to make their lives easier.

Before we know it, we will be into February half term. We are feeling positive and looking forward to a fun and successful 2023.

Warren Du Preez - Daniel Department Store, Windsor

Our department store in Windsor is a destination point for visitors and staycations and we’ve had another very good year on the toy department. Christmas came quite late for us; October was very slow, and we were a bit worried by all the ‘doom and gloom’ messages coming from the media, but sales started picking up in November and then December was one of our best ever. The last couple of weeks before Christmas were just crazy! I suspect the postal strikes helped, but we have never had such a strong peak December fortnight. When Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, the trading week is just perfect, and we were busy non-stop until we closed the store on Christmas Eve. People flocked to bricks & mortar, and they came with conviction.

Our demographic covers all age ranges; we also have a nursery department, so we have customers from new mums all the way up to grandparents. The catchment area of Windsor tends to be an older clientele, so grandparents are amongst our biggest customers. This has been a help with the current cost of living crisis, as the older generation is generally mortgage free and not quite so worried as the younger generation. We find that grandparents enjoy coming in and looking for treats for their grandchildren.

The store sits on the high street and has three entrances, so we are a connection between the old and the new town and you can’t really miss us. We gained a lot of footfall post-Covid from people visiting the castle and the Thames and then popping in to see us.

In our traditional toy department, our top selling products are well-known brands such as Lego, Hasbro, Mattel and Playmobil. Because a large part of our demographic is grandparents, they like good quality brands that they grew up with and can trust. But we also stock everything from pocket money toys all the way up to £300/400 items. Spin Master’s Gabby’s Dollhouse enjoyed phenomenal sales at Christmas, as well as the Little Live Pets Mama Surprise range by Moose Toys.

Pokémon also saw phenomenal sales, as it did in 2021. We thought we had forecast a sizeable increase in order levels, but found we were still constantly scrambling for stock and struggled to get enough product to supply demand. It’s not just the trading cards that sell well under the Pokémon licence; the figurines from Jazwares were also in demand, as well as the advent calendars. I think the whole industry was caught out by the sheer demand for trading cards - and that included anything from the £3.50 boosters all the way up to the £100 box sets – the demand was huge. We were looked after in supply, but could have sold even more if we had received more product. Even in January, people were asking when we were going to be getting the box sets back in, and that really does surprise us at a £100 price point.

We were very busy in the week between Christmas and New Year with customers coming in to spend their Christmas money and vouchers. January also started really well, which if you had asked me three months ago, I would have been very cautious about, but after the first ten days, we were already 5% up on the previous January. These sales are right across the range, from pre-school all the way up to product for older kids. Craft items continue to sell well, as do trading cards, Lego and Squishmallows. Hot Wheels

has enjoyed phenomenal sales, as well as Barbie and Polly Pocket from Mattel. For Hasbro, Play Doh and Nerf are performing brilliantly.

Board games enjoyed very strong sales in the last two weeks before Christmas. The category was tracking down on previous years for the quarter but right at the end, sales suddenly picked up.

The toy department is 10k square feet and we don’t grow or shrink it throughout the year as some stores do, we find there is always an occasion for toys. We maintain what we call our ‘never out of stock” range throughout the year, which includes Hot Wheels £5 packs, Orchard Toys and Ravensburger - we have a big demographic of puzzle enthusiasts. The rest of our stock is pretty fluid across the year, with obviously a big increase in Q4.

We thoroughly enjoy toy fair season, even though it’s a bit manic, with buying trips to London, Nuremberg and the NEC. We are looking forward to another successful year.

Jennie Danso - Happy Returns, Hampstead, London

Christmas trading was very positive and back to a pre-pandemic pattern- we had the usual steady November and then it kept building to a very busy last week before Christmas in December. We are located just below the High Street; almost an extension of it, so we get a lot of footfall and are very lucky to be supported by a loyal local customer base. In December, many customers were saying that items they had ordered online hadn’t arrived, or they needed a few more bits, so in some ways, the postal strikes helped us.

We are quite a traditional, all-round toy shop and our core products are wooden toys for younger children and Lego and board games for older ones. Our suppliers and ranges are tried and tested; I don’t tend to stock items I am not sure will sell.

Our top sellers are Lego and Pokémon - its popularity never seems to fade. Our soft toys have enjoyed extremely good sales, and GigaBots and Spybots from Character Options have also sold very well.

The Tonies range has been very successful for the last couple of years, and we’ve been especially pleased this Christmas. Having sold the tonieboxes well over the last couple of years, there is now a good selection of stories, which has created repeat visits as customers return to buy all the new characters. Our regulars know they can find the latest Tonies releases here.

We sell a high volume of of wooden toys and puzzles from various suppliers, which include Hape, Brio and Ravensburger, and sales have been very encouraging recently.

We experienced a bit of a lull after Christmas, but this was expected as many of our local customers go away between Christmas and New Year visiting relatives. There were a few who came in and bought presents as they were going to visit family at New Year that they hadn’t seen at Christmas.

We have a good mixture of customers; we get a lot of families coming in as well as grandparents. Children love to come in and have a good look around; they like to touch and feel the products, ask questions, and then save up their pocket money to come back and buy. I think it’s an important way for children to learn about the value of money. If children have had to save up for something it means more to them when they finally get what they wanted, so we do encourage them to have a browse and welcome the interaction.

We didn’t sell through all of our stock before Christmas, which was a bit disappointing, but at least it means we had a nice selection of key lines in for January to sell before we go to Toy Fair. It’s better to restock once I have seen the new ranges coming out and I then decide which lines we are going to stock for the rest of the year.

Toy Fair is always something I look forward to. I can get so much done in the three days, although to be honest I don’t think three days is enough. I would love an extra day without too many appointments, to be able to aimlessly wander around and possibly spot something really different and special.

Indie viewpoint

Mark Buschhaus and Stephen Barnes Toy Barnhaus

After a booming Christmas – what’s next?

After all the months of planning and preparation, and a lot of hard work over the last few months, we can look back on Christmas 2022 with a sense of satisfaction. Overall, it was one of our best-ever Christmas trading periods, with figures well ahead of 2021, and also higher than 2019, the last pre-pandemic Christmas. Given all the uncertainty over the last year in the economy, there were a whole host of headwinds that could have worked against us. In the end though, the biggest factor that worked in our favour is that everyone wanted to really enjoy Christmas this year, after the last two were disrupted due to Covid. They were prepared to spend out for it, and we benefited from that.

The current cost of living concerns did have an impact, and that was on the amount of pocket money items we sold. Even compared to last year’ push popper craze, sales in this category increased by over 20% year on year. It’s a category that the bigger multiples struggle to do well due to the low price points and number of SKUs needed, but we are able to merchandise it effectively – and we did a really good job. We also found that many customers were looking to trade down in some areas, but this meant we enjoyed strong sales on clearance products, which offer great value to our customers. Rather than buy the latest version of a particular toy, people were happy to buy an older version at a lower price, and this was reflected in the volume of products sold on promotion.

It was noticeable last year that several new products/brands failed to make the expected impact at the tills. This was across a broad range of the main manufacturers and left us having to move stock on rather than sitting on it. This will make us more cautious going into this year; we need to try new lines to keep our offering fresh but will be careful not to commit to high volumes until we have some firm sales data.

But there was one standout new licence from last year, and that was Gabby’s Dollhouse. It really did become one of those lines that we were getting phone-calls and enquiries for every day. Another line that was a standout was the Live Pets Mama Surprise; it simply flew out right from launch. Otherwise, the bestsellers reflected the rest of the year, with Lego doing well, even at higher price points, Pokémon still a massive customer favourite and Squishmallows remaining very popular, along with Squish-aboos from Ty.

Post-Christmas Day sales were extremely good, well ahead of last year. This was reflected in gift voucher sales prior to Christmas being up on the previous year, then the redemptions post-Christmas were also well ahead. Kids definitely got plenty of money to spend too and were keen to get out early to do so. We took the decision to remain closed again on Boxing Day this year, to give our colleagues a break, and this did not seem to impact business at all, as 27th December was our best ever post-Christmas trading day.

We are realistic about the conditions for the current year, as cost pressures continue to build on consumers. However, the first week of January trade was steady, and our new Lego lines have arrived which we are very confident about. As we write this, we’re looking forward to heading back to Toy Fair and seeing what else is going to be launched in 2023 – more on that next month!