Talking Shop
With a spring in our step With the new year period over, indie retailers are primed and ready for the rest of 2024, bringing in both new stock and new ideas. This month, they tell Toy World how Christmas sales ended up and what they have planned for the year ahead.
Emma Dadswell - Toys ‘n’ Tuck, Southend-on-Sea
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023 was a weird year. Most of our sales growth came early in the year, followed by a period where it was flat. In November we started trading down, and in December we somehow ended up +6% for the month and +3% YoY. Those might not seem like huge numbers, but after the year we’ve all had, I’ll take them. And if 2023 was weird, then Christmas was weirder still. There was no buzz, no atmosphere in the shops, no ‘must-have’ best-selling toy that had consumers falling over themselves to get to the till. It didn’t even really feel like Christmas until the week of the 25th itself. I wonder if this was the result of all the overcompensation from the past few years? Whatever it was, I’d rather not have a festive period like that again. We did really well with all the usuals of course - Lego, Squishmallows, Pokémon – but generally it was a real mixed bag. We saw a big spike in Five Nights at Freddy’s toys and merchandise, and we’ve seen a lot of growth with VTech this year, placing quite a few repeat VTech orders in December. One morning, I woke up to a flood of messages via Facebook from shoppers desperately trying to bag themselves a Soccer Bot from Golden Bear, but by that point it had sold out. I understand more arrive in February. At the start of the year we return our focus to pocket money price points, and while kids are still on holiday, collectibles remain strong. Once they go back to school, I expect we’ll return to the bulk of our business happening at weekends – at least until half term. We just need to keep our heads down until then. In terms of Q1 excitement, Littlest Pet Shop from Bandai has been the big one. I posted about the range being in stock on Facebook and Instagram when it arrived the week after Christmas and didn’t really think too much more about it. However, my phone kept pinging with notifications and when I looked, I realised that it was being liked and shared all over fan pages. It was wild. Interestingly, we’ve had 20-something-year-olds travelling from 50-60 miles away to get their hands on it. Some people are coming in and buying one of every pet: the first day we had it we sold £800-worth, and now we’re on our fourth restock. It’s retro, it’s cute and its affordable, starting
at £3.99, and I know buyers are filming their own TikTok unboxings of the blind packaging because they’re tagging the store in their posts. The one-week head start over the nationals that Bandai gave us with Littlest Pet Shop made all the difference to our sales, without impacting what the bigger guys will end up doing with it. When it’s the other way round, indies always lose out. This is something indies have been saying for so long and I think the message is starting to get through to some of the ‘smaller bigger’ toy companies. We’re just
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a blip on the radar to some accounts, but Bandai has listened, understands what we’re trying to do and what we need as an indie. The team there gets us, and I hope more will follow suit. I was chatting with Paul Reader at Toymaster the other day who asked me how I feel about the rest of 2024 – and I’m genuinely optimistic. Business keeps growing year on year, even when I’m convinced we’ll be flat or down, so clearly we’re doing something right. It’s all about being aware of what’s going on in the marketplace, sticking to