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Show and tell
Exhibitors at this year’s event tell Toy World what Spring Fair means to them and what they are expecting to get out of this year’s show.
Mark Jones - Sales director, University Games
The combination of University Games, Lagoon and now the newly acquired The Learning Journey gives us such a diverse range of products. Spring Fair presents us with the opportunity to showcase our ranges to a wide variety of retailers, not just those in the toy industry. Spring Fair also allows us to spend quality time with our fantastic customers and an opportunity for them to touch and feel our products, which isn’t always possible when we see them in their stores. Our product selection continues to evolve with fantastic new additions all the time. We have over 50 new lines launching this year, including the new Rocky Horror Show, Mog and Art Gallery board games. We offer good margins to help support our retailers, and we have a dedicated sales team which is passionate and knowledgeable, so we can deliver the best service to our customers. The addition of The Learning Journey into the University Games family is a great opportunity for UK customers to buy this brilliant range of products for the first time. It’s a really exciting time for us at University Games, as we add another associated product area of the games and toys sector to our portfolio. We can’t wait to showcase our complete Learning Journey range in Birmingham.
Amber Elliott - Website, Marketing &
Social Media manager, The Noble Collection UK The Noble Collection has attended Spring Fair for over a decade. While we’d consider ourselves regulars by now, we’ve developed several iterations of our stand, and, of course, seen many of our lines come and go. One of the greatest things about Spring Fair is the sheer size of the show, and the number of different industries covered by one event. Walk into one hall and you’re greeted with Christmas displays (in February!) and in the next, you will find home decor, toys or jewellery. There’s always something different that might surprise buyers. The Noble Collection stand is (proudly) a bit of a nerd heaven. Alongside new and existing customers, we get many attendees returning to our stand every year just to take another look and see what new products we’ve released. This year, we hope they’ll return to see how we’ve reimagined a handful of items from The Noble Collection Vault – long discontinued, but popular, collectible pieces, crafted in new materials and presented in new packaging for the modern-day collector, including a 7.5” miniature replica of the Goblet of Fire from the Harry Potter franchise. For 2024, we’re looking forward to sharing a brand-new range from our first video game licensing partnership with Minecraft. We can’t wait to show our exciting, touch-activated, illuminating collector replicas and, in true Noble Collection style, a finely crafted chess set. Unlike anything seen before, you can choose to play as the Overworld Heroes or Hostile Mobs on a striking Minecraft board.
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