Touching Base - Spring Fair

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.

Julia Minchin - Founder and Joint managing director, Hippychick

Spring Fair is a lifestyle show, not just toy specific, which means we see a wider range of businesses coming through. It’s one of the biggest trade shows in the UK and comes after both Toy Fair and Spielwarenmesse, so people will have a pretty good idea of what they want to stock for the season ahead. They will also hopefully have greater knowledge of Hippychick, and the brands we distribute, and will be ready to place their orders.

Visitors to our stand will be the first to see (and stock) brand new products from some of our best-selling brands, including Classic World, Vilac and Moover. There will also be a chance to meet our friendly, helpful sales team, plus there will be exclusive incremental show offers for retailers we see in person.

The latest addition to the Hippychick family is the US brand Crocodile Creek, that specialises in beautifully illustrated puzzles, playballs and creative art sets. Many toys go in and out of fashion, but puzzles really have stood the test of time, and we’re looking forward to showcasing the range.

Ross Bradley - Sales director, Wilton Bradley

As the anticipation builds for Spring Fair 2024, we’re looking forward to presenting an exciting showcase of cutting-edge toys and games that redefine playtime.

Among the standout products we will be showing is the Mi-Mic Live Vlogging Kit. Mi-Mic Live is an award winning pocket-sized Vlogging Kit that allows young creators to capture their best moments in a higher quality. It was the winner of the Tech category in the Big Christmas Wish List at this year's Big Christmas Press Show and has been shortlisted for the Nuremberg Toy Awards in the Teenager & Adults (10+ years) category.

The kit includes a clip-on ring light with 23 customizable settings, ensuring the perfect lighting for any scenario, and a clip-on microphone, equipped with noisecancelling technology and an impressive 30m range.

Spring Fair attendees can see hands-on demonstrations and engage with the team behind such innovations. Our products not only showcase the latest advancements in toy technology, but also emphasize the importance of fostering creativity, exploration and joy in the lives of children.

Steve Finch - Managing director, Click Europe

We always enjoy exhibiting at Spring Fair because we get to meet so many diverse types of buyers, from farm shops and garden centres to museums and football clubs and everything in between. There are also always great speakers at the show that we try to pop along and watch too.

This year, we’re going to be offering a massive 20% off our own brand products, with free delivery over £250 to the UK mainland. This will be on new, as well as existing, product lines. We’re keen to attract new buyers into our brands, so this will be an unmissable show offer.

We’re excited to be able to share our new boppi games and mythical unicorn Round Jigsaw Puzzle that we’ve been working on for the past year. I think everyone’s going to love them. I am most excited to showcase our boppi range; we’ve created a really strong offering, from jigsaws, games and wooden toys to three-wheeled scooters. This means that buyers can have a one-stop wholesale provider to supply their 18-months to eight-year-old audience.

Zara Grindrod - Sales and Marketing director, Rainbow Designs

Spring Fair has such diversity in its visitors. It has become the key event to catch up with our independent customers, as well as meet new retailers from a variety of sectors outside toys, such as gift, greeting and even garden centre buyers. They get to see our best-sellers and new launches on display, and most importantly get to touch, feel and have a cuddle with some storybook favourites.

Rainbow is a leading creator of licensed character nursery, toy and gift plush collections, featuring some of the most adored children’s characters of all time, including Paddington, Peter Rabbit and Disney’s Winnie the Pooh. We have plenty of new products and new characters joining the Rainbow family for 2024, such as Donald Duck and the new Disney Baby Lion King range. We are excited to be partnering once again with Cardgains, and visitors can find us as part of the Cardgains stand, where we are looking forward to meeting up with lots of gift and card retailers.

We are fortunate that we have so many best-selling and much-loved character collections to choose from but are very excited to be welcoming our new Wizarding World collection to the Rainbow family. Available for autumn/winter, the new collection of nursery toys will feature Harry Potter, Hedwig and Dobby.