Retail Profile - Pocket Planet

It’s a small world after all…

Pocket Planet, an indoor miniature world attraction, will be arriving at London’s Oxford Street in 2025. A retail store is set to open beforehand, this summer. Toy World sat down with Pocket Planet and Event Merchandising, the company behind the retail operation, to talk about what the immersive miniature experience will offer visitors.

The idea of Pocket Planet was born seven years ago, after Mark Vlassopulos, the founding director, was fascinated by an exhibit in Hamburg called Miniature Wunderland. He recognised the opportunity to develop something similar in the UK and spent several years planning, finding the right partner to run the retail operation, and eventually securing a vibrant location on London’s Oxford Street.

Mark, who is a veteran leisure developer, says: “This gives us a great opportunity to create an amazing indoor miniature world, which we describe as an immersive journey. We have secured a triple-A location which we hope will attract 1m visitors per year from our third year.”

The Covid pandemic put plans on hold for a while, but work is finally underway to welcome visitors to the retail space this summer and to the miniature world experience itself in Q1 2025. The attraction will span 20,000 square feet, with an additional 10,000 square feet of retail and food & beverage.

“Normally these sorts of exhibits have a gift shop that you pass through after you've been through the ticketed attraction, but we’ll have at least 6000 square feet of retail which customers don't need a ticket to visit,” Mark adds. “We're both a primary retail destination, as well as a place that visitors will pass through after the attraction. 1m visitors per year to Pocket Planet should give us a massive additional throughput for the shop, but also an amazing opportunity to present products as part of our exhibit. As you pass through the attraction, you'll be seeing all kinds of amazing things – and hopefully will be stimulated by the miniature exhibits and motivated to purchase when you eventually get to the shop. Of course, the 150-200m people who visit Oxford Street each year and can just wander into the shop without a ticket may also be inspired to buy a ticket for the attraction. We recognised that we needed a really excellent retail partner and that's why we have formed a partnership with Event Merchandising.”

Pocket Planet will be the UK’s largest indoor miniature world and will take visitors on a journey through the UK and around some of the world’s most iconic buildings and landmarks. The miniature world experience will be held on the first floor, alongside a café overlooking Oxford Street. The largest section of the attraction will be based on the UK, with a large and interactive model of London, both the north and south banks. A miniature airport with a 20-metre runway where planes will take off and land every three minutes is sure to be a highlight, and the remainder of the exhibition space will take visitors on a journey around the world. Visitors will see a mountain region showing Alpine scenes and a waterfront area will comprise everything from huge freight vessels with cranes loading containers on and off, to cruise liners and pleasure craft. There will even be safari, jungle and volcano scenes to enjoy. Many more scenes, small and large, will complete the journey and each of the scenes will feature movement and action – with many of the vehicles and characters to be found in the shop on the way out.

A host of stimulating elements in terms of lighting and sound will transform the attraction from daylight to nighttime every 10-15 minutes, giving visitors different experiences throughout. They will also be able to push buttons to interact with the models right in front of them. Behind the miniature models will be projected visuals and localised sound, adding another layer to the immersive experience.

Pocket Planet’s ambition is to be “London’s favourite attraction”, and Mark believes that Pocket Planet can only achieve the “favourite status” if there is a great retail offer to allow the visitors to take home a piece of the journey they have just enjoyed.

Downstairs in the basement, the retail area will be located next to a broadcast studio where content will be created for a Pocket Planet YouTube channel. Influencers, celebrity model makers and enthusiasts from the world of modelling and crafting – from artisan model makers through to those in animation – will be invited to talk about their craft. A make-and-take space sits adjacent to this area to incorporate education and community into the project, something Mark tells us is an important aspect of the attraction. School groups can arrange a trip to the exhibition and end the day by creating their own model products to take home, inspired by what they saw.

Warren Traeger, head of partnerships at Event Merchandising, comments: “This won't just be restricted to plastic model making either. The crafting sector is a huge growth area at the moment, and we want to ensure that Pocket Planet retail embraces all forms of crafting - we will be a Mecca for making your own product.”

Also situated on both retail floors will be 3D scanners to enable visitors to take home their own replica models of themselves, an item or even their pets, printed fully in colour, from as small as a £1 coin to as large as 10-12cm. Warren adds: “You can recreate your own scene or your own piece of artwork using your figurines. It's going to be an integral part of the Pocket Planet retail experience. Train enthusiasts can create a model of themselves to sit and lean out of the engines in their own train set. This is going to be innovative and different to anything else that currently exists, and hopefully we are going to be creating generations of new crafters and modellers.”

Event Merchandising’s responsibility to the project is to not only create the look and feel of the shop, but also to determine the merchandising mix and build a retail operation which is capable of real success - even before the attraction launches.

“It's both exciting and incredibly daunting at the same time - the prospect of a new flagship retail location on Oxford Street,” remarks Warren. “Jeremy Goldsmith [managing director at Event Merchandising] and I recently went to Hamburg to visit Wunderland and found it’s a concept that fascinates everybody. The demographic of visitors ranged from school groups of 6–7-year-olds to people on their own, young couples, old couples, to hobbyist nerds & geeks and everyone in between. It’s a concept with such broad appeal.”

Event Merchandising is currently in talks with a range of toy companies which fit into the miniature, modelling and collectibles categories to discuss ranging their products in the store. Hornby, Ty, Funko and MGA are just a few of the big names already in discussions, and at both Nuremberg and London toy fairs, Event Merchandising will be focusing its attention on further companies which are a good fit to become part of the Pocket Planet world.

To get in touch with Event Merchandising, contact warren@eventmerch.com