Special Feature
Learning Express visits Toymaster
Harrogate’s
diamonds: an American reports from the Toymaster May Show
“
Yes!” I thought to myself, clapping vigorously and letting out a loud “Woooo!” as an Irish toy store owner started singing: “Where it began…” on stage at the Majestic Hotel in Harrogate, England. “This is just like the eighth inning!” Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline is something of a legacy at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts, home to the Red Sox - my family’s favourite baseball team. Thousands of eager fans belt out the chorus in unison between the top and bottom of the eighth inning. The fans may not know each other, but they certainly know the song, and it unites the entire stadium and city in honour of baseball and Boston. In Harrogate, there were only a few hundred of us singing, but that evening, Neil Diamond’s anthem transformed the Majestic into a stadium full of independent toy retailers and their
suppliers, providing a memorable highlight of my trip to the 2022 Toymaster Show. Rewinding the clock a few months, I had been approached by my friend, Learning Express store owner and toy retail thought leader, Rick Derr, about a similarity he observed between Toymaster, the UK’s largest buying group of independent toy retailers, and Learning Express, America’s largest specialty toy franchise with more than 85 stores nationwide. Rick had been writing a column in Toy World for some time and saw an opportunity for increased collaboration and learning across the pond. Thanks to one of his articles, he had connected online with Toymaster retailer Dave Middleton, who runs two Midco Toymaster stores in Derby and Burton-on-Trent. Rick and Dave had plenty to talk about. After all, Toymaster and Learning Express shared the same kind of customers,
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Mike Derse is director of Business Development at Learning Express Toys. Based in Massachusetts, Mike heads up franchise and new business development, strategic planning, financial reporting, real estate and franchise compliance. Here he reports on his recent visit to the Toymaster May Show in Harrogate. faced the same challenges presented by online and mass market retailers, and served similar communities - just 4,500 miles apart. We had originally planned to meet the Toymaster team in February at Toy Fair in New York, which was unfortunately cancelled due to the Omicron variant, but Yogi Parmar, MD at Toymaster, called me over the winter holiday and invited me to Toymaster’s May Show. I couldn’t wait. Flying from Boston, I arrived around noon the day before the show at Manchester airport, and after hopping into the left side of my rental car, I put myself into “Nigel Mode,” a state of mind named after my brother-in-law who grew up in Blackpool, England and who taught me how to drive on family trips in the Lake District. In Nigel Mode, after a quick stopover at Malham Cove in the Yorkshire Dales, I arrived refreshed and ready to learn and share with the Toymaster team.
