Letter from America

Opinion Hit me with your Fidl Bitz

Passionate toy retailers and unlikely friends Dave Middleton (Midco Toymaster, Midco Toy Planet and Freak Treats) and Rick Derr (Learning Express Lake Zurich) have successfully completed their latest foreign exchange programme. Following Rick’s visit to Harrogate for the Toymaster May Show, Dave headed to Columbus, Ohio, for the ASTRA toy show, and upon their return sat down with Rachael Simpson-Jones to compare and contrast the two events –and what they’ve learned about the US and UK toy markets.

Richard can be reached on LinkedIn or by email at LE45@sbcglobal.net

Dave can be reached on LinkedIn or by email at midcotoys@yahoo.co.uk

If you follow Rick and Dave on LinkedIn (and if you don’t, you should), you’ll probably already have seen plenty of posts about their visit to the annual ASTRA Marketplace & Academy, the jewel in the crown of the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association’s events calendar. ASTRA is a not-for-profit trade organisation that serves more than 1,800 independent retailers, manufacturers and sales representatives of the specialty toy industry. This year, its sold out 5-day Marketplace & Academy hosted around 400 exhibitors – which Rick says is slightly up on usual numbers – around 70 of which were new start-ups or grassroots vendors.

“Out of 5, I’m awarding the ASTRA show a 4.8,” Rick tells me over the Zoom, his background-blur filter causing Dave’s disembodied head to float in and out of view at random intervals. (He adds that his rating for Toymaster would be ‘darn near as high’, if not a 4.9.) “ASTRA’s chosen venue was terrific this year and allowed a really good number of visitors to attend. Of course, at Toymaster you can speak directly to the likes of Moose, Basic Fun and more, whereas here we have to go via distributors, which in turn raises the cost because you’re dealing with a middleman. Now I understand why my portfolio of brands is much more evenly distributed across supplier sizes compared to Dave’s.”

One of the other major differences between the ASTRA Marketplace & Academy and shows here in the UK is that the first day, which this year was Sunday 11th June, is dedicated to education, with a packed schedule of talks on offer for those registered for the full conference. Topics included: ‘How to Achieve Sales through Social Media’, ‘MESH for Retailers’, ‘The Science of Great Teams’, ‘Navigating LinkedIn’ and ‘Storytelling and Brand Building’, and turnout was apparently very high, testament to the relevance of the topics and the quality of the speakers.

Dave agrees that the show was excellent, though he does point out that it’s a very different type of event to the Toymaster May Show. While the latter is driven by big names – Spin Master, Mattel, Character, Jazwares, Hasbro etc. – the ASTRA Marketplace & Academy focuses on smaller vendors. Dave also tells me he noticed a marked difference between the mindset of UK retailers at Toymaster and US retailers at ASTRA.

“In the UK, we’re all about how big the box is, what’s the RRP, and how much money will it make me,” he explains. “Over there, retailers wanted to get toys out of the packaging, play with them, learn how to demo them in-store. They want to get as hands-on as possible and they’re way more outgoing than we are in the UK. We’re built different, with typical British reserve. Rick can start a full-blown conversation with absolutely anyone in his store, and they’ll join in straight away and have a good old laugh. If I tried that at home with some of my customers, and said some of the things he comes out with, I’d probably be arrested.”

He does think the educational aspect of the show could be brought to the UK though: Dave sits on the board at Toymaster, so watch this space. That said, he wonders if, again, the different retailer mindset here might prove an obstacle: “Retailers want to go to a show, buy, and come home. The education day at ASTRA was great, and the people there were very engaged, taking pictures and asking questions the whole time - but would indies over here really want to spend a day doing something like that?”

In terms of what they saw at the show, one product really stood out: Fidl Bitz (straight faces, people, straight faces). From Play Vision, Fidl Bitz is being sold in as a Construction toy, but Rick and Dave think this is a mistake. At the show, the company had Fidl Bitz bins for visitors to interact with, with people merrily plunging their hands into the tactile blocks in a way that makes it clear it’s far more of an ASMR toy. Contrary to my first assumptions, the blocks aren’t magnetic: they’re adhesive. Despite this, they don’t leave a residue behind, meaning playing with your Fidl Bitz won’t make your hands sticky. Hurrah.

Clockwise from top: Santa's Kindness Ornament, Sowa Sowa and Fidl Bitz

Rick’s second product pick is Sowa Sowa (Japanese for fidgety or jittery) from My Bumpas, a weighted infinity plush kids can turn in their hands or wear over their wrist. It’s completely silent, so kids who might benefit from taking a Sowa Sowa to school won’t distract their classmates with irritating noises.

Pick number three is Santa’s Kindness Ornament from Demdaco. Where other festive toys lean into naughtiness or ‘monitoring’ kids’ behaviour in the run-up to the big day, this golden bauble, shaped like a compass, comes to life on 1st December and transmits messages from Father Christmas that are rooted in kindness and positivity. The ornament comes with a Kindness Journal that encourages kids to spread love and happiness by completing simple activities such as giving their loved ones a hug or drawing a picture for their favourite friend at school. Parents control the activities using QR codes and a special app, and the product launches in the US in August.

Although Fidl Bitz stood out for Dave too, he’s come away not with a top product to bring to his three stores, but a category: Tween Girls. The first thing highlighted by James ‘The Rockfather’ Zahn in his day two talk, ‘Trends in Toys’, the category includes hair accessories, makeup, cases, bags, lidded mugs, body butters - that sort of thing. There were three or four vendors offering complete ranges at the show, the most prominent of which was Mavi Bands, which Rick stocks at his Learning Express store. Dave describes the Mavi range as a little like Claire’s Accessories, ‘only cheaper and trendier’, and he says the category offers retailers here a huge opportunity. He’s hoping to introduce a section of these kinds of products to one or more of his stores in the near future.

“It’s taken us around 10 years of playing around with these kinds of products to really understand how they work in the toy retail scene,” says Rick. “It was only at the beginning of this year that we felt there was enough of a curated assortment from the likes of Mavi, DM Merchandising, Zoe Coco and Bewaltz that we could really lean into it. It’s been a great category for us.”

Hello Kitty came to the fore as a top performing property in the US toy market during Rick and Dave’s visit. Nat Southworth at KAP Toys has been shouting about Hello Kitty from the rooftops, particularly his excellent surprise reveal line of Hello Kitty Cappucino collectibles, but licensed toy product remains limited over here despite the success of the property. Dave feels that what retailers need is more product that skews towards tweens, and more product that centres the supporting cast of Hello Kitty rather than the erstwhile feline herself, such as Badtz-Maru, Landry, Keroppi and Cinnamaroll. In the US, he says the toys he saw have taken the niceness of Hello Kitty and made it a little more edgy, a little cooler.

“Those toys bridge the gap between the tween crowd and the anime crowd, and there was enough product on show that ticked those boxes to make a decent Hello Kitty area in-store,” he adds.

Dave also liked Intersell’s Little Wish Lanterns, a Shopkins-esque range of cute and collectible characters (Wishimals) that come with light-up lanterns to live in. The range was shown at Distoy in London this year, when it generated a decent amount of interest, while at ASTRA, the company was looking to indies like Rick to launch the range at retail. For Dave, this is one of the more frustrating elements of the UK toy industry, as he explains.

“Indies don’t get big opportunities like that in the UK: it all goes to the bigger guys, like Smyths,” he says. “And if it doesn’t work, it’ll just get marked down and that’ll kill the brand. Something’s gotta give. Indies have to be given the chance to show just what an amazing job they can do of launches.”

Rick and Dave also feel the two markets differ in terms of their economic outlook. Dave says the American retailers he met seem far more upbeat – more ‘bullish’ – about their prospects this year than UK retailers do. Is that just US optimism shining through? Are we just a miserable bunch over here? Well, it depends who you ask.

“I feel like June went pretty darn well,” enthuses Rick. “Bitzee has just landed and it’s doing great, we’ve got much more newness coming through at the moment than we usually would this time of year, the port situation out west has levelled out, and inflation has calmed down too. I’m feeling good about 2023.”

Dave, whom many readers will know to be very straight talking, says he feels the opposite is true on this side of the pond, in the short term at least. In sharp contrast to Rick’s findings, he says sales have decreased, and even launches that have done really well in the US have been something of a damp squib here. Interestingly, one of the many conclusions the pair have drawn during all their time together is that while Rick sells product, Dave sells brands – and, whether you agree or not, they say that while toys are where indies go to thrive, nationals are where they go to die. Take Bitzee, for example, Spin Master’s new interactive pet. Rick has practically done a one-man TikTok and LinkedIn marketing campaign for the toy that has helped drive awareness and excitement in a big way, and he can feed straight back to Spin Master how kids are responding to the product, what they love most about it, which features they think can be improved, and so on. In their eyes, suppliers should be falling over themselves to launch new toys with indies for this exact reason.

With the end of our allotted Zoom time drawing near, I asked the pair what their biggest take-homes were following their experience. Rick told me that knowledge and connections lead to more opportunities for success. “I’ve enjoyed so many more opportunities to expand and improve my business since John Baulch first put me in touch with Dave here,” he says. “I think our time together has actually tripled our knowledge base.”

Dave adds: “I need to start looking at toys that aren’t necessarily from the major players: smaller items with bigger margins that I can really make my own, like Rick does with his new launches, rather than chasing down brands that are absolutely everywhere. I do see the opportunities Rick sees. Us indies just need to show suppliers how much we’re capable of.”