14 minute read
Talking Shop
Stock tactics
Gabriela Jiménez García speaks to a selection of indies as they brace themselves for the run up to Christmas, finding out what has been selling, what they expect to perform well this year and how they are managing their inventory for peak season.
Lisa Clay - Armadillo Toys - Leeds
Armadillo Toys is a traditional toy shop located in the heart of Chapel Allerton. We’ve been trading for over 20 years and are well established, with a loyal customer base of local families who trust us as the place to come to for toys. Being based in such a busy area close to other independent shops, cafés and restaurants means we’re fortunate to have high footfall.
As a traditional shop, we mainly focus on classic toys that will appeal to children ranging from the ages of 0-13. We stock products from around 98 different British and international suppliers, including Orchard Toys, SmartMax, Janod and Melissa & Doug.
We have ordered plenty of stock in preparation for the busy festive season and are due to receive even more in the run up to the big day. Although we’ve been increasing stock of lines we offer all year round, we will also bring in new lines that we think will appeal to our customers. Educational toys is one of our main categories, and we will be emphasising our wooden toys that align very well with this section. We aim to push our Orchard Toys range, as it offers such a wide selection of educational products, including puzzles and board games, that cater to children aged from 1 to 8+, which is fantastic. We will also be promoting smaller items that make great stocking fillers, things like finger puppets and fidget toys, and we’ll make sure we keep topped up on these before Christmas officially arrives.
Stitch is an incredibly popular character; currently every Stitch-licensed toy that arrives at our store ends up selling out quite quickly. With the Lilo & Stitch live-action movie set to come out next summer, I can already predict that anything Stitch-related will sell well during the Christmas period.
Halloween is a big event for us, and it won’t be until after the Halloween season before we fully transition to Christmas. Once it’s out of the way, it will be full steam ahead to bring the Christmas spirit into the store. We have a section of ready-to-go gift bags at the entrance which cater to special occasions including birthdays; once the Christmas season gets closer, we’ll be updating this section with Christmas-themed gift bags. We’ll also be making use of our social media platforms to promote our Christmas lines and highlight to customers whenever stock becomes limited, so they can ensure they don’t miss out on the things on their children’s Christmas lists.
Tony Duffy - Duffy’s Toyworld - Dunleer, Ireland
Nestled in the rural area between Dublin and the Northern Ireland border, Duffy's Toyworld is a toy shop offering customers a range of products across different categories and catering to both in-store and online shoppers. The store spans an impressive 10,000 square feet and boasts over 19,000 SKUs. We focus on stocking toys that will inspire imaginative play, creativity and role-playing.
Our store is divided into various zones, each designed to captivate and inspire. Our dedicated aisles are organised to group similar toys together, helping parents and gift-givers make informed choices and encouraging then not to just buy the latest ‘hot toy,’ but the toys with the best play value. We have found that this method of grouping like-minded items has significantly boosted our sales over the years.
We’ve recently launched the Future Careers aisle, which features costumes for Nurses, Doctors, Healthcare Workers, Fire Service, Police Officers, Zoo Keepers, Postmen, Road Maintenance, Chefs and other professions. We’ve introduced this aisle to help encourage children to explore different career paths through play. Our Muddy Play aisle is another growing area dedicated to toys that allow children to engage with nature and get their hands dirty, and we have a dedicated aisle for autistic children, filled with sensory toys that cater to their unique needs. We have also expanded our range to include a new area dedicated to pre-schoolers, and our latest addition, ‘Messy Play’, is expected to yield excellent results.
Additionally, we offer aisles dedicated to wildlife, zoological and aquatic themes, as well as domestic and farming models. Our role-play aisle, complete with play kitchens and shops, provides everything children need to enjoy hours of imaginative play, and it makes for a large area in our store.
We find it’s not necessarily brands that drive footfall, but the extensive range we offer and the fact that our long-serving staff are always ready to help. As well as that personal touch, we offer gift wrapping as a gesture of goodwill. Brands we do carry include household names like Lego, Playmobil and many other great European suppliers. Our Playmobil range is especially popular and remains a best-seller, and we also stock 350 SKUs of Bruder products; being based in an agricultural area, we try to stock all the different tractor models, as that is what many of our customers are interested in.
We don’t change our approach or bring in too many specific new items for the Christmas season. Instead, we continually develop the shop throughout the year. We don’t wait for Christmas to bring in new stock; as soon as we find a product that fits well within our range, we buy it straight away. For instance, we are constantly updating our collection of Jigsaw Puzzles with new ranges, as we stock the biggest range of Jigsaws in the country and ship them across the UK through our website. However, we have recently sourced new jigsaws for the Christmas season, as these are a popular purchase, and now have shelving with a selection of over 30 different jigsaw puzzles.
Brendan and Ellen Will - Will’s Toy Shop, Aberdeen
Husband and wife team Brendan and Ellen Will used to run a post office within their Aberdeen toy shop but have recently closed it as it wasn’t generating enough revenue. However, when one door closes, another one opens, and the couple now hope to make good use of the extra floorspace.
Brendan: Exciting things are happening at Will’s Toy Shop. Following the closure of the post office section, we've turned the space into something new and are currently working on launching our brand-new gaming room, The War Room. The idea came from the popularity of our gaming events, especially our monthly Pokémon Day where we teach kids how to play the TCG. We’re delighted to have just been granted status as an official Pokémon League. About a year ago, I removed the middle gondola from the shop and replaced it with removable FSDUs to create a more open space where we can fit in a few tables for our gaming events. Now that the post office is gone, we'll be able to host more events and accommodate more guests in the shop.
We have also been collaborating with brewery company, BrewDog, which hosts an event called BrewHammer, (a combination of Warhammer and Brewdog), at its brewery in Ellon. We provide the stock needed for these events, and seeing their popularity and the number of people they attract further fuelled our desire to open a gaming room that would bring engaging events to our community members on a smaller scale.
In The War Room, we’ll be looking at different gaming systems and popular games that we could bring in. We will also gather customer feedback through surveys and social media interaction to see what the community is interested in and what they would like to see from us. Although we’ll mostly be focusing on tabletop miniature games and TCG at first, there are a lot of avenues we would like to explore and diverse games that we’d like to bring in; technical games could also be an interesting category to incorporate. We aim to target both adults and children and plan events based on the schedules of different audiences. For instance, during the afterschool 15:30-17:30 slot, we’d do an introduction to card games including Pokémon, Magic: the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh!, and during the evenings, we’d focus on hosting events for adults.
As we approach the Christmas season, Will’s Toy Shop will be implementing several changes to its product offering. We will be narrowing our focus to products that have performed well in previous years, which means reducing the amount of pre-school products and increasing our stock of things like Lego; collections such as Harry Potter and Lego Botanical have been very popular amongst teens and adults.
Christmas is the peak season for the games category, so we will be expanding our range of games, with everything from tabletop games to party/family games, including the popular Smart Games’ Genius Square game and other fun games from suppliers like Big Potato. We believe that showing how a game is played is the best way to sell it, so we will prioritise games that are easy to demonstrate. Our staff members will be trained to play and demonstrate games to our customers. One example of a perfect game to showcase in this way is Big Potato’s Kluster, which has gone viral on TikTok for being fun and entertaining.
Ellen: Cheatwell’s range of pocket games and puzzles performed very well last year, and the games make great stocking fillers so we will be well stocked with these for Christmas. The additional space that has become available with the closing of the post office will come in handy for our parents-only evening shopping events, where we’ll be opening the shop a bit later to enable parents to browse for Christmas gifts without their children. We’re also looking at organising character visits and perhaps having Santa make an appearance to encourage more children to visit our store.
With so many great toys currently available, it’s hard to predict what this year’s Christmas best-sellers will be, but one of my personal favourites that I think will be popular – especially amongst kidults - is the Lego Icons Plum Blossom; I like that it features a captivating and unique oriental design. We’ve also seen growth in the STEM category, with Brainstorm's Moon In My Room and Rainbow In My Room being very strong performers, especially during the Christmas season, when parents and grandparents are looking for something both fun and educational.
I’m confident that many shoppers will visit the store in the run up to the festive period, and whether they’re looking for fun and educational toys to gift children, something for the kidults or games to play with the family, our team is here to help them find just the right thing.
Joseph Yap - QT Toys and Games, London
QT Toys and Games is located in a busy shopping street in Battersea and offers a wide variety of classic and traditional toys. Being based in a residential area means that our customer base is largely made up of young families and parents who come to find engaging toys that will keep their children entertained.
The holiday season is fast approaching, but this year we have postponed placing any large Christmas orders too early. We will aim to keep stock tight and hope to order more at the end of this month or in early November. We are taking this cautious approach to avoid carrying excess stock of high-priced products that may not sell well after the holiday rush. While we do stock some high-priced items, we find that customers tend to purchase the bigger and pricier lines from online retailers like Amazon or elsewhere, due to the discounts these retailers can provide. We can’t compete directly with such pricing activity, so are being selective in the larger items we will place on our shelves for the Christmas period.
However, lower priced and pocket money items sell well for us throughout the year and are consistently popular with customers. In the current climate, parents are more willing to spend £10 or £20 on a toy, and many people will be looking for smaller, cheaper presents or stocking fillers during the festive season. There’s a lot of interest in our selection of sensory toys, such as squish balls and fidget items; One for Fun is one of our top suppliers of sensory ranges and our customers love these products. Things like Squishmallows and Lego remain popular all year round and will see a spike during the Christmas season too as customers look for items they know will be well received.
By November, once we have transitioned to all our Christmas stock, we will also bring in Christmas-themed products such as Christmas cards and wrapping paper. These are essential items for the season and, as well as making for plenty of add on purchases, help to entice customers who will hopefully be inspired to do their gift shopping with us.
indie viewpoint
Golden opportunities
By the time you read this we will be well into the golden quarter. Trade throughout August and into September has been good, with the first half of September being very strong. The new Lego Dungeons & Dragons collectible Minifigures have been in very high demand - one of the best series we have ever had and a big contributor to the strong start to the month. Collectible items have made up a lot of our bestsellers over the last month, with MGA’s Miniverse still proving extremely popular, especially the Appliance series. Alongside this, Mini Brands from Zuru continues to perform well, with the new Garden series being the most successful collection. Continuing on the garden theme, the Lego Botanical Collection remains a bestseller; the new lower priced lines have sold very well, and we think this will be another winner in the run up to Christmas. We have also just had the Sylvanian Baking Baby Party series in, for which there is real pent-up demand - they are flying out.
We are keeping a very close eye on anything new to see how it performs, and we are quickly on the ball, reacting and re-ordering any lines that are selling. We are waiting a bit longer than we have in the past before we commit to any big orders – waiting to see actual sales. One line we are confident in is the Real FX Disney Stitch Puppet from Wow! Stuff. We had early stock that sold very well in July, so we know it’s going to be a big hit for Christmas. Otherwise, as the pre-Christmas marketing ramps up, we will see what we start to get asked for. If there is anything we haven’t got, we will look to order it.
Stitch has been one of our strongest licences over the last few years, even before the new movie was in the pipeline, and we stock a broad range of Stitch licensed items including plush, collectibles and craft lines, to name but a few. Character licensed merchandise does make up a huge part of our product offering in store – being in malls, people expect to see the major brands and characters. From Disney’s massive portfolio of licences, Disney Princesses is one of our most enduring successes, while we are also looking forward to Moana 2, which we think will generate lots of sales. Harry Potter is another successful licence for us. It is especially strong in Lego, and also in arts & craft lines, although sales of the dolls have been mildly disappointing. Barbie was an excellent brand for us last year with the movie and continues to sell well this year. Another up and coming brand for us is Numberblocks – this has translated into great sales in the pre-school department for us.
After a cold start to the month, September turned quite warm, but now the kids have gone back to school, Christmas is on many of our customers’ minds. They are shopping early to help spread the cost. We have tried to be a bit more cautious this year with orders, not necessarily committing to too many forward orders for later until we see how things sell through. After last Christmas, where trading was tough and we came out with quite a bit of stock, we would rather keep things a bit tighter this year.
When pretty much everything that we had booked in for September arrived in the space of a week, our warehouses filled up very quickly. In our stockrooms at least, it is definitely starting to feel a lot like Christmas!
