15 minute read
Talking Shop
Talking Shop Top of the shops
As summer draws to a close, indies reflect on sales during the summer holidays and look ahead to Christmas, as they start to put their Q4 plans into action.
Julie Logan - The Olive Branch, Castle Donington
he Olive Branch is a cosy shop located on the high street of Castle Donington, a small village on the outskirts of Derby that is rapidly expanding. We get plenty of tourists visiting for the summer to attend popular events at the Donington Park Circuit, which contributes to higher footfall during the summer period. Things like kites and skipping ropes are hugely popular summer products, and we also sell a lot of activity toys, including puzzles and games that parents buy to keep their children entertained throughout school holidays.
Orchard Toys is one of our top suppliers, and its range of Mini Travel Games and activity books sells well due to being travel-friendly products that can be taken on long car journeys or to holiday destinations. Galt Activity Packs are also popular; they come in compact packaging that is easy to carry and provide entertainment for children when travelling around. Plus-Plus has recently joined our product offering, quickly becoming a standout company for us; its range of construction tubes has been hugely popular as a travel-friendly toy that children can play with indoors or when they’re on the move. We held a demo day at the end of the school holidays to raise awareness of this great product and get children trying it out, which will hopefully boost sales even more in the run-up to Christmas.
I’ve also noticed high demand for pocket money toys and sensory toys with interesting textures. Crazy Aaron’s Thinking Putty, which we get from DKB Toys, is one of the sensory pocket money ranges that has been selling very well; with a wide selection of different designs to choose from, kids like the squishy feel and stretchy aspect. Additionally, Halilit’s Jellystone Designs Calm Down Bottles and Jellystone Designs chew necklaces have been highly popular this year for the youngest of children.
We’re a traditional toy shop catering mainly to children under five years old, and classic wooden toys, books, puzzles and plush make up a lot of our offering. Ravensburger is a favourite supplier, especially its range of puzzles featuring popular pre-school licences including Peppa Pig and Bluey; those always sell well. We stock plush toys to match some of the character-licensed books we have, and we strategically place licensed books and plush alongside each other to encourage customers to create their own bundles.
We started to take steps towards preparing for the run-up to Christmas in summer, as a lot of customers will soon begin thinking about Christmas and start shopping for presents months in advance. We’ve been changing our layout by removing bookcases from the shop floor and replacing them with flat wall shelving so that we can display more stock when we start the push for Christmas. We have been making use of our social media platforms to connect with our community, inform customers about what we’re doing and encourage them to shop with us; it’s especially important to be in their thoughts before they begin their Christmas purchases.
During the festive season, we will be offering additional services to our customers, including local delivery, gift wrapping and the possibility of storing gifts up until Christmas. We will also provide the option to pay in instalments; these are just some of the personal touches that people look for when they visit an independent shop. We’re always thinking about new and innovative ways to provide customers with a unique and outstanding experience.
The Toynamics’ Hape Baby Einstein musical range is very popular with our customers, I think it’s fantastic, and it always sells very well in the run-up to Christmas. Although our toy shop is traditional, we try to keep up with the trends and introduce new toys to provide a good mix between classic and fresh. Certain characterbased toys see very high sales, so we’ve increased our orders on licensed products, for example, The Gruffalo plush merchandise and puzzles, which we know will be popular from our book sales. We’re willing to come out of our comfort zone if we spot a real winner, such as The Real FX Stitch by Wow! Stuff, which we’ve recently added to our shelves. Interactive character-licensed toys is a first for us, but Stitch has been selling really well, and I can predict it will be a Christmas best-seller.
Karen Sasse - J&J Wilson Toymaster, Bude
J&J Wilson Toymaster is a large store situated in the heart of Bude’s town centre, attracting a high number of locals and tourists due to its central location. Our store boasts a wide variety of products; as well as toys, we stock greetings cards, stationery, sweets and drinks. Within the toy area, Lego occupies a large portion of our floor space and remains one of our strongest best-sellers, with sets including Speed Champions, Technic, Star Wars, Harry Potter and the Botanical Collection attracting a lot of kidult buyers especially. Lego Friends and City sets are also doing well, and the brand-new Lego lines that came out in the summer have been a great addition to our shelves. As always, this summer we have sold heaps of buckets and spades and other outdoor toys, including frisbees. We tend to do well with smaller outdoor toys due to being located 10 minutes from the beach; families like to stock up for their days out.
Spin Master’s Unicorn Academy range is performing very well following the release of the series’ second season, as kids love to channel their favourite characters from the hit Netflix show. Squishmallows plush continues to sell at a steady pace; there are so many characters for kids (and a few adults!) to choose from, with new ones coming out all the time. The Disney and Harry Potter Squishmallows ranges have been selling well, and we’ve also recently received The Lion King collection which we expect to be popular. Trading Card Games have slowed a little over the summer, but card games like the classic Uno and Uno Flip are selling brilliantly. We ordered 40 of the new Uno No Mercy, and it sold out within a couple of weeks, which had me restocking immediately – in quantities I wish I had increased, as it’s really popular.
In Arts & Crafts, Tomy’s Hey Clay has sold very well for us, as it’s excellent for developing the imagination of young children by allowing them to create their own clay characters. Epoch’s Aquabeads and Hasbro’s PlayDoh are also highly popular and regularly sell well – I think once children enjoy an activity like this, they want to do more, which drives repeat purchases.
Besides Lego, I tend not to pre-order other product ranges for Christmas too early, until we know how the summer season has gone and what stock we have left. But I’m always looking around to get ideas, before deciding which products to put on my shelves for the next big season – there’s always something that I’m sure will catch my customers’ eye.
Steve Weston - JJ Toys, Gerrards Cross
JJ Toys started with two shops based in North West London’s Golders Green and Edgware, and then expanded to several other branches. After 30 years in Gerrards Cross, we moved to bigger premises located in a busy area on the other side of town. We decided to make the most of the extra space and, besides our huge toy offering, started selling Gelato ice cream which has massively improved footfall. Moving to a bigger store has also enabled us to expand our Lego section to a full range of Lego sets. The Marvel collection has been selling particularly well, and the recently launched Lego Formula 1 series has also been a popular choice among customers, along with other F1 licensed toys. We’re currently experimenting with the layout of our store and have placed Lego Friends in a different section to see if sales will increase when sold on its own.
We’ve recently added Plus-Plus to our offering, and it has been brilliantly received. A table outside the store has Plus-Plus building blocks for children and parents to try out.
Epoch has recently provided us with new light boxes for Sylvanian Families and remerchandised part of our store. It looks great and I’m sure will attract more customers. Character Options has been performing well, and we’re looking forward to seeing how the brand-new Terror Fried range will go down. Plush is one of our leading categories, and more space has been allocated to brands such as Ty, which is a constant bestseller. Arts & Crafts beauty products, such as nail bars, and creative sets that encourage children to make things, such as Aquabeads by Epoch, have been in high demand, along with stationery such as coloured pencils.
When the weather has been good during the summer holidays, Outdoor Toys have sold very well, helped by the fact that our new premises are located close to green areas including Gerrards Cross Common. Reydon Sports’ team-branded merchandise featuring teams such as Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United has been very popular, alongside Nerf’s water blasters and cricket sets. Scooters not only sell well in the summer but are also popular at Christmas. We’re really looking forward to the Christmas period. Now that our new store boasts wider aisles, we can incorporate more FSDUs and add more bulk stack displays, which will help to attract customers. The new store is doublefronted, with two large windows at the front, and we’ll be making the most out of them during the Christmas season. We are currently in discussions with the council about their plans for the Christmas lights this year, as we aim to make JJ Toys a key attraction this festive season. Our partnerships with local schools mean Christmas is a huge opportunity for us to give back to the community.
I’m due to launch an eCommerce platform called Yipp-e, designed for independent toy shops to be able to provide additional services, such as click and collect, to their customers. JJ Toys will be the first independent toy business to come on board; we’re looking forward to seeing how customers will respond, and Christmas is the perfect time to try it out. We’re already placing orders, so we’ve got plenty of stock for the festive season.
Julie Murphy - Creaseys, Guernsey
Creaseys is a department store located in Guernsey’s High Street which is a popular destination for locals and tourists. There’s a toy department, plus a nursery shop and we also carry a range of children’s wear. We have seven employees who work part-time within the toy section.
Our current biggest seller is Lego. Although most Lego sets sell well, including Speed Champions, Lego Exclusive Sets are particularly popular amongst kidult shoppers, and we see high demand despite their higher price tag. The weather this year hasn’t seen summer products exactly boom, but we’ve been selling outdoor games from companies like Waboba, which recently released a new Mini Lacrosse Set which enables players to play lacrosse more freely in the water. In Pre-school, Fisher-Price is currently selling well, and sales of our Tomy range have picked up.
We also cover a wide selection of VTech Baby products which go down very well with customers, and our Arts & Crafts department includes products from companies like John Adams and James Galt. Brainstorm’s Eugy is a very strong seller for us, and we’ve recently brought in Maped Helix, as it offers good quality pens and pencils at a decent price. Plush brands always sell well, especially Ty, while Squishmallows just doesn’t seem to slow down due to the collectability aspect it offers.
By the time we reach the end of October, Christmas stock starts to build up. During the Christmas season, we ensure the popular toys for the year are in stock, and although a lot of our offering will be evergreen products and ranges that perform well throughout the rest of the year, we add ranges that we believe will do particularly well at this time of year, such as the Creative Café Barista Bar from Character Options. We also extend the range of licensed products that we think will excite our clientele, such as Paw Patrol products from the Rubble & Crew programme. We’ll make sure we have plenty of Hot Wheels and Barbie, as those always make popular Christmas gifts.
Last year, there was an increase in board game sales between Christmas and New Year, especially from classic games like Hasbro’s Twister, and we hope for a similar trend this year. We’re striving to provide a balance between classic and fresh products in this year’s Christmas offering, as we believe that having a mixture between new and evergreen is good for footfall, offering something for everyone.
Indie viewpoint
Our best pick up lines
It took a while, but we finally got some summer weather this year in time for the school holidays. This has been a great opportunity to clear out a lot of outdoor product, especially pools and inflatables, some of which have been in stock for a few years now. Now, we will go into next year clean, and won’t have to lug loads of heavy stock into storage for the winter. Sales in late July and early August were behind last year. However, to put this in perspective, anyone who has read our column over the last few years will know how much we like the rain in the school holidays; as we had a very wet July and August in 2023, we are up against some very strong figures. Overall, the volume has been good, with bestsellers including Minions, which has been well received due to the film release; Zuru My Mini Baby, which has also continued to sell very well and the new smaller Lego Botanicals collection - we could almost call ourselves a florist now!
The Pokemon Shrouded Fable special release has been extremely popular, and following on from the Euros, anything football related is flying out, including basic footballs, along with goals and accessories. We buy our footballs deflated, so we can purchase in quantity and ensure we never run out; we just inflate them instore. Another success story is the Moriah Elizabeth range from Character, while Aphmau has continued to sell well too after being launched last year. With the economic climate still being challenging, one area we are doing very well in is the pocket money category. As shoppers trade down, they still want something to keep the kids amused. We used to count pocket money products as anything under £2, but like everything, this has increased and now would say anything under £5 counts. There are classics that we stock all year round, but it’s becoming more of a trend driven category, where a new twist on an existing product can really take off. An example of this is Baofun squishy toys from Leftfield. These soft bao buns sold out in a week, and we have been back for more. Something else that’s on trend for later this year is Grabber Machines, and we have a mini version which is selling well. Our bestselling pocket money line so far this year has been the Light Up Push Popper game from One for Fun. Large squishy puffer balls sell like hot cakes, and we have these by our tills as impulse pick up lines. Anything slimy or putty-like remains very popular – Crazy Aaron’s putty remains a consistent best-seller for us.
Small collectibles is another of our most popular categories which has grown massively over the last few years. There is probably too much product in the market now, so where we would have tried to stock everything in the past to offer a really comprehensive range, we simply can’t cover everything anymore and have to be selective. We’ve found it pays to be cautious when it comes to new ranges and will keep stock tight at first, until we have some sales records. Zuru is one of our biggest suppliers of collectibles, leading the way in the micro trend. Mini Brands has been popular for a while now and is branching out into new areas such as the Mini Brands Garden and the Netflix collection, which are starting to sell well, joining the Mini Brands books which have had a great first half of the year. MGA’s Miniverse has also been in high demand, and we’re looking forward to the licensed additions, such as Harry Potter, coming out this autumn. We’re expecting the trend for affordable lines to continue right through the year.
