14 minute read
Talking Shop
Talking Shop Retail detail
Indie toy shops from around the UK tell Toy World what’s selling and what they are looking forward to in the run up to Q4.
Liz Amphlett - Toytastik, Chepstow
This summer we have seen a slight decline in sales from last year but nothing too significant. I feel very fortunate to be in this industry because people will always buy toys – they won’t ever miss a child’s birthday, for example. Even if the financial climate is gloomy, parents try to protect their children from it as much as they can. They are however buying more carefully, and some are buying less.
I think this is the time for independents to shine. The high street is having a tough time at the moment, and we’ve seen Wilko go down recently, but as for small independents, we’re doing okay. I think local high streets are evolving (in towns at least) and there’s a place for us in them, while the big companies fit into the retail landscape of cities. We are proud to be part of the local community and support local events by donating raffle prizes.
As Chepstow is a bit of a tourist destination, but isn’t by the coast, when the weather is bad it actually benefits us during the summer holidays. When the sun is shining, people want to be in their gardens or go to the park, but when it rains, we get an influx of parents buying things to keep their children occupied indoors. They’ll typically buy things like colouring books, jigsaws and games or activities which can keep kids busy.
We have a demonstration area in store where we can show customers how to use products and how a game is played. We know our products inside out, which is something we really pride ourselves on. We get people asking us questions all the time and we can direct people to the right products for their needs.
Our best-seller in the Collectibles and Pocket Money category by far is Eugy from Brainstorm. It is our most popular collectible by a country mile and people come in weekly, both children and adults, to buy a new animal. We have quite a broad collection of Eugy with which you can build your own 3D card model. The beauty of them is that as well as being fun to make, the finished product really is visually attractive, so you can keep them on your shelf. Both young people and adults enjoy them. We also like to stock environmentally friendly products and this range ticks that box.
We do well with Mojo too, which is similar to Eugy in that you build your own animal, but these become plastic models. Other strong pocketmoney sellers are stress balls and the smaller Rex London products.
We are a very traditional toy shop and are always on the lookout for things you won’t find in the big chain stores. Although we mainly work with smaller brands, we have successful relationships with companies such as Melissa and Doug and Big Potato Games.
Looking towards Christmas, we will be attending Autumn Fair to visit the suppliers we already work with, which we have great relationships with, and have a look around for anything that we think would work in our shop. We have already started to place orders for bigger, higher ticket items which we stock at Christmas such as Janod kitchens, wooden dollhouses and Sylvanian Families products.
Andrew Garthwaite - Rexys Reviews, The Dino Den, South Shields
Our bricks & mortar, dinosaur themed store has been running for 18 months, and grew out of our online and events business which launched around two years ago. It all stemmed from a mid-Covid YouTube channel on which I was reviewing and discussing my personal Jurassic Park toy and merchandise collection (hence the name). We then started going to Comic Cons and other events with one of our vehicles, which is done up to look like a car from the movie, and from there the opening of the shop felt like a natural progression.
South Shields is a Blue Flag seaside town, and we’re located in a former pub just outside the town centre. Summer brings in plenty of holidayers visiting the area, but we also say goodbye to some of our regular weekly customers while they go on their own holidays.
It's fair to say we faced a lot of scepticism when we first started setting up the shop. When we began seeking product, we went to London Toy Fair. Walking onto stands, saying we were after nothing but dinosaurs, raised more than a few eyebrows. When we opened, although customers absolutely loved the shop, I think they all assumed it would be nothing but a pop-up store. Yet here we are, a year and a half later and going strong. We’ve got a loyal and hugely enthusiastic customer base, with loads of regular repeat shoppers. We’ve also become something of a tourist destination, meaning people travel from quite far outside the area to visit us. To my knowledge, ours is the only 100% standalone dinosaur-
specific shop of its kind within the UK.
The interest in dinosaurs and the demand for dinosaur toys will never become extinct. In fact, advances in science and what we know about dinosaurs, thanks to new palaeontology techniques and fossil discoveries, mean the category is actually always evolving and there’s the opportunity for companies to keep bringing out new products year after year. We sell a huge range of toys, from tiny 20p pocket money pick-up lines to big collector pieces costing £1,500 and up. Of course, the average basket spend is reasonably modest, at around the £20-30 mark, but we do have customers that will come in every few months and drop £600 or so on the latest kidult collectibles.
Our biggest supplier is obviously Mattel, being the master toy partner for the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World franchises. We also stock a really good range of Lego sets, the Playmobil Dino collection, collectibles from The Noble Collection, the Hasbro Power Rangers Dino range and much more. The fantastic thing is that there is so much cross-over between core toy brands/ properties and dinosaurs: Thomas the Tank Engine has enjoyed a number of dinosaur-themed adventures, as have the pups from Paw Patrol. If it’s got dinosaurs in it or on it, we’ll stock it. Maybe some of your readers have a dinosaur range they think we’d like? If so, they’re welcome to get in touch.
Dinosaurs is a favourite topic of interest among members of the neurodiverse community, so we’ve tried to create a shop that is as welcoming and friendly as possible irrespective of gender, disability, ethnicity and age. We take a retail 2.0 approach which places our customers and their interests first. Our main goal is for our shoppers to have an amazing experience – a sale is a nice added extra. We’ve got fossil dig tables set up, colouring activities, props and scenes from the Jurassic Park movies where kids can take pictures. We’ve even got an assortment of games consoles set up in-store with games from across the decades. These are free to play (in fact, all our activities are free). Grownups love the retro consoles such as Nintendo and younger kids love the newer ones. We don’t mind if you just want to pop in and play a game for an hour or so. Everyone, absolutely everyone, is welcome.
We’re starting to think about Christmas now, which will be our second since we opened the store. We’re feeling pretty positive about the festive period. Shoppers are perhaps more cautious now than they have been in years gone by, because of the cost of living crisis, but they’ve still got money to spend, and a shop like ours is the perfect destination for anyone with a dinosaur-obsessed child (or adult) in their life. We’re very much expecting Mattel’s new premium Hammond Collection to be among our best-sellers. It’s raised the bar in terms of affordable and accessible dinosaur figures, and with 2023 being the 30th anniversary of the original Jurassic Park movie, we expect there will be a lot of nostalgia-fuelled purchases this year.
Brendan Will - Will’s Toy Shop, Aberdeen
Business has been good so far this year. We’re actually slightly ahead of 2022 on a year-onyear basis, which is nice. We performed so well over lockdown that the years since have seen us take a bit of a dip, but we seem to be climbing out of it this year and we’re really pleased. Because we have a Post Office in our store, we’ve noticed that fewer people seem to be going abroad for their holidays this year. We’re exchanging less currency and we’re down on currency sales overall versus last year. This might be why we’re having such a good year – because people are staying in the UK or holidaying at home. We’re not on a tourist route up here or in a hightraffic area, but even with the poorer summer weather, our toy business is good.
We do well with the Collectibles category. Aphmau MeeMeows and Lankybox Mystery Squishies, both from Character Options, sit at the pocket money end of the price spectrum and are proving popular, though we could do with another real craze like we had with fidget spinners. Pokémon is also big for us, as is Squishmallows. We have customers coming in again and again with their lists, trying to find the ones they want.
Up here in Aberdeen, the best of the weather usually arrives before the kids have broken up from school for the summer: it’s sunny and warm in June, the kids get let out, and then the rain arrives. It’s practically guaranteed that it’ll be nice again once they go back in September. It’s been very up and down here, and so have sales of our usual outdoor toys, but Gazillion Bubbles from Funrise is a consistent best-seller no matter the weather. They absolutely fly out on a sunny day.
Big news for us this year is that it’s our 125th anniversary. We’re not sure on the exact date – we just know it’s around harvest time – but after so many generations, we can perhaps be forgiven for losing track and opting to celebrate in the slightly vaguer ‘month of September’. We’re running competitions as well as instore events at the weekends: on Sundays, when we don’t have the Post Office traffic to contend with, we can do more in the shop on the toy side of things.
A lot of folk in the local area know that Will’s is old, but they’re still pretty shocked when you tell them it’s 125 years old. It’s quite unusual these days for an indie retailer to have that much heritage and I do feel the responsibility. We’re the oldest store in our area by probably 100 years or so and we’re very proud of that. Will’s has survived by evolving and adapting. Back when it first started up in 1898, we were plumbers and bell-hangers: we fitted those bell boards at big country houses for families with servants (think Downtown Abbey). We got into toys into the late 70s/early 80s, but even that in itself is a decent amount of time to be a toy retailer.
With Christmas on the horizon, we’re engaging in some new tactics to ensure the shop is front of mind with consumers. This year we’ve done some radio advertising on local stations, and it’s been very successful. We’ve had quite a few customers come in and tell us they decided to visit because they heard our ad, even folk from out as far as Elgin. They’ve gone out of their way to visit us – you don’t pass our store by accident.
In terms of best-sellers, we do well with wargaming figures, and I think Pokémon TCG: Scarlet & Violet 3.5: 151 – Booster Bundle will be really popular too. In fact, Pokémon is so big for us that we’re going through the process of becoming an official Play Store, which would mean we could run leagues for the local collectors and players. We want to encourage more people to actually play the Pokémon Trading Card Game rather than just buying the cards and chucking them in a drawer. We’ve done a few play and trade events, which have been popular, but the next step is to get official Play Store certification. It’s just another way we’re staying up to date and continuing to cater to customers’ needs, even after all these years.
indie viewpoint
Can you feel it?
As we write this, it’s the middle of the summer holidays. Although the summer has been a bit of a washout, it doesn’t seem to have hurt sales too much. In fact, with Toy Barnhaus stores located in malls, we like wet weather as it always brings customers in. Last year we did very well during the heatwave though, and we were unsure how sales would stack up against those figures. But we’ve had a strong July, and the first half of August has been solid so far.
We have definitely benefitted from the slate of big movie releases over the last month. Barbie started selling well before the movie came out and is showing little sign of slowing down; we anticipate the brand remaining strong for the rest of the year. The new TMNT Turtles film has also translated into excellent sales of the action figures.
Some of the new Lego lines for August have been well received, including the new Star Wars 332nd Ahsoka's Clone Trooper Battle Pack, which is always popular with people building their armies of figures. Another line that has been flying is the classic Hot Wheels single cars. These are always among our bestsellers, but sales have increased by over 50% this year. We also concur with what John said in one of his recent blogs, and that is that Loom Bands are most definitely back. We have been stocking a case of them from Zappies for a few months now, and it is always in our bestsellers.
Pocket money is a huge category for us; it’s one that independent retailers can do really well on if they keep on top of it. Other than Loom Bands, there hasn’t been a strong craze in this area since Push Poppers a couple of years ago, but anything that is tactile, fidgety or ASMR is very popular, as people like to have things to play with using their hands. We have been very pleased with sales from the relaunch of Crazy Aaron’s Thinking Putty, it plays into that trend perfectly. Slime Party products have also proved to be popular, with the new flavours and improved tins with accessories selling well.
It’s fair to say that affordably priced items are making up a large part of sales. One new item that we think will do well this year is Gootoobz from Character, which continues the sensory trend. We sell a lot of plush jelly squeezy characters from Kandy toys, and similar lines. One for Fun’s Light up Suction Caterpillar is another winner. New this year, it’s a cross between a push popper and a squeezy caterpillar and is in great demand. We try to add new lines every couple of months, as it keeps customers coming back for something new to play with. As well as the new lines, retro pocket money toys remain evergreen sellers, so we always have a good selection in stock; classics such as yo-yos, jingle sticks and juggling balls. This includes our bestseller every Christmas: the Whoopee Cushion. Pardon us.
