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INTERVIEW TOMY EUROPE 57
Tomy’s Raa Raa the Noisy Lion range is already getting a strong reaction from retail...
mark. These include licences such as Raa Raa the Noisy Lion, Winnie the Pooh and Chuggington, evergreen properties like Lamaze, Play to Learn and Aquadoodle, plus K’Nex which has more introductions across the key age focus. “We’re really excited about Raa
Raa,” Gray says. “We’re getting fantastic listings for spring and before anyone’s even seen any sales numbers they’re excited about it. The programming is rating really well and the characters just lend themselves so well to toys. We’ve got a really good gut feel that Raa Raa could be one of the few licences to actually start making a difference. We’ve got a pretty ambitious target in, but that could be blown out of the water if what we’re seeing already continues.”
CATEGORY GROWTH Another aim for Tomy Europe is to re-establish its key nursery business. “At Nuremberg, where the Tomy permanent booth was in hall 12, that’s just going to be dedicated to nursery and we’ll have a toy stand in hall four,” Gray explains. “The really
nice thing is that the RC2 nursery line is totally complementary; there’s absolutely no crossover. Tomy’s strength was in monitors and carriers, and the RC2 side was much more focused around the feeding and changing. We’re really going to be able to meet that everyday, middle and top-end – with the Boon range [which was acquired in August 2011] – with a really nice collection.” Hunter says that 75 per cent of
Tomy’s business is currently within the toy sector, with the remaining 25 per cent for nursery. However, there are plans to grow this. “The benefit to nursery is that it’s all year round – it’s not as seasonal as toy – so we hope to balance the business out,” he adds. The firm is also intending to grow its infant category so it is a greater percentage of its overall business. “We would hope that now we are an amalgamated company, we’ll be seen as something of a one-stop in- house shop,” Hunter says. “In most of the key European regions we have our own office or we deal exclusively with distributors, so we’re able to penetrate throughout most of the markets. We
have the benefit of a development team in Europe, the US and Japan and, from a licence point of view, we would hope that we’d get the choice of presenting for master toy as well as some of the other companies the licensors generally go to.”
Despite the integration, product
development hasn’t stopped, Gray explains, and she believes the firm will see growth in 2012. In addition, Tomy is currently working on about four global initiatives for 2013. All of a sudden, that statement to be the largest toy company worldwide by 2015 maybe isn’t quite so outlandish.
WHO’S WHO AT TOMY EUROPE
Gary Hunter, President of Tomy Europe and Managing Director of Tomy Australia
Clive Wooster, Head of European Sales – responsible for overseeing the regional offices in Germany, Benelux and Spain Lionel Delisle, General Sales Manager, Tomy France Joanne Gray, Head of European Marketing Antonia Rainbow, Head of Mother, Infant & Toddler Mark Ashurst, Head of Pre-school Ruth Williams, Head of Boys/Girls Morgan Weyl, Head of Gacha Emilia Lawes, Head of Farm & Agricultural (based in Exeter)
Marketing, Sales and Product Development are based at Tomy’s offices in Sutton, while Finance Operations and Customer Services will be located at RC2’s premises in Exeter. The Product Integrity department will be based in Totten.
FEBRUARY 2012
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