Having got through a tricky integration period after it acquired the RC2 business, Tomy is again firing on all cylinders and keen to show the trade just what it’s achieved since the beginning of the year. Samantha Loveday takes a trip down to Sutton to find out…
IT’S AMAZING what can happen in five months. Back in November 2011 when I visited Tomy’s Sutton HQ, the new-look sales and marketing team had just been revealed and the firm was in the middle of integrating the RC2 business following the acquisition earlier in the year – and some ambitious and confident statements were made.
Returning on a very wet day in April, head of European sales, Clive Wooster, and head of marketing, Joanne Gray are much sunnier as they excitedly talk of the progress which has been made. And, when I catch up with Gary Hunter a few days later, he is just as upbeat that Tomy has all the wheels in motion to be a successful player and have a good year. “It’s all looking pretty good,” he
says. “We’ve got some great listings coming through for autumn/winter, some good PR, our plan has been approved by the board and going forward they are 100 per cent behind us so it’s all up and away. Next year at Toy Fair we will be showing a lot of new product, which we’re already working on behind the scenes. We’re changing things, they’re looking good, and in 2013/2014 we expect to have a bumper number of new products coming through.”
And what of that bold statement
that Tomy is aiming to be the largest toy company worldwide by 2015? I can see Hunter smiling down the phone as I remind him of the ambitious line from the integration press release. “We’re number four now in the world and we believe that we can climb at least another one, if not two places in the next two years; we’re planning to grow across the world,” he says. “In some markets, just combining the Tomy and RC2 businesses has meant we’ve climbed the ladder significantly. In the UK, we want to be number two or three in the next few years.”
JUNE 2012
Gray (left) and Wooster are now looking to turn the goodwill they’ve had so far from retailers into solid business and results...
The trade is looking for us to deliver good products, at a good margin, that
sell well and are delivered on time. Clive Wooster, Tomy Europe
“WE’RE GOING FOR IT” There’s no denying that there have been a lot of internal changes at Tomy, but the message now is that the firm is definitely heading in the right direction. “We’re back on the map,” says Gray. “The focus now is about reassuring our customers we’ve got a plan, we’ve got a team and we’re going for it.” For the sales team, one of the big jobs was getting all of the separate
offices together. As well as the UK, the French, Spanish, German and Benelux offices are now all integrated as Tomy. The same exercise has been repeated in areas where the firm uses distributors, for example Italy, the Middle East, parts of Africa, Greece and the Nordics. “It’s been quite a big step to pull all of those things together,” says Wooster. “The work is in the detail.” In terms of the UK, there are now
four national account managers (two it turns out from both Tomy and Learning Curve), while there is also a specific nursery manager – something which is repeated for each territory – and an eight-strong field sales team. On top of this, there is a
distributor team which works across the other countries, and a head for the Gacha business. Wooster continues: “There has been a lot of goodwill, which we were delighted to see. Our message now is that we’re functional, we’re ready to go and we’ve now got to turn that goodwill into solid business and results. Some of the things we’ve done in terms of sales, we’ve got a lot more room for manoeuvre because the product range is wider and we