THE ENTERTAINER
Next, we speak to Duncan Grant, director of multichannel and Stuart Grant, buying director, about how the pair came to work for their father and how, in these ultra price-competitive times, the successful retailer is giving consumers a reason to shop with them, both on the High Street and online
So how has business been? Duncan Grant: It’s been good. We’ve been trading up and we’re ahead of budget, which is good. I think it's a difficult trading environment. You only have to look at the NPD data to see the trade is having a difficult Christmas. Stuart Grant: On top of that, the discounting and level of promotions is unprecedented. Every year we say it, and you think it can’t get any worse, but I genuinely think this year’s been pretty bad.
I think a lot of people will see a decline in margin and turnover. There are very few items that, if they’re not price promoted, are still selling. With things like Furby we’ll sell everything we can get. But there’s other key things in the industry that if you’re not price promoting, you’re not selling. So it is a tough environment.
How do you decide to what level you’re going to match or compete on price? Obviously you want to protect margins… Stuart:We tend to put together quite a robust plan for Christmas and tend to stick to our plan. A lot of the discounting out there is below cost selling. Bearing in mind we only
sell toys, we can’t match what a grocer is doing because they’re making money on the food footfall. Duncan: The important thing is that price is just one element of our formula. I don’t believe that in the long term you can run a successful retailer purely on price advantage, because someone will always be cheaper at some point, either now or in the future.
It doesn’t seem to be hurting you too much. The Entertainer is consistently trading up… Duncan: Well we’ve been working really hard. We’ve invested a huge amount of
64 February The Entertainer’s major focus is on creating an exciting and memorable shopping experience for both parents and children.
time and money in making sure that we’re doing the best we can possibly do and give the customer the best possible experience. We are trading up, but
we’re working twice as hard as we might have had to five years ago. We’ve got some great people around the business who are very good at what they do and they work incredibly hard, from the store managers to the training teams – every department of the business pulls together. Stuart: I think also we’re maturing quite a lot as a business. Our window displays and the store environment are light years ahead of where we were five years ago, so a lot of that is driving incremental growth for us. I think we’re becoming a High Street brand whereas maybe ten years ago we were perceived as a specialist toy shop, or a little independent. I think all of that is delivering growth. Duncan: The Entertainer of five years ago would not be being as successful as it is at the moment. It would be struggling, but we work harder January to October than we do in November and December, as far as a head office team, because we’ve only got ten months
a year to look at every area of the business and move it up a notch. So you have to have that continual drive to improve, because all the other retailers are doing the same thing – Amazon gets better every year. The grocers do different things every year. There’s always a threat.
We also aim to have a
fantastic multi-channel experience where you can order online and pick up in- store in 30 minutes. We aim to have great marketing, which really explains what we’ve got and what the brand means. Look at our locations.
We’re in shopping centres,
You can’t really separate the business from the family. It’s like another
member of the family, so we’d talk abut it over Sunday lunch.
So how do you do it better? What’s the formula? Duncan: The focus for us is not to go head-to-head against another retailer and try and be better than them. The focus for us is to create a formula which is unique, which sets us apart from other retailers. Number one is the range.
We want to have promotions which are better than other retailers; we aim to have products which other retailers haven’t found; we aim to have fantastic customer service and a really exciting store experience that is relaxing for parents or the toy buyer, but exciting for the child.
the High Street and community locations – which is different to the big box, out-of-town retailers and it’s different from the online only retailers and the grocers. So we’ve immediately set ourselves apart.
What are your first memories of your Dad’s shops? Stuart: My first memory was when Keepers were big. They were little snails, you undid their shells and you could keep things in them. They came and visited the store and I met them, and I remember being super excited that I’d met these characters. That was my first experience in
our Amersham shop. Duncan: My earliest memory probably wasn't of the stores. I can remember helping on the weekend to go and get stock from a warehouse, but not in the way you would think of it now, it was essentially a large lock-up where we would go to get stock ready for the weekend.
When did you first start working for the shops? Stuart: I think when I was six..
Duncan: Do you mean legally?[laughter] Stuart: Legally, I think we both ‘had to work,’ is probably the best way of putting it - we worked every single Christmas in the warehouse pricing up toys.
Duncan: Going back ten or fifteen years, one of the biggest jobs was pricing product because we used to do it with a little gun rather than doing the shelf all at once. We used to work in the pricing room for £2 an hour. Stuart: Good money in those days! Duncan: Yes, so that was probably the earliest time when we worked in the business. You can’t really separate the business from the family. It’s like another member of the family really, so we’d talk about it over Sunday lunch or in the evenings or whenever we got together as a family. It’s not really separate – although officially we weren’t on the payroll – we always knew what was going on. I joined full time in 2006. Stuart: I applied to university then deferred it for a year to travel, deferred it for another year and then I thought, ‘actually, I know this is what I want to do – why would I spend three years at University to do what I want to do anyway?’ Then I joined our web department and worked my way up.
www.toynews-online.biz
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