THE BIG INTERVIEW Gray matters
Jumbo Games has enjoyed a strong 2013, reaping the benefits of the surge in popularity in the games and puzzles sector with its Wasgij line, plus launching Soccer Suckers and a number of other new concepts. Samantha Loveday chats to MD Gray Richmond about the firm’s year and what else is still to come
How has 2013 been for Jumbo Games? This year I guess the best part for us has been our puzzle performance. It’s been really good, particularly in adult puzzles which have performed really well. Listings are really strong
– we’re in more places than we’ve ever been. I don’t think there’s a national that we’re not in at the moment. We have a really good
presence right across, and where we were probably a bit weaker on licences last year, we are a lot stronger now.
Can you talk through some of your key successes? We’ve launched some brand new concepts for Wasgij, including the What If? puzzle and the Collector’s Box, which launched in Argos back in January and is our top selling Wasgij sku despite being at a higher £19.99 price point. It’s everywhere now and doing really well. We had two very strong licences – Fireman Sam and Peppa Pig– but we’ve taken on some really good new ones. There have been some little surprises; Batman for example is one of our top selling puzzles in quite a few of our retailers. Something Specialis a licence I’ve wanted probably since my son was about two – when it became available we jumped at the chance and it’s been brilliant. We’ve also just signed Q
Pootleand Strange Hill High, and there are more licence signings for children’s and adult products to be announced. We’ve also introduced a lot of new concepts as well. For example, we’ve brought out bath puzzles in Peppa Pigand Little Mermaiddesigns and they’ve been brilliant.
www.toynews–
online.biz November 25 You can puzzle them on
the water or stick them to your bath or tiles. It’s gone straight to number one in our Peppa lines because it is different and they do work really well. We’ll be expanding this with new licences as it has done so well. We also wanted to
improve our packaging – puzzles tend to be a box and lid, but kids like to have something else. We launched our Secrets Box, so puzzles can be taken out and then the box used for storing other things.
Where do you see further growth coming from for Jumbo? We are really excited about Soccer Suckers, which we have launched now. This line, we have never had such a wide distribution on anything within Jumbo. We have more depth of
distribution – we are going into much bigger store distribution than we usually do with games and puzzles, and it is very encouraging.
What kind of marketing plans are you putting behind Soccer Suckers? We are doing a lot of sampling to get it into boys’ hands. You can do a lot of advertising to the parents, but fundamentally the kids have to really like it. We are working with Box of Awesome, plus little
league football clubs and we are doing a national print sampling as well – with The Daily Starand WH Smith. We’ve launched with 40
players, but it has to be kept fresh so we’re looking at new clubs and players. Exclusive players can be collected with a redeemable coupon in The Daily Star, and then they will be added to the range later on. The promotion starts on November 2nd, and will be promoted that week on TV.
How about your ‘appcessories’ products – how are they performing? Puzzle accessories is
them in Carphone Warehouse last year and things like that, so it’s in that kind of arena. It’s getting us into
different markets – and I think people in that department are looking for things for their iPads and Android tablets. Most of the iPieces range is now available to use on Android, which is huge for us. Other app accessories
I’ve seen are very much solo play, but iPieces allow people to play together. It’s about getting people around the tablet to play together. Finding a way with iPieces of still keeping that
With Soccer Suckers, we have never had such a wide distribution on anything within Jumbo.
massive for us going into Christmas; they make really good presents and we see a massive upturn in December and then into January.
iPieces has just gone into the tech department in Tesco, almost the whole range which is good, and we’re also now selling our Peppa licensed version on Easyjet. It seems to be more of a tech-focused success. In general toys they don’t do as well, but we had
social element and incorporating it into technology was big for us. Every product we’ve launched has been multiplayer.
What can we expect to see from Jumbo for the remainder of 2013 and into 2014? For the rest of the year, it’s really driving Wasgij – it’s the number one adult puzzle brand, but it’s got a lot more about it than any other thing and it’s
going into new distribution all the time. We’re seeing rates of sales improving; where we increase the breadth of the range, we see that increasing the sales rather than taking it from other ones.
That’s a big, big focus
for us and that will continue into next year and a lot of our marketing budget will go towards Wasgij next year. In kids’ puzzles, we didn’t
have as strong a year as we would have liked last year, so there’s a lot for us to go at this year as well. We will continue to look
for opportunities outside our core categories, while appcessories will still be an important brand for us going forward. We will support it next year and hopefully develop new products.
What would you most like to have achieved by the end of this year? The big thing for us is really to re-establish growth in kids’ puzzles and then also strengthen our position as number one in adult puzzles. Thirdly, if we can get Soccer Suckers going it could be huge for us in years to come. Those are the three aims. Our biggest opportunity lies in puzzles. If we see good growth in puzzles then I’ll be a happy man.
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