European toy market shows growth
During the Brand Licensing exhibition, NPD’s industry analyst Frederique Tutt gave a fascinating insight into the current state of the toy market across Europe and how licensed toys are currently faring. Toy World brings you a round-up of some of the key points from her presentation.
divide beginning to open up. Ytd (up to August) the UK is up by 4%, whilst both France and Germany have posted impressive 8 % increases. By contrast, Italy is down 1% whilst Spain is down by 4%. Interestingly, a significant portion of this growth
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is coming from the older end of the market. The 6-7 year-old sector is 8% up, whilst the 8-9 sector has shown a massive 30% growth. Even the tricky 10-11 segment is up by 13%, perhaps indicating that the toy companies are gradually getting to grips with producing the kind of ranges which will keep older children purchasing toys that little bit longer. Category trends are largely common to all the key
territories; Building Sets are this year’s big winners, having grown by a whopping 22%. Dolls, Outdoor and Plush have also all posted healthy increases. The exception that proves the rule is the Action Figure sector; across the G5 countries it is showing 15% growth, whereas in the UK it has declined by 8%.
This decline in such an important category
has presumably had a significant impact on the performance of licensed toy sales as a whole in the UK, which has declined by 3 % so far this year. This stands in stark contrast to France and Germany, which are showing 13 % and 25 % growth respectively. Nevertheless, NPD concluded that licensing
still plays a pivotal role in the sale of toys, albeit that in NPD’s opinion, it is a segment increasingly dominated by major global / European players. Perhaps unsurprisingly NPD is predicting that Cars 2 will end up as the number one license across Europe in 2011. However it also noted that the market is changing , and that the studios are increasingly being challenged by a new generation of IP’s coming from toys or from the virtual world, such as Moshi Monsters.
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ccording to NPD, toy sales across the main five European territories – UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain – continue to hold up well, albeit with increasing signs of a North / South
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