news
New appointments and senior management re- structure at Golden Bear
John Hales, chairman of Golden Bear, has announced a new senior member for the firm’s marketing team, and new positions and responsibilities in a higher management restructure. Barry Hughes, who joined Golden Bear as commercial
director in 2011, is to be promoted with immediate effect to the position of general manager. The new role will give Hughes the overall day to day responsibility of managing the business, reporting directly to John Hales. Christine Nicholls, co-founder of the business, will also change roles and is to become vice chairman, of Golden Bear retaining responsibility for design and product development. John Hales commented: “I believe the restructure of our senior roles will give the company added impetus to tackle the challenges that lie ahead and an economic situation that is difficult for the entire industry. In making these important changes and ensuring our senior staff concentrate their efforts on what they do best; our new structure will give the company the platform to achieve the major growth that we have planned for 2013 and beyond.” The new management structure has also seen the need for a further appointment and as such Kate O’Leary will join the company as marketing director. Kate has years of experience within sales and marketing, having most recently held the position of marketing and sales manager of Bostik and prior to this, marketing manager at baby feeding specialists Galpharm and Jackel International. With two pre-school children of her own, she looks forward to bringing her experience to the new role of being responsible for marketing, sales and customer services. Barry Hughes commented: “We are looking forward immensely to Kate starting with
Barry Hughes Christine Nicholls
us in January. She will bring a greater depth to the marketing experience of the company and is eager to meet our customers at Toy Fair. It is clear that Kate understands the needs, goals and challenges of our customer base in what is a fast-changing environment. With our new management structure, the on-going success of the licenses we introduced in 2012, the indication of great things to come for our new 2013 properties such as In the Night Garden plus the expansion into older range product, 2013 is promising to be a fantastic year for Golden Bear.”
GoldieBlox coming to the UK
GoldieBlox, the American manufacturer of engineering toys for girls, is actively searching for a UK-based distributor. Launched in September, GoldieBlox has been featured in over 100 publications, and the launch video has received almost 1 million views on YouTube. GoldieBlox is having its industry debut at the New York Toy Fair in February 2013. Goldie is the main character behind
GoldieBlox. The company recently released a book series and construction set following the adventures of Goldie, where she solves problems by building simple machines with her friends. As kids read along with the story, they build what Goldie builds using the pieces from the construction set. The first product, known as ‘book+toy’, is called GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine. The set comes complete with a storybook, five character figurines, and a construction set which includes one pegboard, five wheels, ten axles, five blocks, five washers, one crank and one ribbon. There is also an accompanying e-book, providing narration and animation to enhance the building experience. To find out more about GoldieBlox please contact Sydney Malawer by phone on +1 914 584 4239 or email
sydney@goldieblox.com.
18 Toyworld
www.toyworldmag.co.uk Newsanalysis:
It’s all enhanced Michael Hawkins, Editor of Toy Shop UK, spoke to Toy World about Toy Shop UK’s 2012, The Independent Toy Awards, and the new ‘Enhanced Supplier’ feature.
How’s 2012 been for you? 2012 has been great. Our visitor numbers have risen month-on- month and we’ve sent more visitors than ever before to the retailers that list themselves with us; we’ve currently got 924 independent retailers listed. Every time we think we’ve got all the retailers there could possibly be, we seem to get a flurry of new ones. We’ll almost certainly break through the 1000 mark in 2013.
Tell us about your weekly toy giveaways. These began as a bit of an accident really. We had a sample sent to us which we thought we’d give away, and the response was quite unexpected. We’re now getting anything from 2500-5000 entries per week, although our record came in the lead-up to Christmas with 7324 entries. Let’s just say that product required batteries.
What’s new for 2013? As well as continuing to support retailers, we’re really excited about the new ‘Enhanced Supplier’ feature that will see toy suppliers able to take advantage of a dramatically increased presence throughout our directory. We’re basically giving suppliers access to an ‘Admin Area’ that’ll enable them to take complete control of their listing and gear their Toy Shop UK profile towards consumers, the trade, or preferably both. Obviously website and social media links form part of the package, although we’ve built a raft of other features into the system such as product slideshows, recommended stockists, job vacancies and lots more. All information is optional and can be edited 24/7, plus we provide free support as a standard part of the package. There’s plenty more info here
www.toyshopuk.co.uk/enhanced/. Companies like Bigjigs, Coiledspring Games and Wilton Bradley are already on board, and all seem to be really pleased with their increased profile.
Your Independent Toy Awards seems to be particularly well received... Well, we hope so. People get so bored with all the awards don’t they, and we’ve made a conscious effort to try and put a unique angle on the way our winners are chosen. Our access to the views of so many independent toy retailers always results in a winners list that’s really quite different to anything else out there. It’s always a bit scruffy and eclectic, but we rather like that.
How have you evolved over the last 4 four years? We really feel that we’ve evolved into the definitive source of information for consumers and the trade looking to find toy shops, licences, manufacturers and suppliers. Our first presentation of the website to Ian Edmunds at Toymaster in 2009 gave us great encouragement to get to where we are today, and we’re still very much affiliated with the ethics and objectives of Toymaster.
@toyworldmag
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