Ali Mafi 50 Fifty Gifts


So what exactly is the


right weather? There is no nation known to man that moans about the weather as much as the UK. It’s too cold, too wet, wrong types of leaves falling, snow too powdery, rain too heavy, etc. Basically, the power that be is allegedly doing all he can to make life difficult for retailers here. I am tickled to death by the fact that clothes retailers are clearing out their Summer clothes and re-stocking with woolly jumpers, coats and anoraks. It is nigh on impossible to strike up a conversation with anyone without the weather coming into it, and then there is the mad panic caused by a ray of sunshine. Almost the entire population of this country wakes up to a hot sunny day in a state of utter panic: “Oh my God;


must get some strawberries, we’ve run out of Pimms, better rush to the shops and get a barbecue.” You cannot buy strawberries, cream, Pimms, charcoal, barbecues, ice lollies or a cold drink neither for love nor money. I often wonder how you born-and-bred Brits cope living in Spain, Portugal or, worse still, places like Thailand and Singapore; life must be a constant moan. Then there is the mad exodus to Brighton or Bournemouth. I cannot think of anything worse sitting in hours of traffic, spending even more hours finding a parking space, and then trying to find a spot on the beach invaded by marauding kids getting burnt to a frazzle. I just love the image of the parents trying to cross the


road from the beach back to the car with three kids. The father has a lilo and a dinghy under one arm, three rubber rings under the other, while trying to manoeuvre a twin pushchair with burnt, screaming kids smothering their faces with chocolate ice-cream. The mother, red as a beetroot, is holding on to the other kids whilst carrying her handbag, a beach bag and a pile of towels. Does it sound like fun to you? Mothers with pushchairs always make me laugh; they try to cross a road from between two parked cars, and what they do is they first push the baby onto the road, and if the baby survives they follow. I guess it’s just survival instinct. We seem to be under the misguided belief that the economy is in the hands of the Government when, clearly, it is entirely dependent on the weather. The one good thing for the bearded gits who wear


socks with sandals is that they can cry from the top of every tower: “I told you; it’s global warming!” The fact that we were all freezing our privates off just two weeks ago becomes only a faded and distant memory. Also, will someone please explain to me exactly what is the right weather for our rail network? The heat has caused disruptions, snow brings it to a halt, and leaves create problems as they are often the wrong type...! I just love it when Ministers are dragged up in front of a microphone to try and explain why, as the world’s 5th richest nation, we cannot cope with any climatic conditions. “Oh” they say. “I can assure the listeners that we are doing all we can to keep traffic going, looking after the elderly, and I would like to point out how much worse things were during the heat wave of 2004 under New Labour.” Now my normal thing is to embark on a rant of ‘Ali advice’ as to how to cope, but I am, on this occasion, totally floored. So what do I suggest as a survival plan? Well, basically, shut your shop, get in your car and visit about ten supermarkets and obtain the following: punnets of strawberries, two bottles of Pimms, a crate of lemonade, two pounds of sausages, a bag of charcoal, a crate of lager, three family packs of Bird’s Eye burgers, a gallon of cream, and 24 ice lollies. Then go and sit in your garden, burn the meat to a carcinogenic state of cremation, get thoroughly pissed, and forget the suntan lotion so you can be in a similar condition to the sausages. And just be proud to be British. In other words, keep calm and suffer; it’s sunny for a change.


Adam


McCollough Toyday Toyshop


Brand protection or brand


monopolisation? Brand degradation is a real issue that has been highlighted recently, and companies need to protect their brand. It is being blamed on online retailers selling products in volume at ridiculously low margins, which in turn, causes other online retailers to enter into price wars. Their item is offered at a lower cost (which is encouraged by price comparison sites and highly competitive retailers such as Amazon), until the item is either sold at pennies above cost, or even at a loss, when taking seller fees and packing costs into consideration. Clearly this affects traditional bricks and mortar toy shops whether they sell online or not, it weakens the brand, and many suppliers are now taking action to try and avoid this happening. So it’s just another day at the office (well, back of the


shop, anyway) and I receive an email from Bigjigs Toys announcing that retailers are no longer allowed to sell their products on online shopping channels such as Amazon and eBay, and customers seen doing this would not be supplied by them. Initially, this appeared to be great news; this would surely put an end to the price


bidding wars on such channels, and shop sales would start booming. So we immediately removed all of our listings from Amazon, eBay and Play.com. We figured that although we would take a hit on the online sales through these major channels, at least we would no longer have to try to compete with near zero margins, and could focus on selling the popular Bigjigs Toys brand in our shops and our own website, and at full retail. Well done, and thank you Bigjigs Toys. However, a few weeks after the ‘cut off’ date, we


discovered that Bigjigs Toys were selling directly to consumers through the most popular online channels themselves! At this point I decided to address my concerns to Bigjigs, and here is their exact reply: “The problem we have had with people selling our


range on Amazon is brand degradation. Copy has been wrong, images wrong, brands’ names wrong, titles wrong, multiple listings etc. The portrayal of our brand has been very poor. Coupled with this we have had people listing at silly prices and damaging business on the high street for our shops. We have to protect those shops as they are the core of our business. Our range will still be on the site, but at full SRP and supplied by us.” Ok, so that seems like a fair reply. It’s nice to know that they would like to protect their core business, the high street retailers (us!). After all, 10 years ago, when Bigjigs Toys were practically unheard of by consumers, it’s us independent retailers that helped build the Bigjigs brand in the first place, so of course they would want to protect us.


What has happened is that Bigjigs has now become


a direct competitor to the very retailers they claim are the core of their business. At least other suppliers that have decided to sell directly to the consumers have chosen to sell under different names. I believe that this is a very bold decision made by Bigjigs Toys in order to


monopolise the online marketplace, at the expense of the core business that helped them to get where they are now. When asked directly if they would consider not selling on these internet channels themselves, the reply I received was:


“…I can understand your point of view about withdrawing completely from these sites and not selling ourselves, but this would be counter-productive. There are still people who are never going to go into store to buy a toy regardless, and it would be to our brand’s detriment if we were not to cater for those people on these sites…”


This comment confirmed to me that their motives


were not necessarily about protecting us retailers after all, but about maximising their own profits. Internet sales account for over 70% off our total turnover and I believe Bigjigs realised they were missing out on this market, and that they could easily wipe out all competition by refusing to supply them. If their products were not available at all on Amazon and eBay, then customers would search for the Bigjigs brand online, and find either the Bigjigs website, where they can purchase and have orders fulfilled through the shopatron network by retailers, or find retailers’ websites where they can purchase as usual. The only reason for refusing to allow sales by third parties on these channels, in my opinion, can be for Bigjigs to make more money. We all know that the high streets are not what they used to be, and many high street shops depend on an online presence in order to survive, so if Bigjigs Toys (and any other suppliers considering this same tactic) really do want to protect their core ‘business’, then please, I ask you on behalf of all us independent retailers to show that you really do care by withdrawing from selling on online marketplaces yourselves.


Toyworld 37


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