retailinterview a growing offering
Cara Dennison, toy buyer (Girls, Pre-school and Halloween) at Morrisons, spoke to Toy World’s Tom Roberts about her role in the business.
How did you get into toy buying? I did a degree in management before joining Morrisons and working in the marketing department. I worked in that department for a year before I approached one of the senior buyers expressing an interest in moving into a buying role. There was a gap for a new buying assistant, which I applied and interviewed for, but I ended up getting a job as trainee buyer on DVDs. I worked in DVDs for about ten months before being promoted to buyer, and then moved to buying Girls toys in August of last year. It’s very different buying toys than DVDs, mainly
down to the lead times on the availability of products. Where the lead time for a DVD to appear in stores is around four weeks, for toys we have a 52-week critical path.
How important are toys to Morrisons in the battle against the other majors for market share? Toys are a relatively new offering for Morrisons’ stores, having only been available for the last four years or so. The business looks at toys as a way to attract the ‘family buyer’ who will make an impulse purchase. We’re never going to be a destination for people to specifically come and buy toys from, but we’re not going to miss out on the chance to make impulse sales.
How does the buying team get feedback on their buying decisions from the consumers? Morrisons does an awful lot of exit surveys, and some of those do relate to the non-food stock, so we get a lot of important information from those. We also speak directly to the customers in stores, and we make sure to keep in constant contact with store managers. Sometimes store managers will come to us with tips of what toy products they are getting asked for by customers specifically so we can buy them into their stores. It’s important for us to have our ears to the ground
so we can anticipate any must-haves, and social network interaction on Twitter and Facebook is also just as important in doing that. We receive a lot of feedback, both positive and negative, and that’s extremely useful.
Which toy categories are performing best at the moment? Honestly, all the categories of toys we stock are performing very well. We have just enjoyed a very successful Autumn/Winter off the back of a range of licensed and tertiary branded £10 big box items. We have two-for-£8 bays and party-pick-up bays, which are aimed specifically at parents looking for presents for kids’ parties; we want people to come in and get all the things they need for a party in one place.
22 Toyworld In some stores we also have Lego-specific bays,
with Duplo doing exceptionally well within this; if you ask me, the content and value for money for Duplo has improved dramatically as of late, which has contributed to this success. The Girls category is very buoyant for us right now, mainly down to Moshi Monsters and Monster High. We have strong performers across our own-label
Pre-school offering, 100% of which is sourced directly from the Far East.
Would you agree that Girls toys are becoming just as strong a category as Boys? Girls is certainly getting stronger, but for us Boys is still performing better at present.
And what about your licensed toy offerings? Moshi and Monster High are performing phenomenally well; customers really trust the licences. In licensed Pre-school, evergreens such as Thomas
and Peppa are performing well, as you would expect. Strangely, some of the newer licences have struggled slightly.
What does the future hold for toys at Morrisons? The challenge for us is to our increase our store base; we’re already incredibly happy with our core toy offerings. We want to consolidate what we’ve achieved with toys over the past four years. As Morrisons expands, we may lose space in some stores and increase it in others; though overall our toy offering will grow as part of Morrisons’ future plans.
Cara Dennison toy buyer
"The business looks at toys as a way to attract the ‘family buyer’ who will make an impulse purchase."
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