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shoptalking Baby it’s cold outside
Toy World’s Kayleigh Conway speaks to independent retailers about the hot topics of the month. This month, our experts tell Kayleigh how their businesses fared over the prolonged Winter spell, what they are looking forward to seeing at the Toymaster Show, and which of their Girls Collectables are selling well.
Ginette McGee In terms of collectables for girls, Moshi
owner, Toytown Seaford As well as owning a large independent toy shop in Sussex, we also own an independent opticians. The shop opened in April 2009, and the decision was made over a few beers, and also realising there was a good opportunity to fill the need for a toy shop in our local area. We’ve done very well, and never anticipated that we would do so much business. In our first year we predicted that we’d turn over around £80,000, but we ended up doing £220,000. This allowed us to expand our offering and also the shop into the building next door. We are now the biggest toy shop in Sussex. Our offering in Girls Toys is pretty large.
We stock a very limited amount of Barbie, because it’s hard to get a hold of, but it does well. La Dee Da Dolls do better than we expected at the slightly higher price point. The Lalaloopsy Dolls are a big hit with the local collectors, as is Monster High that we literally have to run a waiting list on because the demand is so great. Disney Fairies tick over nicely at a very good price point. Disney Princess doesn’t do so well, but being a younger property that might be the reason why. Steffi Dolls are also incredibly popular, again largely down to the agreeable price points on them.
does very well, especially the five-pack collectables, and Lego Friends and Lego Minifigures also go down well.. Our remote control offering is very limited
and we tend only to stock them around Christmas. It’s not just the price points that dictate this, but also the fact that we have a specialist retailer of remote control products nearby; we can’t compete with their offering. When we do stock RC, we focus on Nikko and Air Hogs, because they offer good products at good prices. With die cast toys we stock a lot of the
Simba Majorette vehicles. We also stock Corgi, Matchbox and Hot Wheels. With Corgi we find that the five packs and playmats sell best. With Matchbox and Hot Wheels we always do well but, like Barbie, it’s very hard to get a hold of. We find that die cast is bought more by parents wanting to buy something that lasts for their children, whereas for party purchases people buy the bigger boxes of plastic vehicles. We also used to stock Scalextric products, but after people kept coming in with print outs from Amazon, just to compare the prices, we stopped. This happened all across Christmas last year, and it’s very annoying. Online and supermarkets are the big threats to us independents right now; online because of the aforementioned price matching, and supermarkets because of
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their sales and impulse purchases alongside the weekly shop. We probably won’t attend Toymaster, but
we did go to AIS. It was our first time, and it went very well; I placed some orders, opened some new accounts, and I’m in the process of applying for membership. I’ve done an awful lot of fairs this year, including Toy Fair, Spring Fair, AIS, and the Wool Show because I’ve just opened a wool section in the shop.
* Actual game footage
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