retailinterview Crafty devils
Founded in 1995, Hobbycraft is one of the largest art and craft retailers in the UK, with 75 stores nationwide and over 35,000 products available. Toy World’s Tom Roberts spoke to James Heese, trading director at Hobbycraft, to find out more about the company’s plans for 2013 and the anticipated expansion to its Kids offering.
Can you tell me how the business got started? Hobbycraft was started by Warren Haskins of the Haskins group, a nursery and garden supplier in the South of England. Hobbycraft was bought by the investment group Bridgepoint in 2010. The first store opened in Dorset in 1995. In 2010 there were 50 stores, and now there are 75 stores across the UK, the newest being in Chingford, High Wycombe, Guise- ley and West Worthing. The last two years have seen significant investment from Bridgepoint, including a new executive team, a complete rebranding, 25 new stores, refurbishment of all stores, new distribution centres, and completely new IT systems.
Can you tell us about the expansion of Hobbycraft’s Kids offering? First of all, we’re not becoming a toy shop, we’re ex- panding our proposition and have created seven new themes in order to do this. The team, made up of six buyers and one head of buying, has been working flat out for the past seven months. First we have the ‘Create it’ section which contains components and loose bits for art and craft projects. Secondly we have the ‘Make it’ section which is made up of boxed kits, baking, knitting, etc. Next is the ‘Build it’ section which offers things like Meccano kits, jigsaws; those sorts of things. The ‘Picture it’ section offers painting sets, drawing sets, and Crayola will feature here, among others. ‘Showtime’ contains things like masks and face paints, and role-play ele- ments. The ‘Project Zone’ deals with school projects and other large endeavours. Finally we have ‘Science and Nature’, an area of expansion for us, which has kits from Interplay and Thames & Kosmos, among others, available.
The first phase of the expansion contains 500 new
products and expansion of our branded offering. You’ll also see a lot of products from Flair, Crayola and Play-Doh (its first time with us) making a debut in our stores.
How do you plan what to stock in this expansion? For the purpose of aiding the expansion, we have created two target groups and a persona to identify them. ‘Emma’ is a young mum buying for her kids. She looks at arts and crafts as a way of spending qual- ity activity time with her children. ‘Jean’ is an older lady who wants access to a haberdashery and loves crafting and creating. Our Kids offering is one of the biggest parts of the business, and appeals to ‘Emma’ as a mum, and ‘Jean’ as a grandmother. Over the last
42 Toyworld
seven months we’ve been transforming our proposi- tion to suit these two core customers, and week com- mencing the 13th May it all went live.
Sounds like an incredible expansion of your core offerings... It is; it’s very different to what we’ve done before. However, we want to make sure that we stay true to our core values while making what we offer more compelling. Once upon a time we were maybe too focused on components and niche crafting; now it feels like we’re opening up a lot more opportunities for suppliers and our customers alike. This is the reason I came into the business. There was a need to drive the product offering forward, and that’s what we’ve done. It’s going to be very notice- able.
You mentioned ‘phase one’ of the expansion is underway; what’s ‘phase two’? August will see a huge focus on our own-brand of- fering, Crafty Monkey. ‘Phase two’ is heavily focused on own brand, but I can’t reveal any specifics at this point. Christmas 2013 is also a major focus; there’s much more to come. The opportunity is here, and we’ve grabbed it with both hands.
And what about the website? How will that develop? The website is new, and reflects the new products on offer. It’s been massively redesigned with customer inspiration and ease-of-use at the centre of the over- haul. We will also be extending the ranges throughout 2013, which is a massive opportunity for suppliers to be involved.
Anything else we should look out for? 2013 will see the opening of four new stores, and hopefully in 2013 we will have 100 stores in total. That’s the plan. For Christmas we will be placing a lot of emphasis on customers gifting our offering; we anticipate being in a strong position on the run-up to the Christmas trading period.
Will you be doing any community outreach? All of our stores have links with the local children’s groups, such as the Scouts. The stores arrange craft events that happen in-store and invite all the kids to participate. Hobbycraft isn’t just paying lip service to community outreach, we’re actively doing it. For instance, when there’s a new store opening we usu- ally ask one of the local children’s groups, not a local celebrity, to do the official opening.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96