In association with...
Vernon Franklin
Pamela Beckett
owner, Frosts Toymaster, Dorset We’ve been in business for about 55 years now; my mother and father started the business, and after working a year at Curry’s I came to work for them when I was 18. We’ve not had the best Summer, being on the coast; I think the mainland shops have fared a lot better, but we’re on par with last year. We’ve done well on all the usual Summer toys, and things like paddling pools. We’re not actually moving things around for
owner, Honiton Toy Shop, Devon Twenty-eight years ago my husband and I were looking to set up a business; I had been in catering and wanted to get out, and then we saw the toy shop and thought that it would be a fun new venture. My husband is a big kid at heart and loved playing with the toys, and now my son is working for me and he’s a big kid, too. And we’ve just expanded from there. Our Papo and Schleich figures have been doing
very well, and the Lego figures are always popular. Some of the high profile lines that we stock include Playmobil, Meccano, Fisher-Price, Tomy, Hornby and Sylvanian Families; we do enough to bring the kids in. We don’t really have any one thing that sells more than anything else; we’re more of a traditional toy shop, so we sell a little bit of everything. We’re taking our Summer stock off to make room for the Christmas products, and we’ve been doing really well on our pocket money lines, especially on punch bag balloons, water balloons, latex balloons, balls, bubbles, and modelling balloons; one of our members of staff can make balloon animals, so when it’s quiet if a child comes in they’ll make them a cat or dog, or a sword for the boys. We do some character licensed items like Doc
McStuffins and Thomas the Tank, but we don’t go overboard on each category; just one or two items like one soft toy and one hard toy.
Christmas; we keep some of our Summer stock out on display, as we find they tend to sell all year – people will buy things like cricket sets as Christmas presents. It’s very difficult to say what I think will do well
this year, as there’s not one stand-out product at the moment, although larger toys, wheeled toys and prams do well for us. Character-licensed products bring in the customers, and then they might buy something else; but if you don’t stock the licences you won’t get the flow of people Our sales of pocket money toys are very good; we do well on the general ranges
from Tobar and Playwrite. We also do the lucky dips with local schools, so all the children get a Christmas present when they leave.
Kevin Smith
owner, Bailie Stores, Co Cavan It’s been a rollercoaster of ups and downs over the months, but we’re probably on par with last year. We’ve been selling a lot of farming-related products from Siku, Bruder and Britains on the boys’ side. For girls, I would say that our best seller is Top Model. We are indeed changing the store around. We get higher price point items in at
centre stage, and things like bikes and Berg do really well for us; for girls we do well on dolls houses and kitchens. We sell a lot more of the bigger ticket items in those two months than we would in the other 10 months of the year. Character-licensed products aren’t very important for us; we do carry some licensed products, and Doc McStuffins has been big this year, but we find it hard to compete with the larger stores. Our pocket money lines tick over all through the year, although our stand-out range this Summer has been the Alien Eggs from Grossman; it doesn’t matter which kind of egg we put out, it just walks off the shelf.
56 Toyworld
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