Kirit Patel
owner, Cuthberts Toys, Hertfordshire It’s hard to tell how business is faring at this time of year; right now we’re doing well on sub- £10 gifts for birthdays, as well as science and educational lines. There’s slight more interest in The Lego Movie now so we’re expecting that to build. Rainbow Loom and Cra-Z-Loom, and Lite Brix are all doing very well. We were really happy to be recognised for the Specialist Multiple Toy Retailer of the Year (up to 5 stores) Award – at the end of the day it was a team effort. Our team is very focused on policy training and customer service and the people we work with work hard to identify what our customers require and assist them, which has really paid off for our business. Our greatest challenge is getting customers through the door, and to make them want to come to us we run in-store promotions and activities, and we use social media for brand awareness and to create a personality that people remember us for. After that, it’s up to them if they want to come to the store. We have open tables for Brio and Bigjigs and run events like Plasticine days; events where the key focus is not on selling but where the team has the chance to chat to parents and children. Our store format has fewer aisles so that everything is more spaced out to create a more visually appealing look. We want to make the in-store experience easy with fewer queues and less clutter, and offer products that people can’t find online. We are also constantly changing the store around as we have some repeat customers who come in on a weekly to monthly basis, so we change our windows every two weeks and often change the store layout and displays, to keep it fresh and highlight ranges customers may have missed.
If you would like to get involved with next month’s Talking Shop, please get in touch with Kayleigh:
01442 840 306, @KayleighConners
kayleigh@toyworldmag.co.uk
Mark Buschhaus and Stephen Barnes, Toy Barnhaus
The independent voice...
viewpoint Indie
There’s no season like show season H
ello all, can someone tell us where the last couple of months have gone? As we write this it is early February and we have just fi nished our last
toy preview. Over the last four weeks we enjoyed the Toy Fair at Olympia, fl ew out to Nuremberg, fl ew back from Nuremberg, had a quick relay race around the NEC, and fi nished with a full preview at Mattel. With Stephen
typing away now, and Mark yawning, we thought it would be a good chance to look back as we both feel quite excited about the products for the coming year. Starting with Olympia, it was a really enjoyable few days with a very tight schedule of appointments. More so than ever we were time pressured and did not get to see everyone we would have liked to. As predicted, Character and Vivid served up great lunches, with a mean cup of tea coming out of Bandai, and some great cakes served at John Adams. With the priorities sorted we were in the mood to look at some toys. Probably the strongest line-up, in our opinion, was Character Options, with their Palm Pals looking like a novel electronic pet, the Sky Dancer Starfl y seems like a great item at a great price, and the company’s Wikibear could be a real winner at Christmas. John Adams had several great family games for the back end of the year that revealed the competitive side in us when we played them. The Lego ranges look very strong with the Simpsons Mini Figures and a lot stronger range of Star Wars being the highlight. In between all the product viewing, we did have time to go to the BTHA awards, which were held at the Science Museum. This was a defi nite improvement in venue over last year; we had never stood eating, drinking and networking under World War I planes before. We were about the last to be kicked out at 11pm. It was a great evening, well done to the BTHA. Hot on the heels of Olympia, we headed out to Germany for our fi rst Nuremberg Toy Fair. The one thing everyone had told us was that it is large, but we don’t think anything prepared us for quite how big. After going through 15 halls (and walking about 10 miles) we defi nitely needed to refuel ourselves. You will not be surprised to learn that we took rather a liking to German sausages, which certainly lived up to their reputation. If you have never been there before it is defi nitely worth going, as it is an experience in itself for the sheer number of toys available, and we did pick up a few great new products. We touched down on Monday and then sailed up to Spring Fair on the Wednesday for a quick whistle-stop tour. With a Wetherspoons bacon roll in hand we were ready to do business for fi ve hours. As usual, it did not disappoint and we found some great new products. We loved the Edible Sweets on the Tobar stand and, even better, they actually tasted great. There were some great new costumes on the Rubies stand with a lot of emphasis on book week which is an opportunity that is easily missed in early March. After that, we were all toy faired out. A category that we are focused on for this year is Boys Toys. Across the fairs we saw some
great new lines for boys with anything Minecraft being a winner, new fi gures from WWE proving popular, and anything remote control being an opportunity given the sad demise of Modelzone. Anyway, that is enough from us as we are off to see The Lego Movie now. Early signs on
the movie Lego lines are very good so let’s hope it lives up to expectations (with popcorn in hand). Until next month, happy trading.
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