Indie Opinion - Diary of a Toy Shop by Amanda Alexander, owner of Giddy Goat Toys

Diary of a toy shop

Amanda Alexander, owner of Giddy Goat Toys in Didsbury, Manchester, reflects on how small businesses have risen to the challenge of the past couple of months, looks forward to Toy Fair and explains why she can’t be trusted with soft fruit!

By the time this is published, the craziness of Christmas will be behind us all and I hope you will have had a few days off to recoup your energy and spend time with friends and family.

I’m looking forward to having my eldest son home from uni (his bedroom having been cleared of stock!) and getting my boys to play a few board games while I eat my bodyweight in cheese and work my way through a delivery of goodies from Naked Wines. And, like everyone else in the toy industry, I’ll be hoping that 2022 will be a bit more normal and predictable. Plus, I’m looking forward to catching up with the lovely sales reps and agents at Toy Fair (and viewing new lines).

December kicked in with a whizz and a bang and, I’m pleased to say, fantastic footfall and sales. We were chosen as one of 100 small businesses to mark the official 100day countdown to this year’s Small Business Saturday UK. The day itself takes place on the first Saturday in December each year, but the 2021 campaign kicked off in late August and our day was December 2, so there have been lots of lovely posts about us online and my social media guru Jo has been merrily bragging and tagging on Instagram and Facebook.

As I write this, we’re planning some things for Small Business Saturday and I’m on a high from attending a Small Biz 100 meet-and-greet event at the House of Lords. It’s not somewhere I ever I’ve never had any supplier make “ me feel insignificant or that I’m wasting their time. They’re all unfailingly friendly, helpful and fabulous “

envisaged going and I was really quite nervous beforehand. I’m super confident in my little shop and will chat away to anyone and everyone but outside my little domain I’m quite shy.

In the end it was fine. I didn’t trip up, spill tea on anyone, or say anything outlandishly stupid. I did drop a raspberry on the floor, but I think I got away with it and picked it up before anyone could stand on it and ruin the fancy carpet.

The other attendees were all small business owners and we discussed lots of shared issues and challenges, not merely with importing and exporting, which everyone has faced, but on how to promote our businesses and not end up working every hour god sends.

Anyway, it was a fabulous thing to do, and there were uplifting speeches by Small Business Britain founder Michelle Ovens, the Minister for Small Business Paul Scully, and Dan Edelman from American Express, who helped found and support The Small Business Saturday campaign. I left feeling energised, positive and proud to be part of not just the toy industry, but also the collection of small businesses that are so important to the local and national UK economy.

This seems a timely point to raise a glass to all the other small toy shops and hope they got through 2021 intact and had busy Decembers - and also to the many suppliers and sales reps that look after us. In my previous column I mentioned that while Amazon is just about always every supplier’s biggest customer, collectively the indies can be their second. But that’s collectively - and though I did express some concerns about how forward orders are organised, I genuinely appreciate the support I get from individual salespeople and also admin staff.

Some of the orders I place must be like a drop in the ocean to many suppliers - when I’m asking what their carriage paid levels are and knowing that some of the bigger boys probably take in a week what I buy in a year - yet I’ve never had any supplier make me feel insignificant or that I’m wasting their time. They’re all unfailingly friendly, helpful and fabulous, allowing me to send frenzied email lists from my phone at 10pm requesting specific lines (instead of completing order forms), as they appreciate that in December, between the hours of nine to five I’m on the shop floor, serving or unpacking deliveries. Thank you all for being such a marvellous bunch of people.

So, onwards and upwards for 2022, I hope. I’m looking forward to catching up with people at Toy Fair and seeing not just the new lines, but also existing lines that I may have missed, because no matter how great a catalogue or website you have, there’s no beating seeing something ‘in the flesh’ – which is why I think there’ll always be a place for shops like mine on the high street. And sales people: get t’kettle on and, if you have cakes or chocolates ready to hand out to keep our energy levels up, just don’t give me a strawberry tart - because I really can’t be trusted with soft fruit...