Talking Shop
Santa’s on his way! As indies ready themselves for the final push before the big day, several took time out from the busy shop floor to chat to Marianna Casal about how sales have been going this festive season.
Teresa Carter - Chocoloons, Coleraine, Northern Ireland
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ast May, we moved to a bigger store, and since the move we’ve been trying to diversify. Previously, with smaller premises, we focused on smaller, cheaper toys but now people come here for bigger toys too. However, we still see great sales from lines such as Panini football cards and Match Attack from Topps, as well as Pokémon cards. Summer has historically been our busiest season as we’re a seaside town, but we’ve tried to bring in new stock this year to make Christmas busy too. We have brought in more big box items like dolls prams, which we hope will sell well in the run up to Christmas. Our Christmas Club began around mid-August to help our customers budget for those larger purchases. Most of the children that visit the store are attracted to smaller items that look fun to play with. The big shift in buying that we’ve seen is that parents are looking more towards lower price points – not the pick-up lines as such, but items at £20-£40 rather than high value items of £100 or so. If they do spend on higher priced items, they’re looking for ones which have genuine play value and won’t stay in the cupboard for most of the year. The Christmas Club has seen people buy dolls, prams, balance bikes, electric scooters from MV Sports, L.O.L. Surprise!, Barbie, Bruder trucks, Furby and Tonies. We ordered the Squishmallows Christmas assortment this year, which we were confident would sell well; we have stocked Squishmallows since before the brand became a top licence, and it’s been exciting to see how it has developed. This year, we’ve worked hard on offering toys which are a bit different. As an indie store, we look for lines that customers can’t find everywhere else, and we’ve tried to be diverse and cater for different ages and preferences, so customers have choice. We offer a huge range of wooden toys which is our biggest section, including a wide selection from Melissa & Doug. This is a trusted brand where parents welcome an educational factor along with the play factor, and they can be confident the product will last for years. We’re delighted to be seeing growth thanks to our
move and the changes we’ve made within the store; it’s nice to see our efforts to expand and diversify our product mix pay off. It’s no mean feat to run a successful independent toyshop - and we also run a sweetshop at the same time. Our hard work means we are on track to end the year 15% up on last year, which we are delighted with. Over summer, there was a bit of a drop in sales; it was tough for parents, having to keep the kids amused as well as feed them, with the cost of everything. We’re glad sales went up again once the kids went back to school. We have also been putting a lot of effort into our social media. I’m trying to post as much as I can and we’re adding more and more products to our online website, which is a work in progress. We are looking forward to attending London Toy Fair
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next year. It’s really important to us to be able to see the product live rather than just through a computer screen. We will be looking for products to refresh our range. We’re also planning to develop sections that we feel we currently underserve; for example, we cater more for older children than for infants at the moment. We have Halilit in our sights in order to put more focus on babies. We’re also keen to talk to Learning Resources and are hoping to source more items for older girls such as Top Model from Depesche, and we’ll check out more stationery, secret diaries, keyrings and the like. Since the 24th November up until the 19th of this month, we will have a pop-up stall at the Enchanted Winter Garden event here in Northern Ireland. We want to wish everybody a happy trading season and a very happy Christmas.
