Talking Shop
A flying start This month, indie retailers tell Sam Giltrow how the Christmas and New Year selling periods went and look ahead to the new products coming in for 2022. Tony Duffy - Duffy’s Toyworld, Dunleer, Co Louth
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e’ve had a fantastic Christmas, and some of this was thanks to publicity we had, which brought more customers to the shop. We appeared in The Irish Times and featured on a TV chat show talking about toys, as well as on a programme which went out on RTE a couple of days before Christmas called The Toy Shop, which featured family businesses. These all showed the benefits of going into an independent toyshop and the high level of customer service we can provide.
range of sensory toys which is very popular, and we also offer a wide selection of wooden toys. These sell well because they last, and because the public is becoming more environmentally aware. Our entire range has been selected with imagination, creativity and development in mind.
The Toy Shop programme featured 16 toyshops from around Ireland, but we had a large share of the airtime, due to our way of doing things differently here: we don’t sell any electronic or battery-operated toys. We used to sell items of this type, including battery operated ride-ons, and I have no problem with them at all. But we decided we needed to have a point of difference to the many larger retailers near us, so we decided to go down this route a few years ago. We also wanted to focus on developmental skills, toys which encourage children to play and use their imaginations rather than just pressing buttons.
This Christmas, the usual big sellers such as Playmobil, Lego and Schleich all did very well, as expected, and our farm toys always perform well, due to our location in a rural area. We stock a wide range from Bruder – nearly 300 SKUs in total – including tractors, animals and agricultural machinery.
This strategy has proved to be very successful; customers like us because we sell a lot of different products compared to other shops. We stock a huge
Due to Covid, we decided to launch a new website last year and we now sell throughout Ireland. The store is still as popular as ever though; we even have people travelling 300 miles to visit us, as they see it as a day out.
I think this year will be a good one, as we had a very successful year in 2021 and I am expecting sales to increase again for 2022. I haven’t had much chance yet to see what new product is coming out, but I have been going through our figures to see what sold well last year and what didn’t. We were very successful with a lot of the stock we carried, so we obviously chose well and had a good product mix. I don’t want to start changing it too much, but it’s always interesting to see
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what’s new. I think that 2022 will bring challenges and an ongoing one for us is Brexit. I have just had a meeting with our MEP, for a television report on how Brexit is affecting small businesses in Ireland and Europe in general. We have found trading very difficult as it has brought about a lot of red tape, and I am now having to pay a lot of duties, tariff charges and customs clearance, most of which we didn’t have before. For example, we recently had an invoice from a UK company for £650 - they wanted €75 to clear it, and then there was the duty on top of that, so prices were up about 22% for that one consignment. However, I am very happy with how the shop is currently performing and pleased that the decision to have a point of difference to other toyshops is paying off. Despite turning 76 this year, I have no plans to retire. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself and I am so passionate about the toy trade. My father, John, started the business in 1938 and I took it over when he died suddenly when I was aged just 19, so I have been running the shop now for 57 years. When I see young children come into our 10,000 sq ft shop and say ‘wow!’ when they see everything we have on offer, it makes my day. It’s just so lovely to see.
