From the publisher

By the time this issue arrives on desks towards the end of January, the London Toy Fair will be drawing to a close and preparations will be well underway for the opening of the Nuremberg Toy Fair next week. By that stage, the dust will also have settled on an extremely lively festive trading period, and we should know where the UK toy market finally ended up in 2022. I am writing this column before any official statistics have been unveiled, so I am having to base my observations on anecdotal evidence, gleaned largely by speaking to retailers over the past few weeks.

Based on what I have been hearing, the week before Christmas was exceptional for many toy stores – several specialist independent retailers broke trading records day after day in that final week, while The Entertainer’s Gary Grant told me that most of his stores broke their best-ever day and best-ever week records in December.

Our editor Rachael Simpson-Jones spoke to a selection of toy retailers to gauge their reaction to December trading, which you can read on page 42. Thankfully, the feedback was almost universally positive. As Gary Grant said: “It doesn’t get any better from a retailer’s point of view than when Christmas falls on a Sunday.” That full final week of trading was immense for so many brick and mortar retailers, even more so after the Royal Mail strike – and subsequent chaos across the entire home delivery network – sent consumers scurrying into High Streets and Retail Parks. They knew that ordering online would carry no guarantee of product arriving, so they headed to stores where they could physically get hold of what they wanted. Rounding off an extremely strong December for the toy retail channel, I gather the week after Christmas was highly encouraging as well: despite what you may have read in the papers about declining footfall, toy retailers have reported excellent sales, with many children receiving vouchers or money for Christmas. Compared to where we were at the end of October, the contrast with where the UK toy market actually ended up by the end of the year couldn’t have been greater.

Elsewhere, major retailers have been unveiling their festive sales performances over the past few weeks, which – in the main – were positive. Both Tesco and Sainsbury’s reported solid increases, although the numbers mostly focused on food sales: Sainsbury’s did confirm that Argos sales jumped by 7%, but there was no indication of how toys fared within the overall mix. However, both grocers admitted that online food sales fell, as consumers returned to store, presumably looking to ensure they were getting the best bang for their buck. In turn, I suspect that might have helped sales of toys, which are far more likely to occur in-store rather than online.

Mark Kingston and I had an interesting email exchange before Christmas, discussing the fact that UK grocers have yet to crack the conundrum of delivering food and non-food baskets online in a single transaction (unlike several of their European counterparts). In Mark’s words, “a seamless food and non-food online experience would be a game changer.” In the absence of UK grocers’ ability to do that, encouraging customers to visit stores rather than ordering online seems the best way for them to grow toy sales in the foreseeable future.

One retailer which did single out toys in its results report was Very, which saw a whopping 26% year on year increase in toy sales. Considering its overall sales grew by only 2.2%, toys seem to have been one of the key drivers in Very’s Q4 success. Elsewhere, I heard good things about Smyths (repeating orders multiple times since 23rd December) and Aldi (selling out lines halfway through the promotional period), while B&M also enjoyed an excellent festive season – Q4 turnover rose by 6.4% and healthy non-grocery sales helped the retailer to significantly increase its margin. All in all, I think we can say that after a worryingly slow start, Christmas came good for many toy retailers right at the death – for which we have to be truly thankful, given the circumstances and how things could have turned out.

So now we start the process all over again: with the London Toy Fair behind us and Nuremberg ahead, buyers have already started seeing and assessing many of the most exciting new launches for 2023. Some toy retailers will also be heading to Spring Fair at the start of February, where the Kids, Toys & Play section has grown this year. You can read a preview of this sector of the show, starting on page 78, where we round up a selection of the exhibitors that will be of interest to toy retailers.

Our other main feature this month focuses on the Sustainability area, showcasing products, packaging and other initiatives that toy companies are introducing to address this crucial subject. It remains a complex question, with few easy answers – but it is good to see toy companies embracing the need to evolve their product ranges and business practices to meet a whole new set of ‘green’ goals. Whether through packaging opitmisation, plastic reduction, using new sustainable materials or improving recycling capacity, toy companies are adopting numerous different approaches to improve their environmental performance. We’ve rounded up a selection of companies making strides in this area, and we will continue to focus on how the toy community is tacking the challenges as we move forward.

For now, enjoy this edition and we’ll be back at the start of March with our thoughts on Toy Fair Season and how 2023 is shaping up.