Special Feature - New Retail Stores

We all know the second half of 2022 was difficult. We all know why.

And we all know that no matter what, if there’s one industry that can ride out pretty much anything, it’s the toy trade. Indeed, at a time when businesses could be largely forgiven for rolling over and playing dead, we’ve seen a number of retailers up their game – or start playing for the first time – in what was generally thought of as a Very Difficult Year.

Irish retailer Tigeroo Toys, for example, moved into a larger store in Belfast city centre, a move that has allowed owner Raymond Kirkpatrick to expand the selection of brands and licensed toys he offers: in stock in time for Christmas were Pokémon, Piggy, Squishmallows, Stranger Things, Encanto, Godzilla, Poppy Playtime, Fast and Furious Lego, Playmobil, Five Nights At Freddy’s, Monster High, Barbie, anime figures and collectibles, Sonic, Mario, and much more.

Rachael Sankey, along with her husband, William, entered the world of toy retail in April 2022 despite having no previous retail experience – just a passion for toys and hobby products such as Lego and Tamiya RC. The couple opened their shop, Harold’s Toy Store, in a town that didn’t already have one, Church Stretton in Shropshire, much to the delight of locals who felt it was an obvious omission from the town’s shopping scene. They say they’ve never doubted their decision, despite the fact the turbulent marketplace has made getting hold of some key lines a challenge.

“The issues we were facing in Q3 and 4 influenced what we could and couldn’t sell, and where we could get things from,” Rachael notes. “As I am sure everyone reading this knows, some companies have stopped taking on new accounts due to supply issues, and although entirely understandable, this has impacted us. Pokémon is a very important range for us but can be difficult to track down. Ironically, that's the nature of the game itself. At least we can laugh about it.”

Rachael says her customers have found ‘love and joy’ in Harold’s, which is helping to combat the cloak of ‘doom and gloom’ that’s been trying its best to settle over the UK. (If we had a pound for every time we heard that phrase towards the back end of last year…) Since opening, business has been steady and was particularly good in the summer months, when the town gets a lot of visitors, and picked up very nicely at Christmas following the slow October reported by many retailers of all sizes.

“We are very grateful to Kayes of Cardiff for lots of initial assistance,” says Rachael, when asked which suppliers have been most supportive of Harold’s. “We didn’t have the shop premises ready when we thought we would, but Kayes kept our order for us until we were ready to take it. It was also able to provide us with our two lovely Schleich stands, from which product is selling really well. At the smaller end of the scale, Small Fries Games has been incredibly helpful online, supporting us on Instagram and Facebook. The company does this for all of the shops that stock its games and we’ve really appreciated the gesture.”

Fellow independent toy retailer David Middleton, meanwhile, moved his second store into much larger premises in its longterm home in the Derbion Centre in May 2022. Not content with just the two, however, his third location – Midco Freak Treats – is slated to open this month. The new store promises to be a very different take on the traditional toy shop, focusing primarily on the market for the older kid/ adult/kidult toys and collectibles market. As such, the store will place a major emphasis on Funko and Loungefly products, anime and manga, and film and TV properties.

“This is how we started out 20 years ago,” Dave tells Toy World, in between unpacking boxes and supervising the installation of shelves and signage. “Back then, we mainly focused on Star Wars and wrestling, moving into more general gear over time. The collector channel is a massive part of our business already, so with Freak Treats, we’re just expanding on what we already know.”

We asked Dave if the cost-of-living crisis had influenced his approach to Freak Treats, but he says it hasn’t – the target demographic for the store is customers largely unaffected by economic turmoil such as young adults with disposable income. As discussed with Bandai UK in our exclusive interview on pages 250-252, this is a fast growing sector that provides numerous opportunities for those suppliers working with current pop-culture, anime or sporting brands: stores such as Freak Treats therefore offer a new route to consumers. Those consumers, meanwhile, also seem keen to see these sorts of specialist shops pop up – not least because, as Dave puts it, ‘the cool kids won't have to walk past CoComelon to get to Chainsaw Man’ (Google it).

Dave isn’t the only retailer embracing the rapidly growing kidult end of the market. In St Helier, Jersey, a new hobby toy shop has been opened by John Testori, the owner of Bambola Toymaster.

The new shop is dual aspect, being on the corner of Don Street and Waterloo Street, which John says is great for footfall, and unlike the other store, caters towards much older consumers. The store opened in September 2022, right next door to Bambola’s core toy shop which has been open for 18 years. The new opening has given Bambola an extra 900 square feet on the site and is stocked with a wide variety of hobby-based products including jigsaws ranging from 500-pieces up to 4,000-pieces from suppliers such as Ravensburger and Gibsons, to collectible Banpresto figures and slots cars from Scalextric and Carrera.

“The new addition has worked very well, and we have had great customer feedback,” John told Toy World shortly after the opening. “We wanted to make use of both the units in the building which we own, but we didn’t need two toy shops next to each other, so it made sense to go more into the hobby side on the second one. Since Covid, we have had an older, more adult, customer base and this has continued growing.”

From indie retailers with modest store portfolios to those in the double digits, September and October 2022 saw SMF Toytown open new stores in Perth and Coventry respectively. The openings bring SMF’s portfolio to a little over 30, but as managing director Alan Simpson explains, it’s all about maintaining a balance. Shuttering four underperforming stores that had reached a natural break in their contracts actually meant the overall number of Toytown locations was reduced, an approach that maintains the strength and success of the retailer’s business by ‘taking away at the bottom and adding on at the top’.

“If you’re not moving forward then you’re standing still, and if you’re standing still, then in my eyes you’re going backwards,” Alan says. “We’ve always looked to open new stores each year in varying numbers, and 2022 was actually quite a difficult year in which to do so, as solicitors were working very slowly. Even so, the two new stores have been performing really well so far, and we’re planning on opening another four or five in 2023.”

Resolutely one of the top five performers each week since opening, the new Toytown Coventry store in the West Orchards Shopping Centre spans 8,000 square feet and takes up the first floor of a former Debenhams store. The Toytown store is the retailer’s first in Coventry and came about after an approach by the shopping centre’s owner, who had seen other Toytown stores and was impressed with the depth of range they offered.

Alan and his team take a careful look at new locations when deciding where to focus their attention, with footfall of particular importance; most of the retailer’s stores are in popular shopping centres rather than high streets (an approach Dave Middleton, who in 2021 moved his original Burton-Upon-Trent store into The Octagon Centre, away from the high street it had been on for several years, also favours). Alan also says that he entertains far more offers from landlords eager to secure an SMF Toytown branch for their centres each year than he can actually take up –more than 20 in 2022, for example.

So, does Alan always know that his new stores will definitely be a success? Despite all his due diligence the answer to that is no, not at all. But he’s been in the game long enough to know what’s likely to work, and what’s not. Looking at 2023, he says that while the cost-of-living crisis is having a bearing on his expansion plans – footfall is holding firm but basket spend is down – it will still be a good year for his business overall.

BargainMax also has big plans for 2023. The online toy retailer secured 90,500 square feet of warehouse facilities at PLP Ellesmere Port last year, in a move it said would create jobs and expand its footprint in the UK. Unfortunately, the warehouse move was delayed to the point where the retailer had no choice but to commence it in the middle of peak season, and as a knock-on effect, the launch of its highly anticipated new website was shunted into this year (this month, in fact). Despite the disruption, which Alex Woolfstein, eCommerce director & senior buyer at BargainMax, admits caused delivery times of 7-8 days and significant gaps in stock listed, BargainMax was forecasting to end 2022 +15-20% up versus 2021. The new website will only serve to shore up its success even more.

“In order to be successful in this industry, we have to be technologically ahead of the curve,” Alex tells us. “We want to have the fastest, most user-friendly and simple website in the entire toy trade, so our new site is built to offer some truly phenomenal speeds. Our previous website was akin to that small house you buy with lots of land surrounding it; what you end up with is an assortment of bolted-on extensions that don’t really work as a whole. We’ve knocked the house down and built it again from scratch. We’re hugely excited for the launch of the new site and really feel it will be one of the most impressive pieces of tech the trade has ever seen.”

BargainMax is known for its very attractive pricing and works closely with leading toy suppliers to offer promotional discounts for consumers. At a time when shoppers are seeing money disappear from their pockets and bank accounts at (for many) an alarming rate, is this BargainMax’s time to shine? The retailer, Alex explains, never sells toys for more than they can be found elsewhere, a strategy that has resulted in a loyal customer base that returns time and again seeking value for money. This places BargainMax in a very strong position coming into what is likely to be a tough year for many – but Alex says, with a laugh, that he’s all but given up trying to predict performance.

“We have massive plans for this year, with huge investment in marketing to bolster all our goals,” he says. “We’re moving into new or expanding channels such as TV for the first time ever, and doubling our marketing team from its current three members to six. Combined with the new warehouse and website, we’ve bitten all the bullets at the same time. We know that when we reach customers they buy from us, and when they buy from us, they come back 7.7 times a year, on average, to buy from us again. This year is the first year we feel confident enough to push our reach further than ever before, and we’re very excited for what comes next.”