Talking Shop

Talking Shop Summer days drifting away…

As summer draws to a close and preparations begin in earnest for the busy Q4 season, indies update us on how it’s all going and which standout lines have been bringing in the customers.

Jonny Rogers - Rogers Toymaster, Kilkeel

We have three medium-sized stores, two of which are 15,000 square feet each. Two of our shops are in market towns, while our smallest store is situated in a seaside resort known for its fishing. Both larger stores enjoy good footfall throughout the year, while the other is more seasonal. But we enjoy steady business overall, with a wide range of SKUs across popular brands.

This year has been very positive so far; we’ve had decent weather, which has contributed to increased footfall. Despite experiencing a challenging trading period, business during the summer has been solid for us, and we’re keeping up with last year’s sales figures. We’ve experienced strong sales across our portfolio, which includes a mix of sporting toys from suppliers such as Reydon Sports– its scooters are a standout product and sell brilliantly. Lego, Barbie and our range of tactile/sensory pocket money toys have also been in demand this year. We offer a wide range of Lego SKUs, and although all Lego ranges are performing well, the Lego Formula 1 and Cars sets currently take centre stage as the most popular.

A standout range that continues to see an incredible performance is Pokémon TCG; we can never get enough of it, and it tends to sell out shortly after arriving in store. We’ve also noticed huge popularity around darts; Luke Littler has inspired many youngsters to get into darts, so the sport is having a resurgence. The Target Darts’ Luke ‘The Nuke’ Littler range is highly requested, with customers going crazy for the dart boards.

As Christmas approaches, we are planning to make a few changes to get ready for the festive season. However, we typically keep our shop's layout consistent throughout the year, with all product ranges on display at all times. This approach works well, as different sections perform at different times of the year. This Christmas, we’re going to let customers lead the demand, and we’ll follow.

We placed some orders at this year's Toymaster May show, and we've been receiving those deliveries throughout the summer. We have been introducing these new lines ahead of the Christmas season so we can evaluate their performance; based on what sells well, we’ll decide which items to reorder. Something that really caught my eye during the May show is Just Play’s Stitch range, which we’ve now got on shelf; we thought that Just Play’s new launches were impressive, and its current offering is very strong. One of the new companies that we met at the Toymaster May show is RMS, and we have begun working with them.

As we start introducing our Christmas offering from this month, we will utilise our social media channels to promote what’s available in store, to maximise sales during the Christmas season. We have built up a strong social media following and regularly upload videos that showcase products in detail and demonstrate their functionalities to engage with our community and attract customers. Pricing is important to maximise sales, and we will make sure we maintain competitive prices on all our items as far as we are able, although this can be challenging, competing against major online eCommerce platforms such as Amazon. We typically update our window displays based on popular products; if a specific product range is trending, we can adjust our displays to highlight those items.

In licensed products, Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon have been some of the best movie releases this year, and toys related to both licences are selling well. We are wary of licences, as some have only enjoyed short-lived success, but these licences remain strong, and I hope they will continue into the Christmas season. I’m also looking forward to Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie in October, which should give the toy ranges an extra boost.

Jess Walsh - Toymaster Ballina, Co. Mayo, Ireland

We are based in Ballina, County Mayo on the west coast, and our store is about 5,000 sq ft. It’s a big shop, and we sell a huge range of toys, as well as nursery and school uniforms. We are slightly outside the town centre but located in a good residential catchment area. It’s a rural area, so customers will most likely have to drive to us, but we have a very large car park on site.

The warm weather has definitely helped our in-store traffic. We’ve been very pleased with footfall in general this summer, which has been a lot better than last year. The weather then was terrible and had a huge impact on our business.

Our store has seen a big increase in sales for pocket money toys recently. There’s such a diverse range of product to choose from in the pocket money category, and ranges like slime and squeezy or squishy items of all shapes and sizes have been very popular. We predominately work with Kandy Toys and One For Fun for these kind of lines, mixing it up between the two of them. With Kandy, we do all of our ordering through the company’s website which keeps everything nice and straightforward and works really well for us. You can see all the new lines and get a look at what’s coming,  viewing detailed images of the product before buying. With One For Fun, on the other hand, we have a rep, Alan, who is great at staying in touch. He comes to visit us regularly and we find his advice invaluable; he’ll point us in the right direction, sharing what’s new and what’s selling well. Outdoor toys has also been very successful this year. MV Sports’ bikes, scooters and ride-ons have seen fantastic sales this summer.

In this industry, you’re always looking ahead. We placed a good amount of orders for Christmas at the Toymaster May Show, and we will have finished off the majority of our Q4 orders by the end of August. But we will be looking again at the Toymaster Dublin show in September, where we’re hoping to see more offers and anything that might be trending at the back end of the year.

As we reach the first week of September, we start to get the store shipshape for the busy holiday period. As we have a very large shop floor, this is quite a task, but it does mean we have the space to display plenty of ride-ons, wheeled toys, tractors, trailers and bikes. It’s a case of putting up higher shelves and moving things around; taking stock of what we have and what we need. We work hard to ensure we have the right layout for what we want to showcase in the last quarter of the year – and this includes getting our stock room ready too. We run a savings club, and this will really start to ramp up now, as more people will be putting toys away for Christmas. So as well as storing stock for our shelves, we need space for that too.

We were talking about our Christmas predictions recently, but this year, we haven’t yet been truly wowed by anything that we’ve thought is ‘the’ toy for Christmas. With social media, the choice has become so broad. It’s no longer like it was 10-15 years ago when everybody had to have a specific toy. Although that’s better in a way, as there isn’t a big rush on one specific item nor the pressure to try and keep it in stock. I like that what kids want covers a broad sweep nowadays, and hopefully we can offer a wide enough section so that everyone can find their own special Christmas toy.

Dermot Salmon - Salmon’s Department Store, Co. Galway, Ireland

Salmon’s Department Store is a family run, independent, second-generation business which originally opened in1962. We sell a wide range of products, including toys. The store is around 8,000 sq ft and we have a team of 12 staff members.

The summer months have been pretty steady for us this year. We’ve been selling lots of pools, water guns and anything for outdoors. However, the biggest success at the moment is Pokémon. We have started holding Pokémon play events on our second floor as we have plenty of space there, and that’s going down really well with customers. Although it’s a recent introduction, word of mouth has quickly spread and there are already kids coming and playing amongst themselves, and game masters coming along too. It’s a fun place for the Pokémon community to get together. We haven’t started tournaments yet, but we’re getting there. We are planning on hosting events like this for other trading card games, and board games too, further down the line. I think it’s important to try different things and see what works; some catch on with customers and some don’t, but Pokémon is definitely working. The initiative has been great for bringing people in and increasing footfall; so many people want somewhere that they can meet others who are interested in the same things they are, sharing ideas and the fun of it all.

We are based in a very rural area outside of Galway, so toy tractors, farming equipment and farm animals sell really well, especially brands like Bruder as they are so realistic. Lego, of course, is also really popular.

Our orders for Christmas started to come through towards the end of July, and the majority of our Christmas stock will be arriving by the end of this month, ready to get it out on the shelves and start selling online. As a department store that also stocks a wide range of gifts, Christmas ornaments, greeting cards and gift wrap, the store becomes very festive from autumn onwards, which helps to get everyone in the mood for Christmas shopping.

We use Facebook, Instagram and social media to promote the store. For the last few years, the local radio station has broadcast live from the store for a couple of days in the run up to the holiday season. This is always a popular event; we hold one in September and another one in early December. The September event will focus specifically on toys and the launch of our Christmas catalogue.

I wish I had a crystal ball to predict what’s going to be popular at Christmas. But even without one, I can tell you that Lego will sell well, and I expect Speed Champions and Lego Technic to be particularly popular with our customer base. I’m also confident that the latest Bruder tractors will be a best seller, along with board games that are always in demand at this time of year. If Pokémon brings out a new Elite Trainer Box this September or October, our customers will be very happy.

Jane Hastings - Toys Toys Toys, Liverpool

We began as a family business and have been at our Crosby Road premises for about 11 years. We’re very lucky to be situated in a prime location on one of the busiest roads in northern Liverpool, which gives us a fantastic opportunity to collaborate with suppliers and create engaging displays that invite customers in. One of our upcoming collaborations is with Epoch; we’re redecorating our front windows in celebration of Sylvanian Families’ 40th anniversary.

We are currently focusing heavily on our TikTok shop, which is a new and exciting venture that has proven to be hugely successful. I started going live on TikTok a year ago

to showcase some of our offerings. When the Real FX Stitch by Wow! Stuff was released in June, I featured it during a TikTok live session to demonstrate how it works, and it quickly went viral. I have achieved around 1,200 sales for the product in just over twelve months, a fantastic result for any retailer.

I’m committed to building my TikTok following by putting significant effort into posting and engaging with our online community daily, showing them new ranges that are constantly coming into the store. We currently have 27,000 followers, and our numbers keep growing. Establishing an online presence has been very beneficial. Although it initially felt daunting and required a lot of work, keeping at it consistently has allowed us to increase our sales - and maintain them. TikTok has even reached out to us directly to inform us that we are one of the top-performing shops on the platform.

We receive a lot of requests from toy brands to launch new ranges on our TikTok platform. I host these special events in our TikTok studio and get people registered, which enables them to see the product range live and make purchases instantly. I’ve also joined LinkedIn and announced a couple of events there, too. Suppliers we’ve collaborated with on live launches so far include Just Play and Vivid Goliath. I’m also going to be working with DKB Toys & Distribution and with Golden Bear to feature its Soccer Dash range, plus we’re hosting a special event for Sylvanian Families where we will showcase all its 40th Anniversary offerings, as well as the new blind bags. Other special TikTok lives we host include our two-week Black Friday event; the first one took place last year and was highly successful. Although we anticipated being busy during this time, we were taken aback by the volume of sales we achieved. On Black Friday alone, we received 2,700 orders, and we averaged 1,000 orders every other day throughout the campaign, which was incredible. We’ve been preparing for Christmas and for our upcoming Black Friday event since January and have doubled the stock compared to last year to ensure that we have enough. We are still expecting more Christmas stock to arrive, and I’ll keep an eye out for any other interesting new launches over the coming months – though most companies are very helpful in keeping me up to date with what’s coming out. I’ve ordered Christmas decorations for my TikTok studio for the Sefton Toy Appeal, which we launch in November to help families who can’t afford to buy gifts for their children.

Our Christmas Club has launched, in which customers come into the store and make their Christmas orders, so that’s keeping us busy too. This gives customers the flexibility to pay when they want, right up to the day they want delivery.

With regards to in-store sales, the heat waves this year have of course helped outdoor toy sales. We’ve sold a lot of beach stuff, including pools and inflatables. Other best sellers include all Stitch-licensed product, and the DIY Gui Gui slime from Moose Toys; sales for these are mainly driven by TikTok trends. Paladone’s Minecraft 3D Sticker Maker and GloBuddies 3D Lights are both also selling well, as is Epoch’s Sylvanian Families range, particularly the blind bags – lots of people come into the store because they’ve seen Sylvanian Families on the front window.

DKB Toys’s Crazy Aaron’s Thinking Putty, Ty Beanie Bouncers, Vivid Goliath’s Jelly Blox and MGA’s Rainbow High Styling Heads are all in demand and performing excellently – and the live event we hosted recently for A.B. Gee’s Foodibles range was very successful.

At the time of writing, I’m waiting for the Ultimate Stitch Interactive Plush from Just Play to arrive. We held a live event to launch the product with no physical stock, and the number of pre-orders I have received is insane. I predict that this range will be 2025’s Toy of the Year.