indie viewpoint Home and away
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James Waddelove Manager, Storktown Toymaster, Leigh, Lancashire The Toymaster Show was a great experience and really intense but in a good way, in the sense that you miss it the week after. We were looking out for the major trends this year plus anything fresh and exciting. It’s great for members to get a lot of stock ordered in for the year, which helps when you are busy and hands on at the store. It’s a great time to put the Toymaster catalogue lines down and of course this year there were more November and show specials than ever before. It’s brilliant having a show all under one roof where it’s work hard, play hard and great to see all the other Toymaster members too, after all, we are a membership. When it comes to keeping on top of trends we obviously make sure to attend the Toymaster Show, we also listen to our customers and read the trade magazines. Additionally we’re on social media and communicate with our followers via Twitter. I think the market is so dilute and varied, we are really working hard on getting customers in store, currently we are running competitions with the help of Twitter, making the store more fun and using Toby and the Toymaster window displays. I am looking forward to the Minions film, I have a really good feeling about it and think the licensed products will sell well – and with the Toymaster window and a couple of stuarts running around the store I’m sure it will be. There was a lot of good stuff at the show, if I had to pick one it would be Crazy Legs Scooby Doo from Character Options. Toy Division, the Toymaster band playing to a full dance floor of toy industry and Toymaster members was also a highlight.
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s we write this, we are sitting in the departure lounge at Glasgow airport, just waiting for our flight after a showroom visit to Martin Grossman. We have been saying we would come up Mark Buschhaus and Stephen Barnes here for a while, and Martin Toy Barnhaus finally wore us down. We left from Gatwick in the sun, and arrived in Scotland in the pouring rain. We were pleasantly surprised to find a chauffeur waiting for us, until we realised it was Martin himself. We were well looked after for the day, and with Martin buying the lunch, we were sold. And I think he has realised that if we eat before we buy, it is a recipe for success. All joking aside, it was definitely a worthwhile visit. We are visiting more showrooms this year, and spending quality time away out of the office to look at ranges. Oh, and a final update from Glasgow, it is still raining 6 hours after we arrived. Since our last column, we managed to re-open our Crawley store in the week timescale that we set. We had a cracking re- opening weekend, and the feedback from customers has been fantastic. To us, it feels like a new shop. It feels wider, even though it definitely isn’t, and this is all down to new lighting. The new LED panels have made that much difference that we are planning to roll it out to several of our shops later this year. We will be using our brand enhancement rebate from Toymaster to help fund this, and must say that investing in your shops is definitely worth doing. Heading into summer now, we are reaching the anniversary of the loom craze for the next few months. Even though we are not going to hit the heights of last year in arts and crafts, there is still lots going on in the category this year. Sand seems to be the main focus for 2015. There’s Kinetic Sand from Spinmaster, Cra-z-sand from Character Options and we have just seen Grossman’s Magic Sand, which is very competitively priced. The early sales on these ranges have been good for us across all price points. Playdoh sales have been strong this year, with Marvel Can-Heads and the My Little Pony Style Salon lines being popular new additions. For the back end of the year, we like the Easy Nail Spa from Character Options, and the Paint Maker from Crayola. The major event for this month was of course, the Toymaster show. And as usual, it did not disappoint, with a full three intense days of buying, eating drinking and networking. For that week each year, the Toy Trade seems to take over Harrogate. Wherever you are, whether in the hotel, or a bar or restaurant in town, you will always meet someone from the industry. There were certainly some great deals to be had. We felt that Worlds Apart had some really strong deals on a wide range of their products, including the Playtents and Go Glow lights, and there were some good early buys from Hornby too. There were also a lot of deals available from suppliers for Black Friday this year, as it is definitely something we will be getting behind even more. The show was well attended, and hats off to the Toymaster guys for organising another great event. We have next year’s in our diary already.
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