Traditionally, many people from the UK toy community would have been over in New York for the US Toy Fair this week. But with the North American trade show landscape currently in a state of flux, we find ourselves without a US-based Q1 show for another year, before it is scheduled to return to New York in early March 2025. I am sure that’s a subject I will return to in future Blogs, but for now, one of the positives from everyone not being out of the office for another week is that all the follow up from Toy Fair Season gets done just that little bit quicker (although here in the UK, half term certainly doesn’t help).
Achieving a happy equilibrium between seeing the people you need to see and doing the things you need to do is a constant balancing act for everyone in the global toy community across Q4 and Q1. I was speaking to someone this week who told me he had a fantastic London Toy Fair, although he had been disappointed that several retailers had cancelled previews with him in December. I asked him if he felt the two were connected, and it did get me thinking: there was a tremendous retail turn-out at Toy Fair this year, and I do wonder if it makes sense for retailers to maximise their time by seeing 40-50 people over three days in London, rather than visiting individual companies for previews in Q4.
I appreciate that trade shows and previews are two entirely different things, and that having a buyer visit your office for a preview for half (or a whole) day is a dream for suppliers. But equally, Q4 is a markedly different trading landscape these days, with buyers needing to be highly reactive to dynamic pricing, stock fluctuations, marketing activity and many other facets of modern retailing – and it is harder to keep on top of all that if you are constantly out of the office all day at previews in the run-up to the festive season.
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