We’ve finally hit Q4, the weather has turned and Christmas is coming – so it’s no great surprise that festive top toy lists are coming thick and fast now (Hamleys, Midco and Very predictions have all landed this week). The great trade-wide hope now is that we get some movement in the right direction sooner rather than later.
It’s no secret that September retail footfall was hampered by floods and low consumer confidence, not entirely helped by warnings of a severe budget to be unveiled at the end of this month (the hope, of course, is that the dire warnings are worse than what will actually be announced, so consumers will all say “well, thank goodness it wasn’t as bad as we feared”).
I always find it useful to talk to independent retailers at this time of year, as you get the view from the sharp end – and it’s always unexpurgated, honest feedback, not polite, ‘political’ comment that often comes from larger companies. So, it was good that I got the chance to catch up with a bunch of retailers at the Toymaster regional event in Swindon this week. The mood was perhaps best-described as ‘hopeful’ – still cautious, but slightly more optimistic than it felt over the summer. There are a lot of strong launches coming through for Christmas, but there remains a concern that some of the star lines may get price cut by the major accounts – although I guess it was ever thus… It’s actually the last time I’ll be visiting Swindon for this event, as next year will see a new configuration for the Toymaster regional shows: while Dublin will continue to have its own dedicated events for members, the Northern (Harrogate) and Southern (Swindon) shows will be combined into single events which will be held in Coventry in March and October.
The other advantage of the regional shows this year is the fact that many indies have been holding off placing their Christmas orders, so numerous suppliers told me that they were writing decent business at the shows. The regionals will always be very much a complement to the main May Show in Harrogate (don’t worry, that certainly isn’t moving to Coventry…), but they do offer a useful platform to lock down some business at key times of the year.
The big news of the week actually broke at the end of last week – the acquisition of Sambro by HTI. I was in constant contact with the HTI team last Friday morning, as they sat in court getting the deal over the line before being able to announce what had been widely rumoured for days. Let’s concentrate on the positives: Sambro has some very good ranges, HTI is the perfect company to take them on to new heights, and many of the existing Sambro staff will continue to be employed. With HTI due to move into a brand new purpose-built 250,000 square-foot global HQ towards the end of next year, the addition of a selection of new ranges and brands which complement its own core portfolio offers a wonderful opportunity which was clearly too good to turn down (no matter how busy HTI already was). Onwards and upwards.
Read the rest here.
