I’ve just arrived home after three very enjoyable and productive days at the Toymaster May Show in Harrogate. If you were there, you know… and if you weren’t, I’ll try my best to sum it up succinctly.
Long story short, it was an extremely successful event. Long gone are the days when exhibitors spent their time moaning about the attendance or complaining that not enough retailers were scratching the pad. The turnout was great, and specialist independent retailers were out in force and writing orders. A large number of Toymaster members made the trip, with Irish representation as strong as ever. In addition, there were a lot of non-members present – 120 registered ahead of the show, around double the usual number. While I don’t know how many actually turned up at the time of writing, numerous exhibitors told me that they had seen a very healthy number of non-members, including key AIS members such as SMF Toytown, Morleys and Daniels of Windsor. Exhibitors have talked about the possibility of an official merger of the Toymaster and AIS shows for many years, and while in reality that’s unlikely to happen, a more informal arrangement is delivering exactly what suppliers were hoping for anyway.
While retail attendance was extremely healthy, that was matched by suppliers: the vast majority of companies you expected to see were there, and it was lovely to see senior people from many of the larger exhibitors in attendance – there was a time when some stands would be ‘left’ to the local rep or agent, but when you see the country managers and senior directors from the likes of Mattel, MGA, Lego, Character Options and others make the effort, you know they’re taking it seriously. Mattel’s Michael Hick summed it up perfectly when we caught up at the show: “If you want to know what is going on in the toy industry, you need to speak to retailers that live and breathe toys 365 days a year. The independent retailers are at the heart of the toy industry, so I always learn so much from all the meetings we have.”
The Toymaster central office team put a tremendous amount of effort into organising the show, and they deserve massive credit for delivering another excellent event. Talking to Yogi and Paul, they admitted that three things make the show – having the right suppliers present; the show coming on the back of a good start to the year for retailers… and of course, nice weather helps enormously. This year saw all three boxes ticked – the ice cream van did a roaring trade, there was no mad rush to find an umbrella and retailers arrived with budget to spend after a decent first few months’ trading. Even the outdoor suppliers had a smile on their face after the best start to the season since 2020.
Read the rest here.
