Along with the arrival of the festive season comes the propensity for certain retailers to discount toys – it’s a tale as old as time, and sadly I don’t see it changing any time soon. There will always be a debate about the rights and wrongs of promotional offers, particularly when they involve current lines that are selling well.
No-one is quibbling the products brought in specifically to be part of a sale, nor the own-brand lines (often part of retailers’ sale offering, perhaps because of the greater margin flexibility, or simply because the public hasn’t been buying at predicted levels and own-brand stock can’t exactly go anywhere else) or the clearance lines that retailers eagerly seize upon to simultaneously deliver extra margin and allow them to offer consumers a tempting deal. But when it’s a new range which is stocked trade wide that has been performing well across the board and has demonstrated that it doesn’t need to be reduced in price to sell, that’s another matter entirely.
So it was that Argos upset quite a few retailers last week when it offered a 20% discount off several such currently successful ranges. Of course, Argos won’t care – they are doing what they feel is right for them. Personally, I’m not convinced that the toy companies are funding these markdowns or are in any position to stop Argos doing it. But these days, it’s inevitable that when one retailer decides to knock the price down, others follow pretty soon after – and thus we find ourselves in peak season taping metaphorical £5 / £10 notes to products that were selling perfectly well without the reduction. The phrase ‘shooting ourselves in the foot’ springs to mind… the problem is that this happens every year, and unfortunately there is very little that can be done to stop it.
Argos was also one of the retailers to unveil its Christmas ad over the past week: indeed, it is one of the few multi-channel retailers to feature toys as part of its messaging this year – albeit in a rather unusual way. If you haven’t seen the ad, it stars that chap who plays Will in The Inbetweeners (looking a bit like Nic Aldridge these days, it must be said) who gets ‘carjacked’ by Connie the doll and her dinosaur sidekick Trevor, who appear to have taken on rather sinister new personas (was the ad directed by Guy Ritchie?). The premise of the ad is focused on the comment “Argos – they only sell toys, don’t they?” It’s quite a bold statement – although it does rather set up a particular punchline which I would imagine quite a few toy suppliers have been shouting at the TV (I’m sure you can work out where I’m going with that…). The ad is amusing though, so it will be interesting to see if the very mention of toys persuades consumers to head to the rather sterile Argos kiosk at the back of their local Sainsbury’s to buy their festive toys, rather than a real toy store that delivers a sense of wonder and Christmas magic.
Elsewhere this week, Amazon revealed its top 10 toys for Christmas –
Read the rest here.
