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Wednesday, 03 March 2010 18:18 |
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Feeling rather tired today - Jade and I spent a long time yesterday redoing both windows, which then had the knock-on effect of us having to move lots of the toys around the shop as well. I lost count of the number of times I had to climb the ladder to rearrange the top shelf... Still, we're happy with the result - the shop and windows look great!
Also feeling rather proud - Tom and his team-mates from Manchester University have reached the semi-final of University Challenge (their latest match was televised on Monday - an exciting encounter). |
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What a difference a week makes |
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Monday, 22 February 2010 11:30 |
As readers of this blog will know, I have four children as well as a shop – I was going to say 'to look after' but the children are too old for that now...
Anyway, it's been a really exciting week for our eldest, Jo. After returning from a year in Australia at the end of last year, she's now got her first 'proper job' at a management consultants just near here. That has meant a flurry of flat-hunting and clothes buying. Looking around five different flats on Saturday was, I am told, extremely tiring - fun though...
Back in the shop, some of our most interesting new purchases are the bamboo cars that arrived on Friday. These are made by Hape (we pronounce it 'Happy') who have spent several years developing them, part of the first collection of bamboo toys to be available world-wide. Later in the year we will be stocking more of their bamboo toys – we love the design and, of course, bamboo is fast growing (it is a grass) and sustainable.
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Friday, 12 February 2010 13:34 |
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We had a really busy day yesterday - 3 separate deliveries arrived, and two of them consisted of mostly new things for the shop.
First thing we had a large box from Travis, full of lovely dressing up clothes. There are some really sparkly new fairy sets from only £12.50 - my favourite is the Garden Set, but the Midnight Set looks fantastic in 'real life' too...We've put the Velvet Plum outfit in the window as it is very special - perhaps next week we'll replace it with the Starcatcher Princess outfit.
No sooner had we sat down with a welcome cup of coffee, than two boxes arrived full of books, games and snap cards from Usborne Books. We scanned them all in to our stock control system and then set about reorganising the shop displays to show off the new dressing up things to their best advantage.
And then our new pocket money toys for boys arrived - a whole stand full of die-cast model cars, trucks and planes. Well, when I say the stand arrived - the bits to make up the stand arrived and we had to put it together. Luckily Tony was here at the time - it is a very sturdy, German-made stand and was quite heavy to lift and manouevre, but now all the vehicles have been scanned in and put on the stand, and it looks really great.
There are over 100 different cars and trunks: the cheapest vehicles are only £1.99, and the most expensive is only £4.99. There are gift sets of 5 vehicles for just £9.99. The vehicles are available on the website, but there are no pictures of them as yet - we are awaiting high-resolution images from our supplier, but hopefully they will be here within the week. If you liked Matchbox or Dinky cars then you'll love these. |
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Monday, 08 February 2010 10:29 |
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Spent yesterday at the Spring Fair at the NEC in Birmingham, and we have come back fired with enthusiasm - we have found some great new toys for the shop!
We have been looking for pocket-money toys for boys from the ages of about 4-10 for a while now, and have found just the thing - they should be in the shop by the end of this week - just in time for half-term...
We've also found a really interesting new range of toys, new to the UK, that will be coming in March - great design, sustainability and at a reasonable price - watch this space...
We visited old friends too - Travis have some beautiful new designs for their dressing-up clothes and have expanded them to include baby sizes. We have ordered some of the new designs, which should be in the shop by March, and the whole range will also be available on the website within the next couple of weeks for direct delivery from Travis.
Marbel also have some interesting new lines - we particularly liked the gardening tools, made in Sweden from wood and metal, that will be available in April, and the new Plan farm range. A new mobile crane should be really popular as well.
The whole feeling at Spring Fair was busy and vibrant - such a contrast to the Toy Fair, which we visited in London a couple of weeks ago. Toy Fair is organised by the British Toy Retailers Association (BTRA), and we found very little there of interest to us - the emphasis there is on marketing and licensing and the toy is just incidental. The received wisdom is that toys are sold by association with some celebrity, film or TV series regardless of how well they are designed - most aren't well designed, and are as cheaply produced as the maker thinks they can get away with. Apparently members of the BTRA (which doesn't include us) experienced a 10% drop in sales last year, which is not surprising given the quality of toys they have been trying to sell.
We believe the future is in quality toys which provide good play value over several years, and so far there seem to be plenty of people who agree! |
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