 |  News22.03.2018 // 5 Key steps for starting a toy business.Start-up companies keep the toy industry fresh. One of the most rewarding things to observe is seeing a start-up toy company attend toy fair, and then grow year by year until the company is a fully fledged established toy company. Needless to say though, there are significantly more companies that fall by the wayside than become successful. There are several key steps in making a successful start-up toy company. The checklist below helps all movers and shakers planning to start or in the middle of starting a toy company: 1. Research
People wanting to get into the toy business often ask what they should research before they start…and the answer is everything! A really robust research phase is so important. You could argue that many innovators just invented something new or cool, or reworked an existing idea, but you can’t count on hitting the mark with that approach. How can it hurt to understand the retail market place, the current trends, what kids are doing/how they spend their time etc? 2. Feedback and sense check
One fact is that that the vast majority of new product inventors/wannabee toy companies that have already developed a product missed something fundamental about kids, about the toy business or retail etc. Most of new products from toy industry outsiders are obviously flawed in some way which could easily have been addressed if feedback had been obtained before they developed the product! The most successful toy people are great at getting feedback or sense checking their ideas and product concepts before investing their money in a product. 3. Innovation and origination
There are many ways to develop ideas and concepts: True originality vs tweaking the formula. If you are trying to invent something nobody has ever seen anything like before, the chances are you are not inventing something likely to be commercially successful. There are certain formulae for concepts, themes, play patterns etc. The true creatives out there may disagree, but a new twist on an established formula is much more likely to succeed. Fun factor
In the end toys are supposed to be fun. Good new concepts enhance the fun factor. Seems like an obvious point, but there are hundreds of very clever product concepts which do something beneficial or clever, but are not fun. Children are driven by simpler need states than adults. The easiest way to make something appeal to kids is to make it fun!
In built marketing concept
Often the most successful concepts have an in-built marketing mechanism or/word of mouth driver. 4. Sell, sell, sell
Often new toy companies get really perplexed by all the details of the toy business i.e. manufacturing, safety standards etc. The reality is none does matter if you don’t ever sell any product. Everything relies upon the sales process, and while you need to do enough work to have a viable product concept, the reality is that even the biggest toy companies do not fully develop and manufacture products until they have sold it. There are two realities of the sales process in the toy business: Successful companies get highly skilled and effective at selling based on a prototype or mock up.
Selling is 1% inspiration and 99% grind. It takes constant grinding effort to achieve any sales in the toy business. The annual selling cycle takes an age, and the progress made per cycle is limited, so to succeed in toys you need to be able to grind away day after day, year after year. If your company doesn’t do that you are very unlikely to succeed. There are very few short cuts, and no magic tricks. Even if you use a distributor model you still need to first recruit the distributors and then sell to them… and they see hundreds or even thousands of products per year.
Realistic timelines are important. Sorry for disappointing all those companies who expect everything to happen in a few months or even just one year – it won’t! The minimum time to establish a new toy company in one market would be ca 3 years, even with money to invest & hiring toy industry insiders. If you are an outsider with no experience, why would it be any quicker…? Expect a 3-5 year journey to get anywhere in the toy business! 5. Nurture & Deliver!
The toy industry is a relatively small industry. Those companies who think they can burn and pillage in order to make a quick buck don’t tend to last very long. You will need to keep selling to the same customers year after year, so your success is completely tied to their success. Don’t for one second make the mistake of thinking therefore that you should give them everything they ask for, but you do need to do enough to ensure they invite you back to pitch your product range for the next selling cycle! Broader relationships are really important in the toy industry, because you see the same faces year after year, and as you go around each country in the world, there are only so many options for distribution partners or retail in each market. Burning bridges therefore is a silly thing to do! Focus on the key factor for success
There are of course other factors or areas which are important when seeking to establish a start-up toy company, but these 5 factors are key. The most important factor to focus on is: Sell, Sell, Sell! Since nothing much happens until you persuade someone to buy from you. Even those successful companies developing really cool ‘must have’ products tend to be just as effective at selling as they are at developing the next big thing.  | 20.03.2018 // Encouraging entrepreneurship in children through toys!Being an entrepreneur is a real deal nowadays. Parents and children really value these kinds of learning-playing proposals. From toys that teach children how to design and create products to games that teach them how to build their own company. The fact is that most children do not understand where things come from. They are surprised and amazed when they discover what they use in their daily life is thought up and manufactured by real people and real companies. A great way to show them these concepts is, of course, through play. Toys to pretend to create your own business
Schools all over the world are adapting their curriculum to focus it better on learning competencies and skills of the 21st century (The four Cs: Collaboration, Communication, Critical thinking, and Creativity). In general, the goal for applying this education is for children to improve their possibilities to have a more successful life and career considering the characteristics of society and the workplace nowadays. Experts point out that acquiring these skills will be crucial for the next generation of entrepreneurs. No doubt, most parents and educators see a tremendous value in raising children with the tools and confidence to start their own business. And this translates into an important opportunity for the industry, an innovation approach some companies are already taking advantage of. For instance, just a few years ago Fashion Angels was quite a pioneer encouraging girls with its line of products “It’s my biz: become a girl entrepreneur”. Recently, they have developed new concepts under the name “Znapeez”, including activities to design and create multiple products, this time for both boys and girls. Other businesses are implementing “the entrepreneur factor” in their communication strategies. A great example is the video promotion for the game Osmo Pizza Co. in which a girl starts her own pizza shop. This original game consists in managing a pizza shop, preparing pizzas and giving change in a tangible way, while considering the request of virtual characters. The company presents the product as a way to encourage entrepreneurship, and that is how parents and children are perceiving it, even if the main idea is actually based on a quite traditionally way of play pretending (in a more modern technological way, of course!).
Going a bit further with the concept of entrepreneurship, Oink Games presented the game Startups, Believe in your future! at the Spielwarenmesse® 2018. This is a game in which the players have to invest in different companies to increase their capital. A game that simulates the real way investors support innovators, teaching players to analyze the potential of each company and the moves of the rivals in order to become the biggest shareholder and succeed. Toys to create real products
There is another interesting and creative approach to this trend: toys to teach children how to invent and even create real things by themselves. Toys such as The Extraordinaires Design Studio, a game to introduce children age 8 and up the concepts behind designing products for a specific target. A realistic approach to how professionals come up with products, even if the targets are fantasy characters. Through games we can also show children how to actually produce, market and even sell products. Some of the best toys I have seen are kits with instructions and materials that lead the child to make something using their own creativity. I specially like the awarded products from Write Brain Books, a company that provides children with the possibility to write their own stories and publish them both physically and online. A similar concept is behind the product My Comic Book - Create Your Own Comic! by Lulu Junior, also awarded with various recognitions. Conclusion
In a society where being an entrepreneur is more important than ever, games and toys provide children with their first resources to acquire these important skills for their future. Toys with this perspective can definitely be very appealing for both parents and children. For toy companies they mean an attractive business opportunity! | 07.03.2018 // Happy Women's Day!Dear Ladies, We wish you a lot of Happiness, Joy, Kindness and High Spirits today and always! Be beautiful, young, desired and loved 😀 . | 06.03.2018 // Achieving customer loyaltyAs children grow, their needs and wants change. This opens the door to tremendous opportunities for the toy trade, as the current crop of parents is more amenable than ever to individual recommendations directing them towards age-appropriate toys for their children. Lifecycle recommendations and loyalty programmes play an important role in this. Hardly any target group responds better to measures aimed at ensuring customer loyalty than parents. They have clearly predictable needs when it comes to buying toys for their children, which means there is opportunity for the toy trade to turn them into loyal repeat purchasers. At the same time, today’s parents are more confused than ever by all of the advice and options when looking for the right toys. And this is precisely where toy retailers can impress parents through what is known as life cycle recommendations – completely tailored toy recommendations based on their children’s ages. Building up a database for life cycle recommendationsHowever, you have to know your target groups well for this, especially how old the parents’ children are right now. Online retailers have a number of ways of approaching this, such as analysing their customers’ shopping baskets or asking for the age of the children during the ordering process. But brick-and-mortar retailers can also use newsletters designed accordingly to find out how old their customers’ children are at that time. For data protection reasons, however, customers must always be informed about the use of their data and consent to this. There are also interesting possibilities for life cycle recommendations on Facebook, as advertisements placed there can target parents directly with age-appropriate toys. Only parents with kids in the specific age group are then shown the relevant advertisement. Disney has perfected the principle of life cycle recommendations. The entire customer journey is supported, from infancy through to the teenage years, and parents receive regular hints and tips on which of the company’s toys are right at that time. This offers Disney a dual return, as over time both parents and children become loyal fans. Customer loyalty as a success factorLoyalty programmes are another interesting option for toy retailers. Using these, retailers can gradually turn first-time buyers into repeat customers and recommenders, thereby saving valuable resources. However, you need more than bonus points and customer cards to build customer loyalty. Customers want services targeted individually at them which create value for them. This is especially crucial nowadays: the more similar the ranges offered by retailers, the more a retailer has to engage with customers in order to hang on to them in the long run. Small surprises are often enough for a lasting effect. Personalised gifts which go beyond typical promotional items show appreciation for customers who shop in your store. When it comes to toys, small lifestyle accessories or (collectors’) items which give children a feeling of having also gained a little "trophy" from the shopping experience are some suitable ideas. Services which provide uncomplicated support to parents with any problems, at every contact point, especially add a lot of value. This relates to product availability, delivery times, payment options and complaints in particular. Offering a service that people are not yet familiar with is a real trump card. One such service that is still not widespread is offering a gift receipt, for example. This is included with the gift and allows the recipient to return the product without needing the sales receipt. By then providing advice, retailers can help with the search for the right product and maybe, with just a little effort, even acquire new customers who are impressed enough with the wide range of services to return again.
>. | 27.02.2018 // Do Dads now have a say in their kids’ play?Raising a child is no longer for mums only. Men, too, are becoming more and more involved in the education of their offspring. And it goes without saying that such fatherly commitment impacts the choice of toys. Who decides on what to play?The choice of toys that make it into a children’s room and who decides on them depends largely on the child’s age. The older the child, the more autonomous its decision about what it wants to have around. Whereas initially, adults play the decisive role when it comes to choosing a product, a child will develop personal preferences once it goes to nursery school or Kindergarten. Playing and toys, next to being a pleasant way to pass time and learn, also express a child’s affiliation with a peer group. Toys reflect valuesA parent’s taste and intention alone are not decisive – a child’s social environment is increasingly important. The decision either in favour or against a licenced product or product category is for the child alone to make: “I wish to identify with a specific group around me – and distinguish myself from another group to the same extent.” But still, this decision is naturally not entirely separate from the parents’ values and preferences. They share their conception of the world through their education. Based on the parents’ imprint, a child will later develop its own ideas as to what it likes to surround itself with. A mixture between influences from parents, peers, role models and media are the result. Dads show greater responsibilityDads are ever more aware of their role and example function and impart their own values to the child through the way they live. This perception of educational responsibility is becoming visible also by the growing share of fathers taking parental leave. Media and manufacturers focus on fathersThe media landscape equally reflects the fatherly interest in education and thus also in the child’s product environment: men’s magazines such as Men’s Health publish special issues dedicated to fathers and thereby promote how to combine the role of being a man with that of being a father. And even toy makers target product lines for small children to fathers. The soft toy maker Sigikid, for example, launched the “Papa & Me” line which tries to bridge the gap between stereotypical masculinity and an infant’s cuteness. Play time is quality time Robert Franken, Digital & Gender Consultant, aptly makes the connection between daddy-time spent with the child and the choice of toys: Men should spend time with their offspring to make sound, informed decisions as a father, and this applies even and especially when it comes to toys. It is a personal matter close to my heart that my son is not confronted with gender clichés and obsolete role models from his early childhood days on. Be it mum or dad, every time parents play with their children, they convey their own biography and values to their offspring, also through the product environment which they choose. In light of multi-media gaming worlds that children of digital natives grow up with, the bright spot is that this highlights more bridges towards ‘digital’ parent-child bonding: The new generation of parents know their digital game worlds and gaming. That is a definite advantage of today’s dads over those of past decades whose children moved in completely different game worlds to the ones they experienced in their childhood. Enticing dads to embrace an active father roleTrue: The process of involving dads in the decision-process is still in its infancy. But the trend towards more daddy-involvement is clearly noticeable. It is thus now the job of toy makers to help them reach the next phase so that male role models adopt their educational influence in the future with great joy and in a positive way. Internal studies by toy makers emphasise this, says Marco Krahl. “Their findings are the same: Fathers contribute more these days to the decision on which toys to buy than they did ten or twenty years ago.”
| 23.02.2018 // NY Toy Fair 2018: Toy Association to reveal Top Toy Trends for 2018The organisation, the team behind the annual event held in New York’s Jacob K Javits Convention Centre, will present its forecasts at this year’s exclusive Toy Trends Briefing. The Toy Association is preparing to reveal its thoughts on the toy trends set to dominate Christmas sales this year at the 115 North American International Toy Fair. The organization, the team behind the annual event held in New York’s Jacob K Javits Convention Centre, will present its forecasts at this year’s exclusive Toy Trends Briefing. Toy Association trend experts will provide analyses of each trend and give live product demos using toys and games from the show floor. A Q&A session will follow. The session is open to all Toy Fair guests and will be held in Room 109, Hall 1E at the Jacob K Javits Convention Center, New York. Founded in 1916, the Toy Association is the not for profit trade association representing all businesses involved in creating and delivering toys and youth entertainment products for kids of all ages. It aims to lead the health and growth of the US toy industry, worth around $107billion. | 16.02.2018 // One Click Retail releases Amazon toy sales insightsOne Click Retail has released an analysis of Amazon's 2017 toy sales results, showing some interesting trends in the platform's performance. Toys sales generated an estimated $4.5 billion in the US in 2017, showing an increase of 12 per cent over last year's results. "By Amazon's standards, 12 per cent growth is relatively low, but this occurred in a year when total US toy sales stagnated," the report by OCR's VP sales and marketing, Nathan Rigby. "Major brick-and-mortar retail chains declared bankruptcy while Amazon's market share kept growing and is now responsible for roughly 1 out of every 6 dollars spent on toys in America." European results in Europe were more pronounced, with Germany's toy sales growing 42 per cent, after flatlining the previous year. While toy sales generally declined in France, Amazon sales shot up by 78 per cent. One Click Retail attributes a major part of this success to the increased popularity in robot toys, a category which grew by 32 per cent in 2017. "Though it remains a relatively small category with only $50 million in estimated sales, last year's two bestselling toys were both intelligent robots for kids: Cozmo by Anki and LEGO Mindstorms EV3," continues the report. However, robot toys' popularity may have plateaued, as Anki's Cozmo has dropped off the bestseller list and few new products have entered the market. NERF enjoyed a strong year, bolstering the Active Play category. "This is consistent with an overall trend toward active play," details the report. "The fastest-growing Toy category of 2017 was Outdoor & Sports Toys with 46 per cent growth led by the NERF gun and the Little Tikes Jump 'n Slide Bouncer (number four Toy of 2017). This is the countertrend to the touchscreen technologies that have begun to dominate the toy industry, and suggests that parents are making an effort to encourage more physical activity." The report concludes by highlighting the growth of traditional toys and the pre-school sector. Dolls with a collectable aspect are hot right now thanks to the rise of MGA's L.O.L. Surprise line, while pre-school and infant toys have climbed from number three to become Amazon's largest toy category with $650 million in estimated sales in 2017. | 14.02.2018 // Happy Valentine's Day 2018!Valentine’s Day, also called St. Valentine’s Day, holiday (February 14) when lovers express their affection with greetings and gifts. The holiday has origins in the Roman festival of Lupercalia, held in mid-February. The festival, which celebrated the coming of spring, included fertility rites and the pairing off of women with men by lottery. At the end of the 5th century, Pope Gelasius I replaced Lupercalia with St. Valentine’s Day. It came to becelebrated as a day of romance from about the 14th century. Although there were several Christian martyrs named Valentine, the day may have taken its name from a priest who was martyred about 270 CE by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus. According to legend, the priest signed a letter "from your Valentine" to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended and, by some accounts, healed from blindness. Other accounts hold that it was St. Valentine of Terni, a bishop, for whom the holiday was named, though it is possible the two saints were actually one person. Another common legend states that St. Valentine defied the emperor’s orders and secretly married couples to spare the husbands from war. It is for this reason that his feast day is associated with love. Formal messages, or valentines, appeared in the 1500s, and by the late 1700s commercially printed cards were being used. The first commercial valentines in the United States were printed in the mid-1800s. Valentines commonly depict Cupid, the Roman god of love, along with hearts, traditionally the seat of emotion. Because it was thought that the avian mating season begins in mid-February, birds also became a symbol of the day. Traditional gifts include candy and flowers, particularly red roses, a symbol of beauty and love. The day is popular in the United States as well as in Britain, Canada, and Australia, and it is also celebrated in other countries, including Argentina, France, Mexico, and South Korea. In the Philippines, it is the most common wedding anniversary, and mass weddings of hundreds of couples are not uncommon on that date. The holiday has expanded to expressions of affection among relatives and friends. Many schoolchildren exchange valentines with one another on this day!  | 08.02.2018 // Greetings from Ranok-Creative at the International Toy Fair in Nuremberg!!!These were five impressive days full of new acquaintances, business contacts and clients' visits! We are thankful to each of you and we are looking forward to next year's show! With best regards,
Ranok-Creative Team | 25.01.2018 // HOT NEWS!!! Spielwarenmesse International Toy Fair NürnbergÑompany "Ranok-Creative" is announcing that upcoming Spielwarenmesse 2018 will take place in Nurnberg from January, 31 till February, 4. We are pleased to inform you that we are among the exhibitors and would like to invite you to visit our stand E-20 in Hall 10.0.  |
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