Neighborhood Toy Stores Have Reasons To Celebrate This Holiday Season

Amy Saldanha already knows this will be a good holiday season for her two toy stores in Minnesota.

“Families are in search of joy more than ever,” said Saldanha, CEO and founder of the Kiddywampus stores located in the Minneapolis suburbs of Hopkins and Chanhassen. Her stores are already beating results for 2019, the last pre-pandemic holiday season.

Last year Saldanha saw customers shopping early because they were worried about supply chain shortages. This year, “I think they just want to be happy,” she said.

While the country’s biggest toy sellers – HasbroHAS
and MattelMAT
– are worrying about inflation and its impact on the holidays, the smallest toy sellers -the independent toy stores – expect to have lots of reasons to celebrate this year.

Many independent toy stores had their best sales years in 2020 and last year, and are optimistic the customers they acquired during the pandemic will continue to support them this year, according to the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association (ASTRA).

Because of the growing interest in and support for local toy shops, ASTRA this year has expanded its traditional November event – Neighborhood Toy Store Day – into a monthlong event, with a different theme for each of the four weeks of November.

Independent toy stores quickly realized they had to change and adapt when the pandemic hit. The improvements they added helped drive record sales for many neighborhood toy shops during the pandemic, ASTRA President Sue Warfield said.

“The ones that did extremely well realized they had to do things differently,” Warfield said. “They had to up their online game, they had to do curbside, they had to do FaceTime live from the store, do deliveries locally, and they did that.”

Independent toy stores also benefitted from a shift in consumer sentiment during the pandemic toward shopping local, and a desire to make connections with store owners who knew their names, Warfield said.

“People are saying ‘I can walk in and they know my kids and they know me’,” she said. During the pandemic, consumers “really needed to feel a sense of community and connection, and that really is what specialty can offer,” Warfield said.

ASTRA doesn’t have an exact count of independent toy shops in the United States, but it believes the numbers have increased during the pandemic. The association has grown from about 600 members (a member might own more than one toy store) to roughly 800 in recent years, Warfield said.

The association estimates the number of independent toy stores, including stores that may also sell books, gifts, or other items, at between 1,500 and 2,500.

Hasbro and Mattel executives, in earnings calls this month, warned that inflation and economic concerns could cause consumers to spend less on toys, and force retailers to offer discounts to drive sales.

Independent stores often have more protection against those concerns because their customers are less price sensitive, Warfield said.

“If you are a specialty toy shopper you tend to look more for quality and service than cost,” she said.

Specialty customers are looking for services such as knowledgeable staff that can recommend the right toy, gift wrapping, and curated selections of toys that will provide lasting play value, Warfield said.

“They don’t want to pay more than they should – everybody is paying attention to prices – but they’re looking for that service factor,” she said.

Neighborhood Toy Store Month, which kicks off November 1, will have four themes for the four weeks of the month: The focus of the first week will be STEM toys (science, technology, engineering, math), followed by arts and crafts, family game nights, and “making way for play.”

The final week’s theme, “making way for play”, Warfield said, is intended to emphasize how important it is to make time for play in children’s lives, and how play can ease anxiety.

Warfield said she doesn’t expect the opening of 451 toy shops in Macy’s stores this month to significantly impact the independent toy stores.

“Anytime you have more opportunities to buy toys elsewhere it can take a bite, but in the long run they’ve seen this before,” she said. “We’ve had TargetTGT
, WalmartWMT
, Amazon for years, we’ve had department stores come and go with toy sections, and the specialty toy stores still survive because they focus on what they do best,” she said.

Kiddywampus owner Amy Saldanha believes small toy stores have an advantage over many retailers in that they can do things to build a genuine connection with customers.

“We can be silly and quirky,” said Saldanha, whose stores this weekend held a Halloween costume contest with a modern twist, asking customers to post their costumes on Instagram with a #kiddywampus tag.

Local toy stores, Saldanha said, can provide that “big experience” for a child – the trip to the neighborhood store to pick out a toy after getting a good report card, or for a special occasion, or to make their holiday wish list. And parents know they can trust her when she tells them a toy will sell out fast, or that she has plenty in stock.

That connection with customers is why ASTRA and its members are expecting a good holiday season, Warfield said.

Specialty toy store in the days before online shopping used to mean a store that could get exclusive products not easily found elsewhere. Now, Warfield said, “the specialty part is the feeling you get when you come in the store.”