Tips for the Trade: Rev up holiday sales with “Best Toys” lists
By Kathleen McHugh -- Playthings, 11/3/2009 11:07:00 AM
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Playthings.com |
Emma is the new and very excited owner of a Melissa & Doug Shopping Cart (pictured), and soon her family’s living room will be transformed into a pretend grocery store full of pretend products. She’ll exercise her imagination and her muscles, she’ll think about how to organize her store, she will make up rules for how her store will work, and she may even make signs so other “customers” will understand the Emma grocery system. The toy will fuel Emma’s play for hours on end.
It’s the season for top toy lists, so it’s no surprise that the popular Melissa & Doug shopping cart has won its share of awards and shows up on the Best Toys for Kids list recently released by the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association (ASTRA). Lists to guide buyers in selecting toys come in all varieties: toys chosen by toy experts (grown-ups, that is); toys voted by parents as this year’s best; toys tested by kids; and toys on lists that don’t quite say how they were selected.
Do best toys lists help sell toys?
“Best toy lists can be a very useful sales tool for specialty retailers,” maintains Nancy Stanek, owner of the Toys Etcetera stores in Chicago and Evanston, Ill. “A good percentage of our shoppers walk through our door because they know they can get reliable, knowledgeable help in choosing toys—something they won’t find at big box stores. So they are willing to hear suggestions, and if the toy has the so-called endorsement effect of appearing on a list, it’s much easier to close the sale.”
How can retailers use best toys lists to support holiday sales? Stanek offers these tips:
• Focus on a list or two that best fits your store’s positioning in your local marketplace. The Toy of the Year awards, a program of the Toy Industry Association, and Family Fun’s Top Ten Toys, for example, feature primarily mass market toys made by large manufacturers. This type of “best list” is largely irrelevant for a small independent store, points out Stanek. More appropriate is a list that features specialty toys exclusively, like the ASTRA Best Toys for Kids list. “Independent retailers tend to eschew all the electronic gizmo razzmatazz that you find in many mass market toys,” says Stanek. “We’re more interested in what the child can do than in what the toy can do, and we need a list that reflects that.”
• Showcase the toys on the list in a special display. Draw attention to the “best toys” by creating a special display that shoppers can identify quickly. If shoppers have heard about the list through your advertising, on your website, in newspaper articles, or through Mommy blogs, make it easy and obvious for them to find what they came for.
• Use your “best toys” display as an active sales tool. Organize your “best toys” area so it gives shoppers a framework for thinking about what they want in a toy. Consider signage that introduces the concept of different types of play and a “balanced toy box”—one that promotes learning through play in all major developmental areas (cognitive and language, imaginative, social and emotional, physical, and fine motor). Label the types of toys in a way that mirrors the organization of the store as a whole, so shoppers easily can find other toys in the same category. Use the display to start conversations with undecided shoppers.
• Urge seasonal staff to master the toys on your “best list” first—and thoroughly. The “best toys” are a great base for building the confidence of your less experienced, temporary staff. It gives them an easy way to approach customers or to answer questions authoritatively. All staff can always feel good about recommending a “best toys” product.
• Tell customers why you prefer this “best toys” list over others—whether they ask or not. Specialty retailers are experts. It’s a big part of your competitive positioning. Your customers have been reading about “best toys” lists in parenting magazines, online, and anywhere else they get parenting information. Assume they know about all the other lists. You are the person in your community who knows probably more about toys than anyone else, so share your expertise and state succinctly why you prefer the list or lists you feature in your store. “What sells me on ASTRA’s Best Toys for Kids list,” says Stanek, “is that retailers who watch kids play in their stores six or seven days a week choose the toys. They talk with mothers and fathers and grandparents and teachers six or seven days a week. They know the specialty space backward and forward. They care about kids and about toys with high play values. I use this list because it’s the most in touch with real kids and real families, and it’s the most national.”
• Make “best toys” available for kids to play with. Nothing sells a toy like seeing a child fall in love with it. “If you’re using ASTRA’s list, these toys have proved to be engaging for kids in stores around the country or they wouldn’t be on the list,” Stanek says. “Chances are they will attract kids in your store, too. So put them out and let them sell themselves.”
• Do some local publicity about the list to help draw attention and traffic to your store. Reporters are always looking for good stories, and the holidays are no different. Stories about toys have a special appeal during the holiday season, and the “top tips” and “best lists” genre is always in style. As a toy expert—and perhaps the person in the community with the most expertise about toys—reach out to local journalists who cover family, entertainment, lifestyle, or educational issues. Offer to help the reporter walk through your “best toys” and why each is considered a great toy. You’ll get a mention of your store, positioning of yourself as a local toy expert, and traffic to the store to see the toys. ASTRA provides a template press release about its Best Toys for Kids list to its member retailers every year and other organizations may have something similar available about their lists.
• Don’t forget to put the list on your website and in your newsletter! Whatever you are doing to reach out to your customer base this holiday season, suggests Stanek, include your “best toys” list. Busy as you are during the season, it’s a quick and easy way to get concrete suggestions out there to your customers and prospects—and hopefully entice them into the store.
Best toys: Another useful tool for the sales tool box
In a year when all toy retailers need to deploy all the traffic-generating, revenue-enhancing strategies they have available, be sure to add the appropriate “best toys” lists to your store’s “best tools” list for the upcoming holiday season. The season is about selling, and whatever best toys list you use, watch it liven up your sales pitch, build your staff’s confidence, and rev up sales.
About the Author: Kathleen McHugh is president of the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association, Chicago
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