The more things change...

A psychotherapist counsels participants on how to deal emotionally with the pressures of survival.

A panel of retail and wholesale professionals gives tips on how to survive in those niches. A university professor expounds about how to survive financially in difficult times. A group of manufacturers swap survival stories at a workshop.

Yikes! Sounds like one of our industry conferences.

Sign me up. Sorry, too late. And by 30 years, no less.

Aptly titled, “Survivor” (ring a bell?), the conference described here was actually held by the former Toy Manufacturers of America—predecessor to the Toy Industry Association—back in May 1975.

Yes, as the adage goes...the more things change the more they stay the same.

Here’s some of the advice from one retailer that came out of that conference, as reported in the June issue of Playthings in 1975, a recession year.

Good communication, the retailer commented, is one of the most effective means of strengthening the toy industry.

We especially like this advice about good communication—probably because it’s what we do.

And, yes, we agree that good communication is one of the most effective means of strengthening the industry.

When professionals are fully informed and engaged, they are armed to make sound decisions.

So when we at Playthings communicate—whether it be about trends, new product or even with updates about ongoing issues—we are doing our job.

And these days we get to communicate in multiple mediums: print, online and via e-mail, allowing us to do an even more comprehensive job than ever before, with delivery that is almost real time.

While some question the need for such extensive coverage, others embrace it. As far as we’re concerned: we’re just doing our job and accepting the new tools we have with which to do it.

No doubt, the advent of newsprint had the same impact on communities used to daily reports that started with the clang of a town crier’s bell.

At the 1975 TMA conference, this same retailer also shared some of his own company’s business strategy. The executive said a list of objectives had been set in three priority areas. Two included relationships with vendors and relationships with customers.

Hey, we really like the way this guy thinks!

Relationships are a high priority here, too. And we have them with everyone in our business. We say our business, because we believe it is ours as well as anyone else’s. Heck, we are older than almost everybody out there—including toy fairs, toy districts and toy companies (and probably have just as many scars to prove it).

So it may bear repeating something we wrote in January: “We do not represent or cater to any one segment, group or idea—or we could never have lived to be a centurion. We are about the business of the toy industry—all of it.”

As for that executive with ideas about communication and relationships...

The advice was given by a young Target exec, Lew Kennedy, who at the time, forecast that the company expected its most profitable year yet in the toy department. Little did he know.

But we do know. The strategy paid off alright.

Communication, relationships—words to live by and work by, as far as we’re concerned.