PreschoolNews.net speaks to a number of suppliers and retailers to find out how they’ve adapted over the past four months. Today: Inside Out Toys.
PreschoolNews.net/Progressive Preschool has been busy catching up with preschool suppliers and retailers to find out more about how they adapted their businesses over the past four months to cope with lockdown.
In addition, we also asked what concerns they have going forward as restrictions continue to ease.
Today: Nikki Garner, marketing director, Inside Out Toys.
“Our trade business all but ground to a halt overnight, as our trade customers were having to close their doors to shoppers. But some, who either already had an online presence or managed to adapt quickly, were able to start offering home deliveries, so trade orders started to come in again. We have used this ‘down’ time to focus on our strategy to become the best distributor of sustainable toys in the UK – and succeeded in adding the Tikiri brand of natural rubber and organic cotton baby toys to our portfolio last month.
Very recently we managed to finalise an agreement to become the UK distributor for Viking Toys and its Ecoline of environmentally friendly ‘plastic’ toys made from sugar cane which we are sure our customers will love. We also have another exciting distributor agreement in the pipeline, which we hope to be able to announce in the next few weeks.
Sadly, many traditional toy and gift shops may not survive this pandemic, as the impact on the high street shop will have been huge. We believe that those who have been able to adapt to selling online for example, will survive. Smaller, more agile businesses are likely to be able to react more quickly to the challenges ahead, as we have done. To help customers selling on their own websites, we are making all our product and lifestyle images available to download via Dropbox.
Customers continue to search out environmentally friendly alternatives to cheap, plastic toys and we believe that focusing on sustainability is the way forward. Buying habits are definitely changing as consumers become more and more aware of what they purchase and its impact on the world we live in. Surprisingly (you might think), some of our more expensive items, like the Studio Circus Baby Walker, have continued to sell well during lockdown.
From a business perspective, you could perhaps forget how important good staff are to the running of your business. We are fortunate to have a fantastic small, but dedicated team around us who have made a difficult time so much easier to bear. Hopefully, many bigger companies will also realise that their people are their strength – never more so, than during a crisis.”
This feature originally appeared in the June 2020 edition of Progressive Preschool. To read the full publication, click on this link.
