Sarah Hanson, owner of Hoiti Toyti in Bromsgrove talks to PreschoolNews.net about the issues facing an independent toy retailer during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Firstly – how are you and your team – we hope safe and well?
It is only myself working at the shop at the moment and I am as well as can be expected thank you!
What is the current state of play for your shop – are you managing to stay open for online and telephone orders?
Obviously our store is closed, however luckily last year we started work on our new website giftuk.com which launched in December; so we are fortunate that customers can order through this. We are offering local delivery and we have the ability to offer Hermes delivery for customers further afield, as we have a local shop which is able to do this contactless.
What is the current demand looking like?
We are not as busy as we would like, however we are taking several orders everyday which we are really grateful for.
Have you seen any spike in demand for any particular product?
Yes definitely! Activity toys have been really popular, especially jigsaw puzzles. We are selling a lot of 1000 piece puzzles to keep whole families occupied I think!
Are there any suppliers that are going out of their way to help at the moment?
All of our suppliers have been in regular contact with us which has been a really great support. Some of them have been able to lower their MOQs which really helps us out when we don’t need huge quantities of products at the moment.
How much is social media helping during this time?
It has been so important for us over the past couple of weeks. We have really increased our social media content since the lockdown and this has led to a 140% increase in traffic to our website, so I know it is definitely working!
What is your (hopefully positive) outlook for when we reach the other side of this? Are you hopeful for a busy summer with consumers heading back to the high street?
One thing to come out of this is how people have really got behind small local businesses and without this public support we would not be able to function at all at the moment. The impression I get from our customers is that they really see the struggles faced by shops on the high street right now and they want to get behind them. I think once things go back to norma’ although I think consumers will generally have less disposable income for a while, they will continue to support local businesses which will be such a great outcome from all of this.
