Good news: New growth for the toy industry

If you look around the toy retail landscape, you can see a number of green shoots coming up. A few months ago we learned that Spencer’s Gifts was putting toy stores in the malls for the Christmas selling season. Then we learned that Barnes & Noble had introduced new adult and children’s toy sections in its flagship store with plans to expand its toy presence in the rest of the chain. Now we learn that Sears is going back into the toy business and Borders is expanding its listings as well.

Let’s see what that looks like in terms of doors:

Borders               525 stores

Barnes & Noble 680 stores

Sears                   855 stores

Spencer’s Gifts  500 stores

Total                  2,560 stores

That is a total of 2,560 new or amplified doors to sell and most of them offering a diversity of product. In the past few years, the demise of chains like KB and Zany Brainy coupled with the reduction in store counts for Toys R Us and Kmart has have meant hard times for many manufacturers and sales representatives. So, by any standard, this is great news for an industry that has, for the last few years, seen constant erosion in its retail customer base.

Why is this happening? I’ll write about that in my next posting.

In the mean time, hold on Toy Nation, if Spring is here Summer can’t be far behind.