Let’s Talk: The coming war for Moms

We have for a number of years been losing children.  First we lost the boys to computer games. Then we lost the girls to cell phones and other Tween delights. After that we lost the Dads as those Mario playing boys grew up and had children of their own.

We held on, however, to the bedrock of consumer discretionary spending on children: Mothers. As long as we had the moms directing traffic we were still okay.

Well, that may be coming to an end. This Christmas Wii came and stole them away. Moms love Wii. Why, because it brings the entire family together in one place and one time. Wii is fast becoming the 21^st century version of the hearth. Families congregate around it and engage each other in competition, laughter and good old fashioned fun. 

Its not that the traditional toy industry does not deliver a similar experience through board games, it does. In fact, you can bring the family together around a board game for significantly less cost and without having to plug in.

We have, however, been losing market share for several years. Perhaps one reason is that the game aisle is too boring. Not because there is a lack of great game product. No, it is due to retailers filling it with numerous variations of the same games and thereby limiting selection. How often would you go to the book store if up to 25% of what you saw was various versions of Gone With The Wind which you had already read 20 times.

Losing kids was bad; losing dads was worse. Losing Mom’s could be perching us on the precipice of a bigger and longer term problem. 

Bottom line, the war for moms may be fought out in the board game department. Retailers are the front line. We need them to rethink how they merchandise. They don’t have to do away with all variations of the same game. They just need to make the game department bigger so they can deliver as much variety and therefore excitement as possible. A game department with lots of firepower will ultimately draw more shoppers, drive up sales and benefit manufacturers and retailers by growing not just individual slices of the pie but the whole pie. Retailers will benefit and manufactures will as well.