Playing At Business – Toy Industry Podcast Releases New Episodes Our toy & game business podcast ‘Playing At Business’ has just released new episodes as outlined below. The podcast offers a mix of industry insights and analysis from our very own Steve Reece, combined with interviews with leading toy & board game industry figures. If…
Playing At Business – Our Toy & Game Business Podcast If you haven’t checked out our toy & game business podcast, the links are below: https://playingatbusiness.libsyn.com/ On the podcast we look at trends in the toy & game business, analyse the market and also interview interesting people in the business. Our reach across all our…
Kids Brand Insight are delighted to announce the launch of their new Consultancy service packages under the Toy Co Growth Booster Program. The program will see Kids Brand Insight offer a range of effective Consultancy services to facilitate the growth of small to medium sized companies. Elements covered in the service include: company strategy, distribution…
5 Ways Toy Playtesting With Children Increases Likelihood Of Launch Success One of the least utilised tools for toy and game companies is toy playtesting. This is not quality testing or chemical compliance, we mean consumer research to validate the appeal of a toy or game product. The toy and games industry is stuck in…
A few months back we started offering our new service – outsourced brand and product management for toy companies. The idea behind this was the need for toy companies to run marketing projects and to have on hand marketing support at varying levels in uncertain times when it can become harder to justify permanent employed…
Matt Knott and Steve Reece announced today that they have launched a new strategic partnership offering content production services for toy companies. With the growth of YouTube as a marketing platform, the pair plan to utilise their extensive experience of toy industry marketing and content production to the benefit of clients. Matt Knott said “Steve…
BEING AN EXPERT WITNESS (TOYS & BOARD GAMES) Legal cases are usually stressful and antagonistic. These are not conditions we would normally typicall seek out! Most legal disputes are resolved, one way or another well in advance of going to court. Normally commercial concerns make both sides come to the negotiating table to find agreed…
THE ART OF TOY CLEARANCE The single biggest cost for toy companies is manufacturing costs. Depending on the business model, toy manufacturing companies tend to spend between 25% (if you’re very lucky/very good!) and 35% more commonly on product manufacturing costs. This represents a huge amount of money invested on an ongoing basis by toy…
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A ‘TOY EXPERT’ Steve recently gave an interview – he was asked to describe a day in his working life. Here is the transcript of the interview: INTERVIEWER: Please describe a typical day as a toy expert STEVE Firstly, I feel somewhat awkward with the label ‘toy expert’ –…
A TO Z OF TV & TOYS – A IS FOR ANIMATION The world of animation has long since been a great source of Toy brands. Looking as far back as Steamboat Willie (created by Disney in 1928), we can see how animation lets us bring cartoon characters to life. Animation literally turned flat still…
5 THINGS KIDS MEDIA COMPANIES SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE TOY BUSINESS We’ve had a number of requests recently to offer advice to independent kids media companies relating to the Toy industry, how it works and what content producers with merchandising aspirations need to know about the toy industry to allow them to maximise their Toy…
THE TOY VERDICT – 2016 AWARDS Kids Brand Insight, owner of leading toy review website The Toy Verdict has announced a great success in its awards program for 2016. Many products from leading manufacturers including Disney, Jakks Pacific, Drumond Park, Esdevium Games, Step 2 & others have been awarded the much coveted status of ‘Approved by…
And The Winners Of The Toy Verdict Awards 2015 Are… TheToyVerdict.com, a leading toy review service and online portal, fully owned and operated by Kids Brand Insight today announces the results of The Toy Verdict Awards 2015. Steve Reece, CEO of Kids Brand Insight told us: “The sheer quality of the products submitted has made…
5 Reasons Why Kids Love The Minions… We recently took a group of kids on an accompanied viewing trip to the cinema to watch the Minions movie. This movie is a spin off from the highly successful Despicable Me movies, and focuses just on the highly amusing Minions characters. We wanted to better understand…
Toy & Board Game Sourcing We help clients protect against supply chain risk, reduce manufacturing cost expenditure and reduce the stress/workload of finding new toy factories and board game factories. We work with upwards of 60 leading toy, games and related product factories in China, Vietnam, North America, North Africa, Europe and beyond. We have a…
New Research Study – Kids, Parents, Toys & Gender… In the last few years we’ve seen an upsurge in negative PR/social media regarding the gender stereotyping seemingly inherent in the toy industry. Having conducted hundreds and hundreds of research discussion groups with children and parents over the last 16 years, our suspicion/belief was that actually…
Why Toy Companies Need to Know All About The Developmental Stages Of Children… We recently published an article in conjunction with Spielwarenmesse.de – the official blog of the world’s largest toy trade show in Nuremberg (with over 2,000 exhibitors and over 70,000 visitors every year). The article looks at why toy companies need to understand…
KIDSPLAYTEST™ – October Research Session Report This week we successfully conducted one of our KIDSPLAYTEST™ sessions. The concept behind it is the fact that so many more toy companies should be playtesting their products with children, but they are often put off by the prohibitive cost of qualitative research methodologies such as focus groups or discussion…
4 Ways That Kids & Toys Have Changed In 15 Years We recently pitched our services to a potential new client. One of the questions we were asked was how things have changed over time. In our last article we looked at how kids entertainment content has changed, this article looks at how kids and…
The Formula For Compelling Kids Entertainment Content Hasn’t Changed In 15 Years… We attended a pitch meeting this week where a (prospective!) client asked us how kids had changed since we conducted our first kids research back in 1998. That’s one of those questions where you have to stop and think for a moment before…
