Toy Recruiters: How To Find A Good One

Check our our Toy recruitment services here: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services

Here's the thing - most Toy recruiters out there are not from the world of Toys. They may have the requisite skills to be a recruiter, but what they don't normally have is a long track record of working in the Toy business and of being both connected to plenty of other Toy people as well as having the necessary insider knowledge of how this industry works to work out which candidates should be put forward to clients and which are likely not suited to the Job.

When we help Toy companies recruit highly qualified staff we are focused on first assessing the applicants and whether they are truly qualified based on having run Toy companies ourselves and knowing a). what experience, knowledge and results really matter b). Identifying any red flags that might make a candidate unsuitable.

So for example, most recruiters will be able to look at someone's Resume/CV and figure out that the applicant has never stayed in a Job for long enough to be a good fit with a Toy company looking to recruit someone for the long term. However, what takes more specialist knowledge is to look at which Retailers a candidate has worked with and fit that to what is required for a client's customer base in the Toy business.

Toy expert recruiters can also ask more in depth and informed decisions of candidates. For example, when recruiting a General Manager for a Toy company recently, we were able to ruthlessly analyse a hypothetical P&L the candidates submitted as part of the application, and then screen out and also prioritise candidates based on the remit from our client. You just don't get that level of service or knowledge from typical Toy recruiters.

Our approach to Toy recruitment can best be summed up as 'Toy people recruiting Toy people for Toy companies.'

If you want to experience the difference in working with a Toy category specialist recruitment company, find out more here: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services

How To Find International Toy Distributors

Regardless of which country is your home, you have a greater opportunity to sell Toys outside your own country in the world outside. International Toy distributors can help you to access the huge opportunities for Export Toy sales. The Toy market in the USA is by far the world's biggest, but I would estimate that the US market drives just around, or maybe just a little more than one third of the Global market.

So therefore it is logical that wherever your head office is based, and whichever is your home market, that you should be exploiting the commercial opportunities offered by selling your products internationally. The challenge though is that it's a large, fragmented and complex world, and even very large long established companies don't have subsidiaries in every country. Most successful companies build a matrix of distributors to build retail coverage around the globe. So here are some tips to help you be more successful in finding international Toy distributors to sell your products overseas:

Be realistic about your expectations of the performance of the Distributor from the start. The reality of the business model under which International Toy Distributors operate is that they need to sell multiple product lines from multiple countries. Because they don't own the rights, what often happens is that they successfully launch product lines and if they are 'too successful' the brand owner often takes back the rights and uses the successful product line to launch a sales subsidiary newly set up in that market. Clearly distributors then need to minimise or at least reduce the risk of that happening by running multiple, and often many, product lines from an assortment of brand owners/manufacturers. As such, be aware that your distributor will never be focused on your brands and products like you are. Be realistic in your expectations of them accordingly.

Trade shows are a great place to meet International Toy Distributors. The biggest Toy trade shows attract thousands of distributors and wholesalers. If you want to grow your export sales you should at the very least be attending the Spielwarenmesse International Toy Fair every Jan/Feb held in Nuremberg, Germany. More than 60,000 visitors from around the world descend on this show to secure products to sell in their home markets and to sell their wares for distribution overseas.

Consider Sales Reps & Consultants to set up your Toy Distributor networks. It normally takes years to build relationships with companies from the Toy trade. But you can use international sales reps to help you access the market. Our company offers an Export Sales Consultancy service - you can find more details here: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services

Search Toy Company Corporate Websites. Many Toy companies publish contact details for their international distributors on their websites. So if you search trade show exhibitor databases, you should get a list of a large number of companies, then if you go to their websites you will find quite a few of them list out who sells their products in various countries around the world. These distributors could become your commercial partners.

Kidult Toy Expert Profile: Steve Reece

So we're going to begin this article with a shock revelation, despite all the recent furore about 'Kidult Toys', adults have been a major consumer segment of the Toy market for a very long time.

Steve Reece has been working in the Toy business since the late 1990s. One of his first ever projects as Hasbro's in-house consumer researcher was to run a project interviewing adult collectors of Action Man, the pre-eminent European action figure at that time. To be fair, that group of people could best be described as 'unusual' at that time, but even back then higher spec, higher priced action figures were made on various brands including iconic action figure brand Star Wars directly targeting adult collectors. Steve has been working with companies to understand the Kidult Toys market for a long time at this point, most industry analysts describe Steve as a Kidult Toy Expert.

What has changed in the twenty something years since then is that new generations who have been brought up on popular culture and pop culture merchandise have aged, and versus their parents generations who were arguably more straight and serious, today's adults will happily buy or receive as a gift a Toy if it represents something they are into.

It isn't just about Pop Culture though, in the adjacent world of 'Hobbyists', generations of model train enthusiasts have shared their passion with their kids and grand kids.

CONSUMER SEGMENTATION OF THE KIDULT TOY SPACE

The following consumer segmentation diagram shows a more detailed nuanced way to approach this space. It should be pointed out that there are those who we might categorise as Kidults who find that description offensive or insulting, they prefer to be known as 'adult collectors'. Our view is that the Kidult space is actually bigger than just collectors as the following diagram shows, so we continue to use the phrase as the most commonly accepted descriptor.

If you want more detail on the segmentation of the Kidult Toy market, you can read a more in depth article we published here: https://www.toyindustryjournal.com/post/a-deeper-examination-of-the-kidult-toy-space-consumer-segmentations

And if you are interested in our Kidult Toy Expert Consultancy services, just click here for further details: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services

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