One of the major trends in the Toy & Game business in the last decade has been the growth of companies coming from outside the Toy & Game business and successfully establishing themselves across multiple markets via Amazon. These companies use their knowledge of tech and algorithms to beat established traditional players who see Amazon as one sales opportunity alongside bricks and mortar retail and the e-commerce sites of major mass market retailers.
Because these companies have no set parameters in terms of their own 'business as usual' they can invest more in advertising than the incumbent companies and they can adapt both their approach, but also their product development around what works best on Amazon's platform alone.
The challenge though for these disruptors in the Toy & Games business is that their eggs are firmly over weighted in one basket. Like all tech driven platforms, Amazon's method of operation, algorithms and trading terms can be changed at any time, and this can cause problems. No prudent business owner should be happy to have one retail platform alone dominate their revenues.
Once a company has established a successful business selling Toys & Games on Amazon, strategically speaking they need to work out how to diversify so that their entire business is not reliant on one platform.
In the last ten years, we have Consulted for a few dozen companies to help them establish 'traditional' Toy market distribution. We have helped them build up sales rep networks in some markets, selling in to book stores, bricks and mortar mass market chains, independent/mom & pop stores and beyond. We have also helped them set up a matrix of international Toy distributors and Board Games Distributors in countries as diverse as India, Korea, Australia, Germany, Canada and beyond.
If you are successful at developing and selling Toys & Games via Amazon, the good news is that your products have already accumulated enough social proof and industry kudos to be attractive to other distribution channels. Some of our clients have hundreds of thousands of positive reviews on Amazon across their product portfolios, other retailers, distributors and sales reps are very keen to sell products with such a high level of proof of value and positive consumer reception. For typical retailers, the biggest concern they have is whether products they buy will sell off their shelves, so if they can see that the products have already sold good quantities and been positively reviewed by consumers they are much more likely to want to list those products.
There are some sensitivities when it comes to setting up Toy & Game distributor networks though. Amazon's pricing policies can cause challenges for other less dynamic retailers, and as such, distributors do sometimes have to be persuaded to take a product without getting the rights to sell on Amazon, but there are ways and means of persuading them on how to manage this.
If you are a successful seller of Toys or Games on Amazon, and you have ever asked yourself 'How can we sell our products offline, in bricks and mortar retail around the world?', then we may be able to help you. We have undoubtedly already worked with companies like yours with the same challenges and opportunities. For more information on how we can help, how we work and our fees, just click here: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/services
That is why (& how) successful Amazon Toy Sellers should diversify into offline sales!
