TOY FAIR NEW YORK 2019
ON AMAZON, ADULTS CONTROL THE TOY SPACE One Click Retail Examines Amazon’s Continued Growth by SHYLA NAVARRO, director of e-commerce advisory, Edge by Ascential WHEN TOYS “R” US SHUT ITS DOORS, the retailer left its 12 percent share of the U.S. toy market up for grabs. Amazon is not one to miss such an opportunity. Ahead of the 2018 holiday shopping season, the busiest time of year for toy sellers, the tech and e-commerce juggernaut mailed out its 70page toy catalog, “A Holiday of Play,” clearly designed to replace the beloved Toys “R” Us catalog. It also began developing its own line of private-label toys. The result? Amazon.com toy sales were up 15 percent* last year. The growth was neither uniform nor can be credited entirely to picking up what Toys “R” Us put down. Amazon’s toy categories saw some big swings last year, from games
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THE TOY BOOK | FEBRUARY 2019 | toybook.com
growing by 63 percent year-over-year to construction shrinking by 41 percent. These represent some wider consumer trends—bigger than just a shake-up in the retail landscape— and it all comes down to who is buying the toys—adults. Though the closure of a major toy institution like Toys “R” Us illustrates the shift to consumers now favoring e-commerce, experiential retail is still important. In fact, it’s arguably experiencing a comeback after the loss of Toys “R” Us, with new independent toy stores popping up across the country. The experience of taking kids to a toy store is something the online channel can never recreate—the value of the old fashioned toy
store is in product discovery, while the online channel is preferred for convenience, repeat purchases, and competitive pricing. Take the collectibles trend for example: We can’t talk about today’s toy market without mentioning L.O.L. Surprise! dolls. The collectible mystery dolls have been one of the fastest-selling toys for years, but they tend to do better in stores than they do online. L.O.L. Surprise! dolls are fun to collect and carry an accessible price point, so it’s easy for kids in stores to convince their parents to buy some. But when parents shop online, they’re less likely to be pressured into buying some flashy, brightly packaged toy and tend to gravitate toward products that
