With the setbacks of two of their major retailers, the Christmas season starts to prepare now, looks complicated for the manufacturers of toys. And especially for those whose brands are manufacture the products in factories located in China. They must now assess the quantities that they will have to deliver at Christmas to start the manufacturing.
“There may be a second wave of deaths, but, this time, in the manufacturers… “, is afraid of one of them. The current difficulties of the distributors have had, however, one virtue : that of having accelerated the reflection of the brands of toys around the issue of distribution channels and their presence on the Internet.
Epoch, the japanese group that owns the trademark Sylvanians, who until then had not planned to engage in direct selling in France, preparing for the month of September an e-commerce site, with all of its european offering, exclusives, but also the spare parts. And, based on the example of Lego with its Lego Store, the brand does not exclude the idea of opening a shop Sylvanians in France, with a restaurant.
Report of strength
In Japan, Epoch has twenty restaurants where its mascots come to give a spectacle and even an amusement park. Direct selling also allows you to get rid of the influence of the major platforms of online sales, “in cases where the sites do not play the game,” explains Fabrice Aumont, director-general of the Epoch of childhood, the French subsidiary of the group. It happened to me as an e-commerce site online and tell me in a sudden “this year, it takes only 30 references, instead of 200 as usual” “.
According to him, after a first phase, around 2008, where the platforms of online trading sought to gain market share by referring to the ranges of toys in their entirety,…