Off to the toy fair

Today I am writing the blog from the train, which is good in that I have time to myself, but bad in that I hate Pendolinos, they make me feel sick even when I'm not reading/typing. 2 hours to London is not to be sniffed at though ....

So this time last year I was stressing about setting off for the London Toy Fair in thick snow, worried it would be a disaster and scared I would be "found out".

This year I am properly excited! Even a late train and being 9 coaches the wrong end of Euston station when I arrive is not going to weigh me down.

Because I know what I am doing. I am beginning to know what sells, what to say, how to ask about shipping and MOQs and FOB. I know this stuff!  And I know where the toilets are, I haven't forgotten my business cards, I am a young (ish) business woman who isn't going to be scared of the salesmen in suits who sneer at these "idiots who sell via Third Parties". I sell on Amazon, eBay, my own website AND in a bricks and mortar shop. Get with the times losers.

And best of all I will have my mum with me so I have someone to chat to - maybe I'm not so tough after all.....but she is my accountant, and if we didn't look so alike I could get away with it 100%

And that's the lonely part of working for yourself I suppose. That's partly why I am so excited to be going to the trade fair because I get to talk shop with people who are interested. I realise that although my heart is taking me in another direction, i loved working in huge organisations because I like to talk. I like to laugh with colleagues, do a secret bit of gossiping, argue with other people about the right way of doing things, so I think that's why having a face to face shop or keeping up with occasional contracts in financial services is the right thing for me. I need to interact, I can only enjoy my own company for so long.


So with that, wish me luck for tomorrow, and lets hope I find lots of lovely things for the shop. Well not too many things, I need to shift all the stock I already have!

Au Revoir

Welsh Tedi Bears - Bestsellers and Nightmare all in one

Sorry for the absence, my first "shop" Christmas was a bit of a whirlwind of late night orders, fairs and frantic hair-tearing-out.  But that's for another post!

Back on the story of my first year trading, this cute little bear above has caused me highs and lows all on its own.  Let me elaborate....

Just before the Celtic Manor Show I blogged about before, I emailed the manufacturer of my Welsh speaking Tedi Bear "BB Bear" to ask what stock levels were like, in case I sold out.  I didn't hear back straight away but that didn't ring any specific alarm bells.

I did sell a couple at the show but nothing epic.  I also made a contact with a government backed agency promoting Welsh speaking at preschool age upwards, and we made a deal to offer a bear as a competition prize, as they couldn't directly promote me.  Fair enough I thought.

Anyway, the Facebook promo started and the hits on my website went off the scale - so I hurredly emailed Adrian again and to my horror he rang me and said he had none left and wouldn't be making more for 6 months.  SIX MONTHS!!!  And the Facebook competition hadn't even finished.

What was I going to do?  A cold sweat started as I got off the phone.  What a fool I was for not checking first. What a missed opportunity.  All those lost sales...

I needed have worried as it turned out - what I also learnt through this was that you can't control Social Media (shame some bigger companies didn't learn this earlier eh?).  Someone posted on the company's Facebook page that people should be buying these bears in their local bookshop instead, the company themselves then promoted someone else's online shop and didn't mention me (not able to promote as a government-backed agency?) and basically I lost control of the whole thing.

But it didn't end there.  I bought some extra bears that someone else was selling cheap - were they mad I had to wonder to myself - and its a good job I did because I had a massive Christmas rush on them and completely sold out.  Everyone sold out of them this Christmas, just as they had the Christmas before according to newspaper reports at the time.  So I shall be stock piling them this year as soon as they are available.  My husband will be pleased....

lesson #641 - you can't control Social Media
lesson #642 - giving away your stock always seems like a good idea and never is
lesson #643 - check stock availability before any advertising


And there end-eth the lesson(s)

See you same time next week!!

www.rachelstoyshop.co.uk

Christmas Gifts for Toddlers - A Few Ideas

Good evening!  I have put this information on my website, but I thought that some of you might be interested in the different developmental toys I stock.  To some of you it might look like my stock is a random set of things I wish I had brought for my children when they were smaller, but I do try and buy a range of things that develop key skills.  Enjoy!


Building Blocks

We stock 3 stages of building blocks – the Clemmy soft bricks for initial play, the Sluban construction blocks, and then the Melissa & Doug castle blocks are a good follow on for role play and balancing.  These all develop the hand eye coordination and delicate motor skills baby/toddler needs.


Shape Sorters

These are old favourites anyway, but a good shape sorter can teach not only fine motor skills, but also pattern recognition.  To start with a younger baby might want to just put the blocks in and tip them out again, but as they start to develop they will enjoy trying to get the shapes in the holes.  It doesn’t matter if your toddler can't get the colour names yet, but understanding that certain blocks are the same colour is a really important developmental step between 2 & 3 years




Threading Toys

Threading toys are great for developing hand eye co-ordination – even up to pre-school age these have value because fine motor skills are essential for being able to hold a pen/pencil as children begin to write – often just an attempt to scribble their name at first, but its really important that they develop this before school.



Imagination & Role Play

Toddlers love mimicking grown ups and encouraging them to make believe is really important – it helps with the development of abstract thinking (you aren’t really eating the wooden apple, you are pretending).  Something like the soft sandwich basket or handbag for younger babies is great, moving onto the play kitchen or shop.  For 3 years plus we also have the castle blocks and fold-n-go barn for pretend play.

Mumpreneur? I'm not sure I like it!!

Hi - here we are again.  Nearly November!!  Can't decide whether to be excited or worried about my first christmas with the shop.  I'll let you know.

I've decided to wade into the "mumpreneur" debate on here - dicey I know, there are two very divided camps and I don't want to antagonise anyone, but here is my twopennethworth.

Obviously the majority of my customers are mums - some grandparents or interested other parties but mostly mums.  And I want to offer a service that appeals to them whatever their work situation - I'm not sure it matters what that is, but I know I want to be as convenient and inspirational as possible, thinking about my own experiences as a working mother.  And I am a mother myself - and I have 2 businesses - does this make me a mumpreneur?  I guess so, by definition, but why does it sit so uneasily?

Lets take the mum thing out of it for a second.  When I was a senior manager at a global bank, I was, whether I liked it or not (too much pressure!), a role model to other women, and networking with other women was important to me.  So important I spent several hundreds of pounds to join a professional women's networking and support group, whose aim was to encourage us to eventually strive for board appointments.  I found the events exhilerating and inspiring but it was greeted with a sneer from my role-model mum ("I HATE women-only things", she said) and disgust from my male colleagues ("its terribly sexist, you know").  So I ended up half-apologising for it whenever it was mentioned.  Ridiculous!  I wonder whether part of the reaction actually showed underlying distaste still for a women fighting for her career with other women rather than putting up and shutting up with male dominated environments.

So why is label mumpreneur a bit uncomfortable for me - isn't it an extension of female networking?  I think because I don't want to be defined by the fact I am a mother.  And I'm not sure the term itself is helpful to dispell the idea that this is women playing at it, its just a hobby, not to be taken seriously.

So just for the record - I take my business very seriously.  I want to win.  Market share, plaudits, awards.  I want to push myself creatively, negotiate hard, work hard.  But its true - I want to do this for my kids too - I want to be able to pick them up from school.  I want to be a good role model for my daughter.  And if people don't take me seriously, thats their problem.

And I am enjoying meeting other business women, having spent nearly 15 years in male dominated environments - many of the mothers I meet are just trying to keep something for themselves whilst they bring up their children.  Good on them.  And some of them are incredibly creative (more than me) and have really good business concepts, and have a drive and passion that will make them a success.

So "Businesswomen", fine.  "Mumpreneur" - if you really have to - I'm not ashamed to play on it.  Just don't make the assumption I'm not serious - I am.

Have a great evening x

Midnight purchases

Hello everyone,

Following on from last week's blog about eBay, I also wanted to make some observations about online shoppers.  Obviously what's really great about being online is never knowing when you are going to have a sale, you don't have to wait around in an empty shop for a customer and its pretty exciting when you first get started, to wake up to one or more Paypal notifications from overnight sales.

I've noticed some patterns, definitely.  End of the month is always good = payday.  Mondays and Wednesdays seem to be popular = post weekend slump / midweek blues I think!

Evening is obviously popular, but I am still surprised at how late people are ordering.  Perhaps I shouldn't be - I remember Nigella Lawson once saying on her cookery programs that when she couldn't sleep she would quite often buy cookery books on Amazon.  I also think its tired parents ordering once the children are in bed.

So back to my old friend eBay - the problem with the late night ordering is this - as those who follow my blog know, I have a full time job as well as running the shop - so when someone orders at 11.59pm, eBay expects the parcel to be despatched the next day (if you do "get it fast" as I do).  So I have to package up before I go to work, or else I will miss the depot and not meet the customer's expectations.


So one night I had just got into bed after a very tiring, long day and I saw my phone flash - Paypal!  Oh good.  Oh no!  The customer had paid extra for next day delivery, so I had to get up, print an invoice, package it up, weigh it, order the delivery slot etc etc. So I got to bed just after midnight, and then got up 6am to drive 130 miles, then go to the depot in my lunch hour (30 mins!).

So sometimes I am so tired I don't know what to do with myself.  This is why I don't always do my blog on a Monday, sometimes its just too much.  But I don't seem to run out of enthusiasm for this business.  Well sometimes if I have a quiet week, or one of the disasters that I have written about on here.  But I am still one of the luckiest people I know and I don't forget it.

So go ahead - order at midnight!!  I am always at your service :)

Rachel
x 
(off to bed now, yawn zzzzzzzzzzzz)

"I'm just ordering something from Rachel's Toy Shop, Mum"

 

Doing my eBay sums......

Good evening!!

I decided after 3 months trading to do the sums on my eBay sales - in the first 3 months, as you can imagine, for someone starting from scratch, my eBay shop was generating most of my sales.  The website obviously is more of a slow burner, which I knew.

So I sat down in the quiet one afternoon, and downloaded all my eBay statements (all three of them!!) and got to work on Excel - as a "Lady Geek", I am never more at home than when messing about in a spreadsheet. (www.ladygeek.com)

Well, here are the horrible facts.  I had sold £400 of toys.  eBay had pocketed £80, and I walked away with a princely sum of £8 gross profit (after postage and all eBay fees, but before packaging).  Ouch.  That's alot of hassle for 8 quid.

Now this isn't eBay's fault - they even helpfully showed this worrying data on a graph (not my costs obviously), if I had bothered to read the statements before.  Thank goodness I did the sums before I got too far in.

So I cancelled my shop for the time being and then worked out, product by product, whether it was worth selling it on eBay.  I got down to 20 items from about 50.  I realised that some of my brands were pointless on there, because the competition is too fierce, and of course no sale is better than a sale at a loss (where there is little customer loyalty to be had by discounting).

I sort of understand why some brands won't let their retailers sell on eBay and Amazon, because I do think it can destroy the value, and perhaps ultimately make people stop stocking them.  I find it highly hypocritical though when they then sell direct themselves at cut prices on those sites, which makes it harder for both the online seller and traditional bricks-and-mortar toy seller.

Its a cut-throat internet retailing world out there, so you need to have your target market clearly in mind, and I have definitely paid more attention to the bottom line after taking everything into account, which I didn't always do in the first flush of excitement.

I don't usually plug my stuff on here, as I think that's a bit boring, but its near Christmas so what the heck.

New Stock Alert!!!

You may have noticed but I have an online shop :)
I have some new stock arriving this week, from a Dutch rival to the You-Know-Who construction toy, and is largely compatible with their toddler range, but 40% cheaper.  Here are some sneaky peeks at the new stuff:

www.rachelstoyshop.co.uk

Sluban Big Blocks Farm Animals Set - £9.99

Sluban Big Blocks Merry-Go-Round - £13.99

Celtic Manor Baby Show

We're in June now (don't worry we'll catch up before Christmas)


I decided to go Big Bang and book myself a proper baby show. 

I don't know if anyone reading this has ever booked a stand at a baby show or similar, but it's pretty expensive. Usually at least £100+ VAT per square metre for one day which is cheap when you consider the sales you could make, but is expensive when you have a fairly small £ profit margin.

For example, if you sell 4D scans (or whatever) at say £100 profit per scan, then you only have to sell   4 scans to break even on a small stand. This is doable. 

However, when the equivalent for me is 50 Welsh teddy bears, you can see that scale is my problem. This is what I learnt at Celtic Manor resort. 

It was a long round trip to learn this lesson. You may ask "why didn't you do the Maths before?"  We'll I sort of did but I was brimming with enthusiasm and I thought I might clean up with my Welsh bears, even have to take back orders. And this event was £120+ VAT. So I thought it might be good. 

I met my mum at the Premier Inn and we had dinner together. This was very nice and I felt quite excited. I managed to get my dongle working (no jokes) and tested the virtual terminal for credit and debit cards. All ok. 

We got up early and made our way over to the hotel. It went downhill (or uphill) from there. I won't got into too much detail, but it went a bit like this:

Think we are first at the loading bay. 
Find we are in the wrong place. 
Find other loading bay is up a big hill, and is full. 
Park precariously on the slope, unpack. 
Shortage of trolleys. 
Only one very slow squeaky lift. 
Very hot day. 
Unpack. 
Eat free event cupcake in hyperglycaemic frenzy. 
Arrange stall. 
Wait for customers. 

The customers were nice, I sold a few things, but as anyone involved in mothers and mothers to be knows, they come out early. So the initial rush was hopeful but it quickly petered out. Mum and I took it in turns to get our pre-ordered lunch. This is where the hotel took the proverbial. £12 buffet lunch was some pathetic chips and some slithers of smoked chicken on some crostini. Well, I tell you, I ate more of those little tasty morsels than was really necessary, but I wanted to get my money's worth. Where were the cold drinks (just lukewarm cheap orange juice), where was the salad even?

It was in the terms and conditions that nobody was to pack up before 4pm. Most people in our room had finished packing up by 3!!  I sold a welsh bear at the eleventh hour but I still managed to only take £200, which is about £50 profit. So you already know it was a financial disaster. But I got some email addresses out of it, and at least one follow up sale. And I learnt a lot.

Seems to be a common theme so far, eh? I am getting better at this, I am a fast learner. It was a long journey home though with all those toys in the back. 

I met a nice lady though who had invented a step to help toddlers get into their car seats - she has since won awards - check her out at www.mycarstep.com or at JoJoMaman Bebe

And of course don't forget to look at my lovely website www.rachelstoyshop.co.uk

Ttfn x