21st-Century Toy Store: Make Magic Online There’s an old adage among magicians: “The audience may not know how to do a magic trick, but they sure know bad magic when they see it.”...
10/1/2007
Retailing Tips: Plan Now for Christmas Being ready for Christmas shoppers means planning months in advance and ordering when you're still busy with beach-toy sales...
5/1/2007
Branding Products, One Culture at a Time Forget customer loyalty and sales that depend solely on good product design. In an interconnected world of ever-expanding options, “tribal” tendencies are taking the mass out of culture...
5/1/2007
Retailer Spotlight: G. Willikers! The brother-and-sister team of Bob and Jody Breneman grew up in the toy business; their parents opened G. Willikers in 1978 in Portsmouth, N.H...
How to Publish a Card Game You may have had a great idea for a card game, secured investment and funding, and even completed the design. But until the cards have been printed and cut, your game isn't fit for the table...
4/1/2007
How to Keep Your Toy Store Thriving What are the secrets to keeping your customers from crossing over to the mass-market dark side? Everything from owning your toy store’s building to wrapping birthday gifts with lizards...
4/1/2007
Retailing Tips: Ordering for Christmas While everyone else gets ready for summer, specialty toy-store owners are placing their big Christmas orders. But are you too late?...
4/1/2007
Is Pomona Plummeting? Despite its designation as the country's largest regional toy and hobby show, the WTHRA show in Pomona, Calif., in March didn't have many exhibitors talking "big" this year...
4/1/2007
Retailing Tips: Making the Most of Trade Shows Fifteen minutes before the show floor opens at the American International Toy Fair, Manager Matt Hannifin of Science Toy Magic in Santa Fe, N.M., waits in the Javits Center, adequately hydrated and armed with a black suitcase on wheels, a laminated, Sharpie-marked map of the exhibition halls secured to the handle...
Retailing Tips: How to Find the Right Books When choosing books for your toy store or bookstore, it is difficult to predict which ones will bring in high volume and low returns...
2/1/2007
Grab Attention Without Squeezing Your Wallet TDmonthly Magazine spoke with two experts to find out how manufacturers can make their products stand out, even on a small budget...
1/1/2007
Toy Industry Code of Ethics Recurring headlines in the toy industry reflect continuing agitation and the escalation of the costs of legal issues, as one company after another files copyright infringement suits...
12/1/2006
Retailing Tips: Choosing a Trade Show Picking trade events that feature newly discovered companies that are right for your toy or gift store requires some legwork...
12/1/2006
Game and Toy Creation - Part 3 After protecting your concept and making the decision to launch your own company, promoting and marketing your invention is the next step...
Game and Toy Creation - Part 2 Before bringing a new toy or game to market, legal protection in the form of a copyright, patent and/or trademark is essential .....
8/1/2006
Imagine Simplicity Seems like only yesterday our family crouched in the crawl space beneath the stairs, anticipating the bedlam that was prophesied to accompany the arrival of Y2K. Yet, five years later, here we still are. Time sure flies...
1/1/2005
TDmonthly Top 10 Most Wanted Lists The TDmonthly Top 10 lists are mostly used by specialty retailers to better anticipate market demands and trends. These lists are based on thorough research and interviews...
1/1/2005
Make the Most at Toy Fair 2005 The American International Toy Fair 2005 will be held in New York on February 20-23. Sponsored by the Toy Industry Association, Inc., the show will take place at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and special showrooms in the Toy District. This year, be sure to make the most of...
1/1/2005
TDmonthly Top 10 Most Wanted Lists The TDmonthly Top 10 lists are mostly used by specialty retailers to better anticipate market demands and trends. These lists are based on thorough research and interviews...
12/1/2004
Wooing the Parents of Tweens My son now falls into that demographic Limbo known as "tween"--a new market segment crammed into the space between "kid" and "teen."...
11/1/2004
TDmonthly Top 10 Most Wanted Lists The TDmonthly Top 10 lists are mostly used by specialty retailers to better anticipate market demands and trends. These lists are based on thorough research and interviews...
11/1/2004
Keen on Tweens: Boys’ Purchasing Power “Age compression” or KGOY (kids getting older younger): In response to this shift in interest, marketers are increasingly targeting boy tweens in response to their love of the video and gaming industry. Tween boys want products that have an electronic, Internet, video or sports component; and there’s a premium for portable toys and electronics because most tweens spend time traveling to after-school activities...
11/1/2004
Tween Market 101 The “tween” market, popularly identified as kids 8-12, began to emerge in the late 1980s. By 1998, Bruce Friend, vice president of worldwide research and planning for Nickelodeon, could say, “The 12- to 14-year-olds of yesterday are the ten to 12´s of today.”...
11/1/2004
Toys to Talk About "Toys to Talk About" features dozens of exciting companies and products! So, make sure you´re clued in and see what everyone´s talking about...
TDmonthly´s Top 10 Most Wanted Lists: A Buying Manual for the Holiday Season TDmonthly Magazine reaches 142,500 readers on the Internet and has 24,500 retailer subscribers. You are our audience and our goal is to enhance your business, so we decided to prepare categorical retailer buying guides for the holiday season. We’ve compiled this information into several TDmonthly Top 10 Most Wanted Lists based on items consumers will want most for the holiday season...
9/1/2004
Toys R Us Toys R Us Inc. may sell its toy business and put its retailing efforts toward its thriving baby product specialty store Babies "R" Us, the company said Wednesday, August 11. Plans to restructure the businesses to become two separate entities under the existing corporate structure are directed at reducing operating costs, boosting shareholder value, and developing growth of the core baby product market...
2004 International JPMA Show Dallas, Texas was the host city for this year’s International Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association (JPMA) Trade Show, May 3-5...
6/1/2004
ASTRA Provides Strategies for the Specialty Toy Industry Among the show’s highlights was the opening panel which addressed the state of the industry and provided several strategies for smooth sailing despite an ocean full of mass market toy retailers...
