Playing At Business podcast with Steve Reece

What makes a toy company last for generations? In this episode, we break down the eight essential characteristics that separate fleeting fads from industry legends. From unwavering brand identity to innovation that evolves with consumer trends, we uncover the secrets behind long-term success. Expect insights into adaptability, quality, nostalgia, and the magic of emotional connection. Whether you're a toy industry veteran or an aspiring entrepreneur, this episode delivers practical wisdom for building a business that stands the test of time.

It's been a wild start to 2025 with tariff tribulations abounding.  From supply chain disruptions to retail price rises, these developments have produced a complex landscape for Toy & Game companies to try to navigate. Join us as we unpack the challenges, explore strategic responses and offer some tips to help you navigate the current situation.

In this episode, board games business expert Steve Reece of www.KidsBrandInsight.com runs through the steps in completing a commercial launch of a board game (also includes a card game or other cardboard based Games).  If you are wondering what you need to do next after you came up with the idea of a Game and made a Gameplay mechanic, then this episode is for you.

Over the last decade and a half or so, we have advised 200+ Toy startups and Game startups. There have been a number of recurring Tips and bits of advice we have given. This podcast covers those Top Ten Tips for startups in this whacky world of Toys & Games.   This is a definite must listen for new entrants to the business of Play!

This episode reviews the Toy Biz trade show event in Delhi. This time round more than 400 exhibitors were at the show. Host Steve Reece runs through his experience at the event, and discusses the many opportunities for Toy & Game companies in India.

This is the question we get most often. There are a number of key trade shows in the Toy business, and historically there has been a commom complaint that we have too many of these shows and that the schedule is inefficient. The pandemic gave us a good opportunity to consider our show schedules and to reassess what makes most sense for our businesses. In this episode we run through the main shows and talk about how to decide which shows to participate in.

In this latest episode host Steve Reece shares 10 Key Success Factors for Board Games based on decades working with and on some of the most iconic Games of all times, including Hasbro's stable of Family Games such as Monopoly. Clue/do, Risk, Game of Life and many more.  Unusually Steve also acknowledges working on the worst selling board game of all time, as well as the best. If you are in the business of Games this is a must listen episode.   Sign up for our free email newsletter on the Toy & Games industry here: www.ToyIndustryJournal.com 

Another Spielwarenmesse Toyfair in Nuremberg has been and gone. This episode reviews this years show, and based on conversations at the show and market data released at this time gives an analytical outlook on the key drivers and trends of the European Toy market for 2024.   Sign up for our free Email Newsletter here: www.ToyIndustryJournal.com 

2020 and 2021 were unexpectedly boom years for the Toy business overall as locked down families invested out of season in play activities for their homebound children. 2022 and 2023 were significantly worse years for the Toy trade. The question now is what happens in 2024? Host Steve Reece talks through the factors affecting Toy market performance in 2024 in this latest episode.    For more Toy business analysis, check out our Linked In newsletter here: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/toy-industry-journal-6910540635838013441/

In this episode we take a look at how choosing the right products to launch is the fundamental success factor for Toy & Games companies. Host Steve Reece uses an example of when he turned down a now famous & massively successful product as an example of how sometimes turning away good products is necessary in order to focus on what will work best for your company and the business model and market positioning of your company.

Many companies in the Toy business grow via acquisition. Company owners often want to sell up and retire or move onto other pastures. In this episode we take a look at some of the biggest Toy acquisitions of all time, we look at why and how Toy Cos are bought and sold and we discuss the details of the process of buying or selling. Maybe you have a Toy business you want to buy or sell, or maybe you just want to understand how company sales work in the world of Toys, either way this episode will have something for you.

In this latest episode host Steve Reece talks to Kate Scott & Declan Fahy, the Founders of Holo Toyz. Their company aims to inspire creativity and imagination via augmented reality technology. Kate stated "At our core, we believe that children should be able to experiment, play and learn through emerging technologies in a kid-safe environment away from the open web, whilst not losing touch with the physical world." We discuss this proposition, and the path from starting the business, through raising funding to achieving distribution for HoloToyz products.  This episode is a must listen for anyone interested in or actively pursuing a start up in the Toy business, as well as international distributors looking for new products and new stories to latch onto.

Join Steve Reece in a deep dive into the toy industry's recruitment nuances. Drawing from over a decade as a consultant, Steve unveils key strategies for companies to recruit effectively and tips for candidates to land their ideal roles. Whether you're hiring or job-hunting, discover invaluable insights to navigate the toy business world. Our business is a Consultancy to Toy & Games companies. We have worked with more than half of the biggest Toy companies in the world, as well as 100+ startups and small businesses. Our main areas of business are: Export Sales Consultancy - let us help you sell more of your products overseas. Growth Consultancy for start ups with funding. 'Traditional' distribution Consultancy for companies who launched with success on Amazon and want a fast track acceleration into other 'traditional' Toy & Games distribution channels around the world. Strategic Sourcing Consultancy - we advise companies on how to diversify their sourcing from being over reliant on China to other geographies including India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Mexico & Europe. Recruitment - many of our clients who we have helped with expanding their distribution come back to us to help them find key staff members to allow them to go direct to retail in key markets. Consultancy phone calls - this is the entry level service we offer, comparatively low cost, but normally rated 5/5 in terms of value & impact from our clients. To find out more about our Consultancy services & how we can help your business, just click here: www.ToyIndustryJournal.com/toy-business-consultancy 

Guess what – people have been buying Toys for adults for a very long time. Even though the ‘Kidult' thing is the big thing nowadays, hobbyits sand people buying Toyetic gifts for adults have been around for a long while. Listen in to Episode 99 as we look at these adjacent areas in more detail!

A few episodes back we looked at why excess inventory is so dangerous - in this episode we move on to look at the practicalities of how our industry manages excess inventory, where they sell it, how it works and some major banana skins to watch out for when selling clearance stock!

We are living through times of massive change and disruption. Technology is advancing at a frighteningly quick rate, and the very fabric of society has been changed by our adoption and development of new technologies.  However, despite that there are 5 unchanging fundamentals of the Toy & Games business. In this podcast your host Steve Reece takes a look at what has not changed in his nearly 25 years in the Toy business, and what is unlikely to change looking forward another 25 years into the future.

There are some recurring characteristics of best selling Toys & Games. In this episode we run through the 5 most important features. This is not so much creative inspiration as it is a ticklist for new Toy & Games products in development.

Regardless of which country is your home market, the opportunity outside your borders is greater...in this episode we take a look at some simple ways to significantly increase your export sales of Toys & Games.

Ep 94 - 5 Key Tips To Find & Validate New Toy Factories In this episode host Steve Reece talks about his experience helping more than 100 Toy & Game companies find manufacturing around the world, and he shares 5 key tips for finding & validating new Toy factories. We look at why most companies make a massive mistake by focusing on manufacturing cost as the primary assessment factor for a new Toy & Game factory, and much more.

Excess inventory bleeds Toy & Games companies to death, unless the company makes bold steps to reduce the size of the problem. In this episode we cover in detail the issues caused by excess inventory, why inventory represents a recurring challenge which needs to be constantly managed and we look at some case studies of best and worst practise.

This episode reviews the 2023 Spielwarenmesse Toy Trade show in Nuremberg. This show is the biggest trade show covering the Toy business in the world. This show marked Steve's 21st visit, and in this episode he talks through how the show went, the outlook for the Toy business in 2023 and much more.

Report on UK Toyfair 2023, with a short UK Toy Market update based on newly available year end 2022 Toy market performance.

2022 was a tough year for the Toy business. But finally that's over...now we can look ahead to what 2023 will bring. In this podcast we look at the 4 key factors driving 2023's Toy market: 1. RETAIL INVENTORY LEVELS 2. CHINA'S RE-OPENING 3. INFLATION RATE & CONSUMER DISPOSABLE INCOME 4. TOYETIC MOVIE SLATE We explain in full detail on this episode of the podcast...

The Toy industry does not spend enough time worrying about available production capacity. For decades we have presumed that we can get our Toys & Games produced from the same old factories in China...but things have changed... ...and the pace of change may be set to accelerate. We discuss what Toy manufacturing will look like in the future in this episode.

In the third episode of this podcast series we take a further look at The Future Of Toys, this time looking at Toy & Game Consumers. We discuss what areas could see the most change, the areas which will most likely stay the same as well as identifying one massive threat to the Toy industry  and at the same time one massive opportunity.

In the 2nd in this series we take a look at the most fun part of the Toy business - Products! Most people who work in the Toy business do so because they love Toys, most of us have a collection of the Products we have worked on around us as we work. The podcast looks at some fundamental factors of Toy products which are unlikely to change, even far out into the future, and we also look at how Technology will facilitate deeper play experiences and interactions with Toys.

In the 1st of a series of podcasts looking at the future of the toy business we begin with a look at Retail - how it's evolved, how it affects the toy business today and what future changes we can expect to see. Many fundamentals stay the same, we discuss these key areas in this podcast, but we also look at how technology is evolving constantly and affecting Toy Retail as a result.

Human beings tend to learn best by making mistakes. In this podcast we look at the 5 big learnings that toy & game people have to make...ideally as inexpensively as possible! There are 5 big areas where toy & games companies can really mess up, listen to the podcast to find out more about what they are.

Localisation is normally the poor cousin to the more exciting and glamorous parts of developing a toy or game product and bringing them to market. Yet localisation is a critical functionality and process for maximising the commercial success (or otherwise) of our products. In this episode we look at the key elements of localisation, and I share a few amusing anecdotes which show how localisation done badly can cause unintended consequences & commercial failure.

Products tend to vary from category to category, but at the heart of any top selling you will normally find most or all of the 5 key ingredients we run through in Episode 83 of the Playing At Business podcast. We discuss successful products such as Spin Master's Paw Patrol ranges, Monopoly board game & the truly iconic Rubiks Cube. This episode is for anyone who hopes to develop & launch a top-selling toy or game.

It's looking like 2022 is panning out to be a tough year in the toy & game biz! The question is what companies can do in the face of a drop in consumer demand. The reality for most companies is that they have not faced a significant drop in market size, at least not for a very long time. For sure companies revenues will have gone up and down due to competition and the quality of their own product lines, but most of us have not had to deal with a strong decline in the toy market. In this episode we look at how companies can manage a significant drop in consumer demand if that is what happens in 2022 overall. We also look at some reasons to be cheerful for those in the toy & game business right now!

The world has changed so much in the past couple of decades. Sometimes the rate of change can be bamboozling...but there are some underlying fundamentals of managing toy & game businesses which haven't changed. Listen to Episode 81 to find out more...

One of the major trends in the toy business in the last decade or more is the morphing of the major toy companies into cross platform entertainment companies.  In this episode of the Playing At Business podcast we take a look at this trend, and we also look at what smaller companies can do to try to compete in the entertainment world to capture the opportunities to sell more toys!

There is one fundamental success factor for board games which is overwhelmingly present in the most successful board games of all time. From Chess to Clue/do, and from Monopoly to Mousetrap, any board game which sticks in the market features this one fundamental feature at the very core of the gameplay mechanic. It isn't glitzy marketing, it isn't necessarily a beautiful looking game box, but what it is reaches to the very heart of human existence. We reveal what this factors is at the start of this podcast... 

Toy & games companies generally don't test their products enough with consumers. We all know how much testing goes into ensuring products are compliant with safety standards, but what about testing to see if they are compliant with functionality, fun and general appeal to kids & their parents? Consumer research playtesting is the not so secret, but shamefully under-utilised weapon of toy & game companies. All the major global toy companies have extensive consumer research programs, but as we discuss in this podcast, research doesn't necessarily have to be expensive to be useful.

Inflation is very high in most western markets right now. This is a challenge for the toy industry to manage, because our products are discretionary purchases, and when mandatories such as food and heating increase in price, this can reduce the amount of available funds consumers have to buy toys.  In this episode we look at the current drivers of inflation, we look at the time it is likely to take for this inflation to diminish and we look at how toy & games companies can best navigate the muddy waters of inflationary times!

Electronic Toys are not new. The toy business has a long history of dumbing and pricing down electronics & tech in general into toy formats and toy price points.  In the end though, whether these tech toys work or not in the market doesn't come down to the tech/electronic itself. Listen to Episode 76 to find out what really matters even more!

Creative Play toys have been around for a long time, but this isn't an easy space with so many generic stationery products and 'Me too' generic kits for sale straight from the factory gate in China. In Episode 75, we take a look at the key success factors, and how companies can build brands in this space & win over the long term.

With soaring container shipping prices, Covid lockdowns and rising costs in China, many toy companies have begun to look at 'Nearshore' option for manufacturing. We run through the pros, cons and realities of Nearshoring in this episode of the Playing At Business podcast.

Not that many people know that the video game business was considered to be part of the broader toy business for quite some time before it eventually became clear that the Video Games business was a bigger beast than its parent!  In this episode of the Playing At Business podcast we talk through the differences between the Toy and the Video games business models, as well as looking at other points of intersection between the two.

Toy companies (both big & small) rely heavily on the factories they work with. Every time they produce a toy your reputation and potentially your business rest on the factory & their complying with safety, ethical and quality standards. Competitive pricing is also a concern of course, manufacturing spend is the biggest cost for toy & game companies, so comparatively small savings in percentage terms can add to up to significant money.  In Episode 72 of the PLAYING AT BUSINESS podcast we take a look at how to find and then validate good reliable toy factories. We have worked with many different factories in different factories over the years, and we have introduced more than 100 toy & game companies to new factories. The things we learnt during this process are shared in this podcast.

The toy business is moving from a single hub (China) sourcing model to a multi-hub model. India is the only other country with comparable population size, with abundant cheap production line labour and existing industrial capacity and domain expertise in plastics. There are many more reasons though why India's rise in toy manufacturing is an inevitability.  The current manufacturing solutions in India are not perfect, but as the toy business begins to clamour for ever more production capacity outside of China, only India has the potential to scale up capacity to levels like we have seen develop in China over the last 30 years or so. More on all this in Episode 71 of the Playing At Business podcast.

There are some core fundamental practises that successful toy & games companies follow. If you look at any company operating in the toy biz with longevity and success, they will no doubt be following these 10 'Commandments'. 

Sometimes toy companies get so lost in their own internal processes and stakeholder conversations that they forget to think about what their end consumer i.e. children will want out of a product. We run through how to make toys that kids will want in this episode of the Playing At Business podcast.

France is one of Europe's 'BIG 3' toy & game markets. In this episode we speak to Yann Fresnel (of Toy Influence), who has extensive commercial experience in the French toy market. We discuss his career in toys, what companies need to understand about the market in France and also look at how his company helps with market entry in 'La Republique francaise'. This episode contains a lot of very useful and insightful information - for example we discuss how the Games category accounts for nearly one fifth of the entire toy market in France. For more key information and tips on how to get ahead in the toy market in France, listen to this episode now!

Selling your products into Retail is rarely easy, but getting into those accounts in the first place is one of the hardest elements of starting a toy or game business. Even for established companies persuading new customers to come on board can be tough. In this episode of PLAYING AT BUSINESS podcast we take a look at this topic and look at some fundamentals of acquiring new customers.

The only constant is change! The toy & game business is ever evolving. Over time we have observed many fundamental changes in the business itself but also in the world around us which also affects the world of toys. In this episode we run through the 10 biggest changes we have observed over time, and how that helps us predict & prepare for the future.

This not a podcast episode, instead it is an advertorial in which host Steve Reece talks at length about his own experience in the toy & game business and how our Consultancy business came about. We wanted to put this recording up to explain how we work and what we do in more detail for anyone who is interested. We talk through each of our Consultancy services in detail. Normal service on the PLAYING AT BUSINESS podcast will resume very soon!

Licensed products are a major feature of the toy & games business. In this episode we take a look at the key elements of licensed toys & games in terms of standard deal terms to acquire licenses, the do's and dont's of licensing and we take a look at what a healthy approach to licensing looks like for toy & games companies.

Europe remains a major region for the toy business, but it is a very fragmented region with more than 40 countries/territories, along with many languages, cultures and peoples. In this episode we discuss how to approach this potentially lucrative but highly fragmented market.

The Collectables toy category has been a major pillar of the toy business for a long time now. But the costs and risks of trying to enter this category can be high, while product launches tend to be very hit or miss. In this episode of The PLAYING AT BUSINESS podcast we look at the key success factors for Colelctable toy product lines.