WHAT ELECTRONIC ARTS DITCHING FIFA CAN TEACH US ABOUT BRAND LICENSING… FIFA has been a massively successful video games franchise for decades now for Electronic Arts. In fact, your author once interviewed to manage the brand, back in the early noughties, coming a close second to the winning candidate! FIFA delivered $1.6bn in revenues to EA in the financial year ending March 2021. That’s a big chunk of their revenues, and so to make such a fundamental change, and to drop the FIFA name has to be seen as a major financial risk. However, FIFA were reportedly demanding to double their receipts fro ..read more

SPIN MASTER GROWS Q1 REVENUES & PROFITS YEAR ON YEAR After a stellar 2021, Spin Master has continued their growth with a very successful Q1 2022. Spin Master’s CEO Max Rangel was quoted as saying “Following our very strong performance in 2021, we are extremely pleased with the positive momentum we saw across all three of our creative centers in the first quarter of 2022,” said Max Rangel, Spin Master’s Global President & CEO. “The Toy creative centre benefited from strong customer demand for our innovative toy line and our global commercial team continued to manage supply chain vo ..read more

MATTEL REPORTS STRONG Q1 2022, AND PROGRESSES CONTENT STRATEGY Mattel have this week reported strong figures for Q1 2022. Net sales in what is normally a fairly sleepy quarter were up 19% year on year at $1,041m. Reported operating income was up by $46million, or 136% hitting $80m for the quarter. Many people are expecting 2022 to be tough overall with high inflation predicted to dampen down consumer demand, but despite the inflationary environment Mattel delivered this quarter. The company has reported their expectation of 8-10% growth in ‘constant currency’ for full year 2022 at this point ..read more

MATTEL WINS ANOTHER DOLL OPPORTUNITY – FIRST DISNEY PRINCESS, NOW TROLLS Having only recently announced the return of Disney Princess Doll rights, Mattel has further announced the signing of the Trolls license for and beyond the next instalment of the Trolls movie franchise, due for release in late 2023. Mattel’s rights are reported to cover Dolls, Games, Vehicles and Plush. The original Trolls movie grossed a creditable $346million at the global box office. The second movie ‘Trolls World Tour’ was released just as the Covid-19 pandemic emerged, and as a result had a limited release cinematica ..read more

The Only Inevitability Is Change – New York Toy Fair Moves From February To Sept/Oct 2023 Big news on the trade show front, with the announcement by the Toy Association of their flagship trade show in New York moving timings from the traditional and long-standing February timeslot to September-October in 2023. Needless to say with any move of this kind, there are those who are for and those who are against, there are also winners and losers. In the end though, the start point must be that the Toy Associations role is to serve and promote their members. Therefore, they have taken the best possi ..read more

3 Reasons To Cancel A Toy Or Game In Development Before It Hits Shelves One of the peculiarities of the toy & game business is that the level of due diligence applied to product selection is far lower than in many other industries or consumer products categories. This is largely due to the fact that most products in market don’t carry forward to the next year. In our business, if a new product launch fails to live up to expectations, the implications are normally not that severe in terms of lost revenues – we budget for some markdowns and stock clearance across our product range and we cle ..read more

A Challenging 2021 Delivered Big Results For Major Toy Companies! At one point 2021 was looking decidedly risky for toy companies as we struggled to get products shipped in time for Christmas. Results released this week and recently suggest that globally, the toy business thrived despite the very challenging conditions. Firstly, NPD Group reported the U.S. toy market up 13% in value from 2020 to 2021. This is incredible, has the U.S. toy business grown by double digits in living memory? It may have done, but certainly not recently! This is all the more impressive since covid waves were still r ..read more

How To Create & Build Brands In The Toy & Game Business There can be no doubt that the big money in the toy and games business comes from building and selling brands. Growing by acquisition is a proven formula for successful growth in this industry. Brands which get into retail each and every year also provide stability and security in a turbulent marketplace with massive annual product churn. It isn’t easy though to build a blockbuster toy or game brand, but here’s some thoughts on how to do it: Focus on building your own brands – this seems painfully obvious, but often companies get ..read more

Z Is For Zuru, Zapf Creations & Ziv – Toy Industry A To Z   ZURU Zuru co-founders Nick and Mat Mowbray started the company back in 2003, before being joined by their sister Anna. The company has since enjoyed hits including Robofish, Bunch o Ballons and X-Shot. The siblings recently purchased the most expensive house in New Zealand, their home country. By the end of 2020, Zuru employed 8500 people, had 26 offices and revenues of over $1billion.   ZAPF CREATIONS Zapf Creations is a long standing and world-renowned toy doll company. Founded way back in 1934 in Rodental in Germany ..read more

PLAYING AT BUSINESS EPISODE 20 – How To Successfully Start & Build A Toy Company (Transcript) To listen to this podcast episode, just click here: https://playingatbusiness.libsyn.com/how-to-start-a-successful-new-toy-business   INTRO Hi, welcome to Episode 20 – Playing at Business podcast. I’m your host Steve Reece. Today I’m going to be talking to you about starting a new toy business and how to set it up for future success so you can keep on growing and growing! Before we get onto that though, If you’d like to find out more about the toy & game industry You can get news, analys ..read more