Are Your Children Putting Up The Cost Of Toys?
Seriously, just taking your kids to a toy store could make presents more expensive next year!
I don’t mean the normal cost of demand or an increase in the cost of material - I mean that prices have to go up to account for the behaviour or your kids – or more importantly – You.
How A Toy Store Works:
Like all businesses it runs on a balance or 3 main things: the cost of buying in the toys in the first place, the cost of staff and the cost of the rent and bills on the shop. These 3 must be less than the total money that goes into the till – leaving a profit (hopefully).
If any of these 3 things costs too much – the store isn’t worth opening every day so something has to give – and it’s normally the price you pay.
So, based on the short time I worked in a toy store, here are the 2 ways you can help to keep these costs down – and therefore, the cost of your toys!
The Products Themselves:
When you buy a toy, the store make a profit on the difference between what they paid for it in the first place and what you paid for it to take it home. So, if they buy a wooden toy for £1 and you buy it for £3, they make £2, right?
Well, not always. You see, they may well buy 100 wooden toys (costing them £100) to sell for a total of £300 – but if 10 of those are accidently broken by children playing with them roughly - the store has lost £20 profit plus the £10 to buy them, so each remaining toy will only be worth £2.70 each.
Imagine this multiplied up by all their products on display (my store had over 1000 different products) and on the more expensive items. That’s a lot of money being lost by the store because your child accidentally tore the packaging of something, or burst something else when you weren’t looking.
So, the answer is only let your children play with the display models (those that the store has singled out for everyone to play with) – therefore limiting the number of manhandled products to one of each.
Don’t let your children eat food while visiting a toy store as a chocolaty finger on a furry puppet is not what the store were hoping for – as you aren’t going to buy it and neither will anyone else!
And also – don’t leave your kids in a toy store while you stay outside talking to friends or are on your cell – as they can do a lot of damage in just a few short minutes alone!!!!
Too Many Staff:
As a result of the number of people who do leave their kids alone in toy stores – the store manager needs to employ a larger number of staff to keep an eye on them all to limit the damage they cause!
Most toys in our store were for 3+ but of course children under 3 can’t read that so they pick them up and snap bits off – off more commonly lick or bite them. And quite a lot of ours were filled with liquid!
If the store is having to employ more staff than say a shoe store would need, then their overheads become higher, and higher overheads means less profit.
And stores want more profit, but they can’t have less staff – so they raise their prices!
Less Rent:
The only real way to lower your rent is going to be bad for business. It is either going to be moving to a smaller store (so they will have less products), moving to a less busy street or smaller mall (so less customers will visit) or going totally online (so you have to advertise your site).
None of these are good for you as a customer either. If they have a smaller store – you have less choice for your children’s toys and gifts; if they move to a less popular street or mall – you have further to walk to find them, if at all; and if they move online – your kids won’t be able to play with the toys at all until you buy them!
Less Waste:
Don’t forget that all the toys that can’t be sold – whether they are broken or not – will be thrown away. What a total waste!
Even if it is just the packaging that’s torn – the product can’t be sold on the shelf. Some stores would use it as display model, but not all of them.
And, the more that get broken before making it to a home – the more that need to be made in the first place!
So, next time you visit a toy store - hold on to your kids and save money – and you will also be saving those resources!
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