How The World’s Biggest Toy Companies Grew Their Distribution
The world’s biggest toy companies are $multi-billion corporate behemoths with subsidiaries and employees all around the world. They didn’t necessarily get there quickly though. In fact, the one word which could best be used to describe how these massive toy companies grew distribution in terms of a global footprint would be SLOWLY.
It takes years to build up distribution around the world via sales agents and distributors. And then it typically takes decades for toy companies to set up subsidiaries even in the major toy markets in the world.
There are several reasons why distribution growth is seemingly so slow. The first factor to consider is that we work in an industry with an annual selling cycle, so whatever momentum you can create through the course of the selling cycle can only be built on for the following year. Bearing in mind that many (most!) toy product launches flop or at least fail to succeed well enough to come back the following year, we can see why it takes time to build a compelling must list portfolio of toy products.
Aside from the slow and laborious selling cycle, the process of finding premises for a new office and hiring staff to run them is innately risky and time consuming. For this reason, many toy companies seeking to grow enter new markets via acquisition. By buying an established company with good reputation in the country they seek to enter, with existing and strong relationships with buyers and with a good understanding of the market many years of costly trial and error can be avoided. Needless to say though, while acquisition is usually less risky as you are buying an established business you do have to pay a hefty price, and sometimes things still don’t work out. And to find good companies acquire at a realistic cost is also not easy – this also takes times, often years.
So, the reality is that even the biggest toy companies in the toy business today took decades to grow their distribution capability and capacity to the current levels. Therefore, for toy companies which are far less mature, you have to expect it to take time, and that time is measured in years. There are ways to accelerate distribution growth via sales agents or consultants for instance. This can take years off the process, but even then it will still take time!
We run a Consultancy business for toy companies. We work with major toy companies through to start ups and one person bands. For more information on how we help toy companies grow their distribution around the world: https://www.kidsbrandinsight.com/blog/toy-co-growth-booster-program/