Toymaster’s May Show officially ended yesterday.
From the great stands attracting business from all over, to the dancing nights of live music, food, socialising and – more importantly – awards to Toymaster’s great, kind, generous and good.
We caught up with many of the suppliers, and as ever were showing great ranges and offering generous deals to Toymaster retailers. On the Vtech stand, Mike Williams, national account manager said: “There are some great offers and ours is a further 7.5 per cent discount on top of the existing 5 per cent one for members, on some of our ranges.”
Ian Jenkins, sales representative at Wilton Bradley said “Toymaster is the highlight of the year and it’s always well attended. It’s great to sit down with my Welsh and Irish customers for a proper catch up which just isn’t possible in their busy shops or on a tight schedule visit to Ireland.”
And on the first evening, when John Adams’ Bruno Gallone received a Toymaster Special Recognition Award – the one given to those who have made a real difference over many years, putting people at the centre of everything it does. Bruno came back for an unexpected and roof raising encore too, when he fronted the live music band, Toy Division (with well known band members from the industry including Paul Reader (Toymaster) in a dance crazy hour of multi-genre hits from the 70s onward. Our favourite? Mud’s Tiger Feet, which nearly had the entire Majestic bouncing off its foundations.
So, serious business was done with added smiles and showers. And, of course, fun. How could it be otherwise when you’re dealing with the great and the good of our industry?
Then came the main night of the Toymaster awards
Yogi Parmar, managing director of Toymaster opened the awards presentations and took the opportunity to thank the whole team. He added. “It warms my heart to see it all come together. Thank you to all our independent retailers, suppliers and members for their support in making this show so special.”
Supplier of the Year was received by Joe Kissane of Character Options and his colleagues who took to the stand. Joe said: “Richard King who I’ve worked with and John Diver & Kiran Shah for 40 something years now. The ethos of Character comes from Richard. I respect him for that, and I will always say that, without Richard, we wouldn’t be here. He’s a one off. We’re really pleased, the team are really pleased. And also some of the team that aren’t here, they would take this with pride, including the back room team at Character as well, they put in a lot of hard work.
I’ve never missed a Toymaster show. For me, this is the start of the year, it’s tough out there. You come here, you have a laugh. You can smile. Then you can go back to the nitty gritty, get stuck into the hard work that’s about to come. Just enjoy it. They do a fantastic job these guys (at Toymaster), love em’ to bits. Thank you.”
We’ll go into further detail about the awards in our June issue, which included, Friends of Toymaster (Nick Saunders of Brainstorm) and Golden Teddy (Jon Ward of Epoch). There was also another Special Recognition Award (Philip Kaye of Kayes of Cardiff).
Then there was more chat, music and dancing into the early hours before the final day of trading which is at the heart of the show.
And that was another great Toymaster completed.
Read the full report in our June issue of TnP.
