Campaign for real toys brings success to the Entertainer
Traditional toy shop celebrates BATR award
January 28 2003
A focus on real toys has seen independent toy shop The Entertainer seal a year of success with the coveted Toy Retailer of the Year award.
The 33-outlet traditional toy chain, which doesn’t sell computer games, came out ahead of High Street names such as Woolworth and Argos, as well as high profile toy specialists including Hamleys and Toymaster, to win the award from the British Association of Toy Retailers (BATR).
The Awards capped a year of success for The Entertainer, in which it opened new stores and increased its sales by 20 per cent. The BATR judges were impressed by the customer service and parent and child friendly stores across the chain – something that The Entertainer has worked hard to improve during this last year.
Highlighting The Entertainer’s successful approach was its coup in bringing a shipment of Beyblades into the UK with just a few shopping days to go until Christmas. Each store put 500 of the sought-after spinning top toys on sale on Friday, December 20 – and all had sold out by Christmas Eve.
The business was founded 20 years ago by Gary Grant with a single toy shop in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. Grant has dedicated The Entertainer to offering traditional toys in a market where children’s Christmas lists for Santa are more likely to feature electronic war games and pre-teen make up kits than yo-yo’s and dolls’ clothes.
The Entertainer’s branch at Romford in Essex, which opened in May, won the BATR’s Independent Retailer of the Year award.
Grant said: “We are delighted to win these awards, which is a very welcome recognition of the success of our strategy to focus on developing the market for traditional toys, It is also a tribute to the dedication and hard work of our staff in providing the highest levels of customer service. The Entertainer is on a mission to bring toys back to the High Street, and this proves that we’re well on the way.”
