Playing At Business - toy & game business podcast with Steve Reece

Human beings tend to learn best by making mistakes. In this podcast we look at the 5 big learnings that toy & game people have to make...ideally as inexpensively as possible!

There are 5 big areas where toy & games companies can really mess up, listen to the podcast to find out more about what they are.

Localisation is normally the poor cousin to the more exciting and glamorous parts of developing a toy or game product and bringing them to market. Yet localisation is a critical functionality and process for maximising the commercial success (or otherwise) of our products.

In this episode we look at the key elements of localisation, and I share a few amusing anecdotes which show how localisation done badly can cause unintended consequences & commercial failure.

Products tend to vary from category to category, but at the heart of any top selling you will normally find most or all of the 5 key ingredients we run through in Episode 83 of the Playing At Business podcast.

We discuss successful products such as Spin Master's Paw Patrol ranges, Monopoly board game & the truly iconic Rubiks Cube.

This episode is for anyone who hopes to develop & launch a top-selling toy or game.

It's looking like 2022 is panning out to be a tough year in the toy & game biz!

The question is what companies can do in the face of a drop in consumer demand. The reality for most companies is that they have not faced a significant drop in market size, at least not for a very long time. For sure companies revenues will have gone up and down due to competition and the quality of their own product lines, but most of us have not had to deal with a strong decline in the toy market. In this episode we look at how companies can manage a significant drop in consumer demand if that is what happens in 2022 overall. We also look at some reasons to be cheerful for those in the toy & game business right now!

The world has changed so much in the past couple of decades. Sometimes the rate of change can be bamboozling...but there are some underlying fundamentals of managing toy & game businesses which haven't changed. Listen to Episode 81 to find out more...

One of the major trends in the toy business in the last decade or more is the morphing of the major toy companies into cross platform entertainment companies.

In this episode of the Playing At Business podcast we take a look at this trend, and we also look at what smaller companies can do to try to compete in the entertainment world to capture the opportunities to sell more toys!

There is one fundamental success factor for board games which is overwhelmingly present in the most successful board games of all time. From Chess to Clue/do, and from Monopoly to Mousetrap, any board game which sticks in the market features this one fundamental feature at the very core of the gameplay mechanic.

It isn't glitzy marketing, it isn't necessarily a beautiful looking game box, but what it is reaches to the very heart of human existence. We reveal what this factors is at the start of this podcast...

Toy & games companies generally don't test their products enough with consumers. We all know how much testing goes into ensuring products are compliant with safety standards, but what about testing to see if they are compliant with functionality, fun and general appeal to kids & their parents?

Consumer research playtesting is the not so secret, but shamefully under-utilised weapon of toy & game companies. All the major global toy companies have extensive consumer research programs, but as we discuss in this podcast, research doesn't necessarily have to be expensive to be useful.

Inflation is very high in most western markets right now. This is a challenge for the toy industry to manage, because our products are discretionary purchases, and when mandatories such as food and heating increase in price, this can reduce the amount of available funds consumers have to buy toys.

In this episode we look at the current drivers of inflation, we look at the time it is likely to take for this inflation to diminish and we look at how toy & games companies can best navigate the muddy waters of inflationary times!

Electronic Toys are not new. The toy business has a long history of dumbing and pricing down electronics & tech in general into toy formats and toy price points.

In the end though, whether these tech toys work or not in the market doesn't come down to the tech/electronic itself. Listen to Episode 76 to find out what really matters even more!