British journalist Eric Clark explores the hidden side of the world of toys: production, market, competition, real monopoly ! The survey remains superficial, but entertaining.
Monograph on an industry is a particularly difficult exercise. You must both be precise enough to interest observers in the sector and remain general enough to interest the informed public. By devoting his latest investigation to the toy sector, Eric Clark, English economic journalist for investigation specializing in substantive surveys, has chosen a subject that may interest the greatest number. He touches everyone with his childhood memories and in his family life. The developments in this sector are also spectacular and linked to the general transformations of the economy (globalization, the development of information technologies, transformations of the manufacturing system), which potentially gives a scale about. His work is the product of an in -depth investigation, very documented and very pleasantly written, but which often remains anecdotal.
The book opens onto a description of the Annual New York toy fair, which serves as a pretext for the introduction of themes that will be developed during the remarks. The style is alive, the anecdotes alternating with some figures and fragments of interviews. The current reality of the toy industry is thus replaced in its history. The table is that of the passage of a sector of small family firms to large multinationals which negotiate with an increasingly concentrated distribution sector (whether specialists like Toys’r ‘US or generalist distributors like Wal-Mart).
One of the specifics of the toy industry, which explains the importance of fairs, is the high number of amateur inventors, attributed by Clark to the intrinsic interest of the products themselves. For a few hundred professional inventors (some self -employed, and the majority employed by large groups, including the two giants Mattel and Hasbro), there are thousands of amateurs who send their ideas to manufacturers. The vast majority of ideas are not produced and 95% of product toys only live a year. But the few phenomenal successes that made their inventors rich (Pokémon, the Play-Doh modeling dough …) continues to dream. The market is increasingly closed, more and more concentrated, the manufacturers now relying on variations of old toys or licenses from cinema, which makes the task of inventors difficult, hence the development of agents and other intermediaries, who become essential.
Clark then turned to the board market market, notably through the history of the invention of Trivial Pursuit in Canada in the late 1970s by amateur inventors, a game which obtained phenomenal success by going against all the established rules (game for adults, expensive, intellectual). An exceptional case.
The game market is even more difficult to penetrate than that of toys. The vast majority of toys have a short lifespan. Classic games, on the other hand, form the majority of sales. In the United States, the industry is recent and dominated by a giant, Hasbro, which bought all the big names in the sector (Parker Brothers and its Monopoly, Milton Bradley etc.). Unlike the toy industry, a good part of the games are still produced in the United States, because the production, very automated, is not very intensive in work. The current heart of Hasbro’s profession consists in classics in -laws and games under licenses (from films, television games, etc.). Few new games are produced and they are characterized above all by spectacular mechanisms, capable of being launched by television campaigns.
After Hasbro, we must mention the second giant in the sector, the largest toy company in the world, Mattel, which supposes to present the toy on which it depends, the most striking in contemporary history, Barbie (a quarter of the company’s sales, a third of its profits). Having become a symbol of American culture, Barbie is today in crisis, in particular in the face of competition from another doll which, for the first time, succeeds in competing it: Bratz, produced by MGA.
Barbie’s invention in the 1950s is above all that of a doll “ adult (And no longer a baby) inspired, according to legend, of a doll produced for the pre-war German brothels. Barbie reflected a growing youth more and more quickly and a very successful commercial model consisting in making the doll buy to sell very expensive accessories and, today, increasingly diverse lines of licensed products. The secret was then to constantly reinvent the doll to make it stick to the times, thanks to a well -established system to determine the new trends in young girls: Barbie, symbol of the housewife, thus became in the 1980s the symbol of the girl power. Another ingredient of success is that the doll can play all roles (it is not a rock star doll, but a doll that can be dressed in rock star, nurse, etc.). The recent evolution, however, is worrying. Young girls abandon their doll earlier and earlier.
Bratz is a more adult, more trendy doll, in line with the fashion of the time, with multi-ethnic characters, criticized, like Barbie in her time, because she is too sexual. Mattel’s attempts to copy the principle have failed for the moment.
The two companies defend their bea and nail dolls against unauthorized copies or parody diversions. Local competitors that appear in certain countries (notably Arab countries, where Western dolls are often prohibited for immorality) remain marginal worldwide.
The author then describes the toy industry in general, taking up, by developing it, the leitmotif of his work, the progressive loss of his soul by an industry which continues to live from its image. Dominated by Germany at XIXe century, the toy industry experienced at XXe century The plastic revolution and concentration to reach the current sector, dominated by the two American giants Mattel and Hasbro.
The industry, very competitive, and whose manufacturing is almost completely relocated to China, has the fundamental risk taking. While the fixed costs (the molds) are significant, the market, based on childish modes, is very volatile. The sector depends a lot on seasonal sales and must constantly renew the products. Companies are trying to decrease the risk by using licenses and toy families (even Play-DOH plasticine now has its history, its range of books, etc.)-But the sector remains unstable and bankruptcies can be suffered.
To explain the structural decline in demand, Clark repels external explanations, such as the drop in birth rate, and argues that companies are based too much on marketing and not enough on good toys.
In terms of distribution, note that there are around 1,500 specialized shops, but their number is decreasing and that they are finding it increasingly difficult to survive. At the other end of the spectrum, three channels share 60 %of the American market: Wal-Mart (30%), Target (15%) and Toys’r’us (15%).
The great advantage of a general practitioner like Wal-Mart is that he structurally has more frequent visits to his customers, who do not only come for toys-they are often only a call product for him. In addition, its size gives it enormous negotiation power with suppliers. Toys’R’us, formerly criticized for its anti-competitive practices at the time of its boom, is today the only real competitor of Wal-Mart.
Relations are difficult between manufacturers and channels, and producers are looking for other distribution methods, for example fast food chains which are now distributing a third of toys USA.
Independent stores no longer represent only 3.5% of the toy market. Many stores and small channels closed during the price war launched by Wal-Mart in 2003-2004. Those who survive play on the services and the search for unknown news. Thus, in 1993, the inventor of Beany Babies deliberately chose to bet on small stores and the organization of shortages to make his toy a fashion.
Recent evolution in the sector is consubstantially linked to marketing innovations. When Hasbro, in the 1980s, invented the transformers, the toys became characters in a series. It is the emblem of convergence between toy industry and entertainment industry. One of the explanations of this phenomenon is the old rule of American television channels prohibiting the use of animation in the pubs for toys. In the 1970s, comics GI Joe had been created to bypass this rule. With the Transformers, for the first time, the same evolution is permitted with an animation series.
The industry has long been skeptical of targeted advertising towards children (it is the parents who buy after all), but it is today one of the first advertising investors. Symmetrically, youth programs are increasingly dependent on marketing, including public television (Bbc,, Pbs) where advertising is prohibited but not partnership. Two major developments are observable today: the continuous decline in target age (with teletubbies, we are tackling infants) and increasingly sophisticated marketing research. This is based on the Internet, on very organized viral marketing operations and on research in “ labos »Equipped with tainless ice where the smallest reactions are analyzed.
Clark completes his overview by attacking toys production, which comes back to describe Chinese factories. The last chapter of the book thus constitutes a real report in the report, with a description of the appalling conditions of this production, which are not specific to the toy industry.
In particular, the ineffectiveness of the reactions of large toy companies, which, after having denied the problem for a long time, are now based on codes of good conduct and inspections, is highlighted. The factories have passed by the art of preparation for an inspection. In addition to the pressures, moreover, the workers lie spontaneously. As companies stop dealing with faulty subcontractors, workers are indeed afraid of closing their factory and losing their work if they tell the truth. Finally, two factors are cited as fundamental to explain for these difficulties continue: the ban on independent unions in China and the pressure of Western client companies on deadlines and costs.
The book is fun to read, very pleasant and full of anecdotes. It gives a very good impression of the interior of what the toy industry is. The monograph also addresses the games, but at the turn of a single chapter, while all the rest of the discourse focuses on toys. Unfortunately, the work suffers from being only a journalistic account without much analytical pretension. There is little data and very little analysis, we are often faced with interviews and anecdotes and therefore “ expert saying »Not supported. Some construction tics are also weighing in the long run. Thus, the speech is very disjointed, with transitions over the pen and many returns back. This choice of writing makes the point easier to read but leads to many repetitions and does not allow very deep reasoning.
This excavated monograph will therefore be worth more as a documentation than an analysis. The author’s main message, a condemnation of the evolution of the practices of large companies tinged with nostalgia, seems a bit short.
Sources Images: Légo | Playmobil | Bratz doll | Transformers