It is about ten inches high, light blue, and as hideous as only toys for the
very young can be. Press its foot, and it lisps childishly. It is an Iggle
Piggle, and if you haven’t got one yet this Christmas, you probably won’t
now.
Every year there is some must-have item that the shops sell out of, to the
despair of the parents of inconsolable tots. Remember Cabbage Patch Dolls?
You shudder at them still. Toy manufacturers and retailers are routinely
accused of engineering such artificial shortages to boost interest in their
products.
Gary Grant, chairman of The Entertainer, says it is no conspiracy, but the
impossibility of knowing, in a business with a 16-week delay between order
and arrival in the shops, what will be irresistible to the young this year.
Going strong for the 2007 season, Doctor Who and Transformers. Less popular,
for reasons locked up in the playground psyche, spin-offs from this year’s
Shrek movie.
If you could only predict what the little ones want, you could make a fortune,
says Mr Grant. But no one has managed to track these playground building
blocks of cultural evolution in the making. It is one of the difficulties of
running Britain’s biggest independent toy retailer.
The Entertainer’s gaudy shopfronts are a fixture of 41 high streets and
shopping malls, and counting. They have to compete with the three biggest
toy retailers, Woolworths, Toys R Us and Argos, which have between them up
to half the market. Woolworths probably has 12 per cent; The Entertainer has
just 3 per cent.
Mr Grant left school at 16 with one O-level. Like many entrepreneurs, he is
dyslexic. Like many entrepreneurs, he started early. He delivered papers,
helped on a milk round, worked in a sweet shop and a bicycle shop. “Working
was as natural as going to school.” He left for that bicycle shop, becoming
manager. At the age of 23, he was fired.
He had built up a thriving business on the side, sourcing and supplying
components for the boom at the time in skate-boarding and roller-skating.
His employer lost patience at the amount of time this was taking up. He and
his wife, Cath, decided to set up on their own.
“I started in 1981 with one store in Amersham,” he says. He was brought up
around there and retains a strong attachment to the area, in Buckinghamshire
at the far end of John Betjeman’s Metroland. “We bought this ailing toy
shop. It was called The Pram and Toy Bar.”
It was the only shop he could find in the area at the time. In those days,
toys tended to be stored in drawers and behind glass, and handed over on
request. The Grants put in shelves and racking where customers could pick up
and play with the merchandise.
He was not the first to go over to self-service, but in toys he was one of the
first. The purchase was funded by Barclays Bank, with whom he still has a
strong relationship, with a matching loan on the mortgage on their house.
Further expansion was equally funded by profits and bank loans.
Mr Grant is dead against any stock market float, believing, probably
correctly, that he is not right for the City. “We’ve built this business
brick by brick. There hasn’t been any massive inpouring of cash that’s
enabled the business to grow so fast we don’t know what we’re doing.”
He adds: “I’m not sure if my type of business is compatible with the City.
Mike Ashley, Richard Branson, even Philip Green – to a large degree it’s
their ability to act quickly and do things that aren’t planned that makes
their businesses different from a Marks & Spencer, for example.”
Mr Grant is not sure if he could do it all again today. Times are tough in the
toy game. Zodiac Toys, Beatties – the industry is littered with bodies. Over
the past 18 months alone, says Mr Grant, three chains have gone belly up.
You are competing not only with the aforementioned three big firms, but with
supermarkets such as Tesco and Asda. His response is to put an emphasis on
service.
Recent months have seen various horror stories in toys, with dangerous
products, many sourced in China, having to be embarrassingly and expensively
withdrawn. His staff have to have the knowledge to reassure parents, and
instruct them on what items are appropriate for any given age. “That’s the
sort of service that sets the independents apart from the mass toy
retailers.”
It must be said that The Entertainer staff are noticeably more enthusiastic
than their counterparts in the average high street chain. There are Saturday
clubs devoted to collecting football cards, for example, when this craze is
in the ascendant. There is also, Mr Grant claims, a wider and more
specialist product range than can be found in the bigger chains. Toy
manufacturers, under pressure from rival attractions such as computer games,
have had to reinvent themselves. Lego, for example, makes a Star Wars-based
range. Meccano, now in plastic, is back in vogue.
There is also the “kidult” phenomenon - Scalextric set-ups and train sets are
bought by more adults than children. In 2004 Mr Grant took over the bust
Gadget Shop business, which sells online a range of – well, indulgences, is
how his son Stuart, 23, who runs this side, describes them. These are
grown-up toys, ranging from bafflingly popular “c’mon” dolls from the
Vauxhall motor ads, to deliberately retro products such as the
staircase-descending Slinky in its original packaging.
Mr Grant’s oldest son, Duncan, 25, a KPMG-trained accountant, also works for
the family firm, which today is based on an industrial park a few miles from
Amersham. Daughter Anna is at university, and 12-year-old Alastair is
available for a ground-floor insight into what his peers are buying.
Christmas is the busiest time, inevitably, about half of all sales coming in
the run-up, and the chain’s 600-strong staff are increased by 150 seasonal
workers. The impressive nativity scenes are now appearing in the shop
windows, taking space away from more commercial displays.
“We get people stopping and queueing outside to look at our windows.” Mr Grant
says, admitting that he thought long and hard about whether to make this
sacrifice of valuable display space but “as a Christian I thought it was the
right thing to do”.
Ah yes. Mr Grant lacks our former Prime Minister’s reticence at discussing his
religion, and his business is known as one of the few that, on principle,
will not open on Sunday.
“As a Christian, I believe everybody deserves a day of rest. From a practical
point of view, we employ a lot of parents. I believe in the importance of
Sundays, and in the ability of staff to spend time with their families.
“One of the issues today is, when one or both parents are working over the
weekend, there isn’t any family time together.”
Most parents would agree. But Mr Grant takes this further. He will not stock
merchandise that has to do with Hallowe’en, or with Harry Potter because of
accusations over the latter’s association with the occult. “I look at this
from a Christian perspective, and decide if it’s the sort of thing I wish to
endorse as a Christian retailer.”
This extends to Trolls, those fuzzy-haired creatures. “When toys are actually
put on the table, I have a sense that there are certain things I feel
uncomfortable with and refuse to stock. It’s not that the toys are evil. I’m
no spiritual policeman on toys. It’s for parents to choose what they are
comfortable with their children playing with.”
Curriculum vitae
Gary Grant
Born: 1958
1974: Leaves school, one O-level
1981: Buys first store in Amersham after losing his job at a bicycle store
1985: Second store, in nearby Beaconsfield
1991: Third store opens in Slough
Married. Three sons, one daughter
