For more than a year and a half, the Covid-19 epidemic has disrupted the global economy. But as the end of year celebrations fast approach, one question is on everyone’s lips: “Are we going to run out of toys at Christmas?” Here is the answer.
55 is the number of days before Christmas and if some parents are delighted with the arrival of the end-of-year celebrations, for others this period is synonymous with real anxiety. And for good reason, it seems that this year, a shortage of toys threatens the Christmas holidays. To find out more, we interviewed Patrick Jocteur Monrozier, Director of the Customer Center at King Jouet.
Every year, around the world, the toy market faces many shortages of stocks, especially on the most popular toys. This is because for manufacturers it can be difficult to estimate what the major trends of the year will be, so they make estimates as close as possible to what they think is the sales potential.
“Unfortunately, sometimes it happens that a product has the wind in its sails, that it is extremely in demand and when it arrives at the beginning of december the most popular toys start to fail. ”, explained Patrick Jocteur Monrozier
A difficult recovery
However, this year promises to be a bit special.
“There was a global supply chain disruption notably linked to Covid-19, in France many stores were unable to open and were restricted during periods of confinement. In this context, from the end of last year, many manufacturers wanted to reduce their toy production, to avoid ending up with too many unreturned products, knowing that the toy market is pulled each year by the novelty.”, he detailed. “This disorganization is also explained by theTo economic recovery which happens to be much stronger than anyone imagined. ” he continued.
“We find ourselves with players with very low stocks, even lower than usual given the recovery known at the end of 2020, iThey then had to replenish their stocks. The requests were higher than normal.”
An impacting health situation
Unfortunately, maritime transport failed to meet the overall demand since it was far greater than what carriers could offer in terms of logistics capacity. This is a first phenomenon to which several small elements have been added.
“Firstly, the blockage of the Suez Canal last spring caused an additional delay of the carrier vessels due to the non-shipment of the goods. And second, in Asia, where a large majority of toys are still made, the health situation is still worrying, in the slightest case of Covid-19 in a port, the latter is completely closed and the goods remain at the quayside. Together all of these will lead to a higher failure rate than usual. ”, he explained
“There will be toys under the trees”
The second problem that could impact Christmas sales concerns the lack of raw materials and more particularly of electronic chips. This means that in the field of toys, especially games with a large electronic dimension will be directly penalized in manufacturing. However, don’t panic: “There will be toys under the trees at Christmas”, reassured Patrick Jocteur Monrozier.
It’s hard to imagine which toys will be the most popular toys for kids this year, so if you want to buy a specific toy for your toddler, we recommend you do it now.
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