The French family brand King Jouet is launching the start of the new school year for games. This is an opportunity for the distributor to take stock of a satisfactory year and to talk about its future prospects.
Despite a year 2023 which gave little hope to retailers, The toy market has started a slight recovery in 2024 by posting a stable result of -0.1% (compared to a decline of 4.8% in the same period last year). This stability is partly due to a 5% deficit in sales volume offset by an equal increase in prices. According to Circana data, specialists and multi-specialists are posting the best performances in the market, while generalist brands such as hypermarkets are down 7.9%. The same is true for online sales, where specialized e-commerce sites are performing in contrast to giants such as Amazon, which is recording a decline of 4.7%.
In this context, the French brand King Jouet recorded a growth of 2.9 points and gained 0.4 market share, reaching a score of 13.9. According to Philippe Gueydon, CEO of King Jouet, two categories are driving the brand’s results upwards despite the declining birth curve: construction games, such as Legos, whose sales increased by 30% this year, and playing cards. Conversely, outdoor toys, which represented a significant share of sales, are in decline, particularly due to the unpredictable weather. Faced with these results, King Jouet wants to consolidate its position on the toy market by focusing in particular on the “Kidult” category. This concerns customers without children who buy toys and games such as Legos, playing cards or figurines.
King Jouet focuses on responsible consumption
In addition to consolidating sales of products in the Kidults category, the family brand wants to accelerate its responsible consumption strategy. To do this, it is developing its second-hand service offering. Indeed, a study conducted by Junior City shows that 60% of parents plan to buy second-hand toys for Christmas. While this figure is more or less stable compared to last year, the number of customers who want to buy from a specialist retailer has almost doubled. 25% of them prefer to buy second-hand from a toy store rather than on platforms like Vinted.
Thus, King Jouet wants to offer a 360 approach around the life cycle of a product. To do this, the brand is developing its points of sale dedicated to second-hand goods: King Occaz. These represent 10% of the store network of the brand with around thirty points of contact. “Every week, our teams buy back 2,000 used toyscomments Philippe Gueydon, This year we sold 80,000 of them.”
In addition to second-hand goods, King Jouet offers to help with the repairability of toys and games with a spare parts service, while supporting its customers in fault diagnostics. According to the Junior City study, four out of 10 parents have already had a toy repaired and nine out of 10 say they are ready to do so, even if it means buying a new part for 74% of them. While these consumers mainly turn to digital to help them with repairs, their second destination of choice is the specialist store.
Finally, the brand is positioning itself on the revaluation of toys that can no longer be sold, with collection bins in its points of sale. Since the deployment of these spaces a year ago, King Jouet has collected four tonnes of toys to recycle.
Preparing for the future
Outside of the CSR axis, King Jouet wants to consolidate its activity by developing its urban stores. Currently, this represents around twenty points of sale among the 350 stores of the brand in France. This month, the brand will open a point of sale in the heart of the city of Béziers, in the Polygone shopping center. In addition to the store openings, the company is undertaking a graphic overhaul of its own brands. It began these changes with the Zig Zag educational games and used generative AI for packaging design.
King Jouet is also continuing its capital takeover operation by the Gueydon family, in order to prepare the succession by the daughter of the current manager, Coralie Gueydon (currently CSR director of the group) and her son-in-law Noam Bouyakoub (communication and omnichannel marketing manager of King Jouet). In addition, The brand will open 5% of its capital to its employees in 2025.
Source: www.ecommercemag.fr
