Nothing captures Christmas quite like stockings full of toys. For the first time this festive season, Disney and Sainsbury’s partnered to bring a new shop-in-shop toy showcase to the front of a raft of its supermarkets.
To discover how the project played out, and what we can learn about the toys category as a result, Retail Week spoke with Disney’s director of UK&I Retail & EMEA Ecommerce Ollie Pryor
Tell us about your tie-up with Sainsburys
The project was 18 months in the making. It was a seasonal shop-in-shop across 68 Sainsbury’s stores, and lasted three weeks. Given the strength of the Disney ranges we have across Sainsbury’s and Argos, we wanted to put forward a multi-category showcase of our product in peak football trading space to cement Sainsbury’s and Disney as a destination over the festive period.
We know from our research that there’s a strong correlation between Sainsbury’s shoppers and Disney fans. The synergy was there and it simply just made sense. We had over 16 licensees involved in this, so it was quite expansive and incorporated the multitude of Disney brands. There was something for everyone, from preschool to kids to adults to dress up.
You mentioned that you wanted a range that would appeal to adults too. Can you tell us more about that trend?
Disney brands have such a rich heritage and elasticity to cater to all audiences. We have products across virtually all of our brands, from baby, infant, preschool kids through to kids, adults and beyond. Look at Disney, Marvel, Star Wars – we ensure that we are attuned to the various demographics’ customer needs.
How does what adults want from Disney differ from what kids want?
Using the Sainsbury’s example, some of the electronic lines performed really well with adults, as did card games and collectibles.
With some of our action figure partners and collectible partners, there’s an evolution from playing with the product to now having a product that looks quite nicely packaged on their shelf as a collectible item.
What did the project tell you about how people are shopping the toy category today?
There was not a single store where a multitude of people weren’t browsing the product. I observed people independently stumble upon it and then explore what it had to offer. Toys is a key category that people shop over Christmas, but this was a moment to put it front and centre, make it easier for them, make it fun, and help them purchase things that maybe otherwise they hadn’t planned to.
Tesco has a big partnership with The Entertainer, is the toy category becoming a key battleground for the grocers?
Toys is one of the most preeminent, established, and mature categories within retail. Grocers aren’t new to selling toys, but the landscape is incredibly competitive and fast changing. There is always a need to make sure that the space the grocers have in store does what it needs to do.
The front of the store, particularly at peak hours, is often reserved for certain other product categories guaranteed to deliver certain things over that time. So replacing them with toys was a real consideration for us – it needed to be a rich brand experience, but also fulfil Sainsbury’s and Disney’s aims from a commercial perspective. The early reads indicate that we’ve delivered on that.
How did the toy category perform more generally over Christmas 2024?
It’s a very challenging retail landscape at the moment, and toys isn’t immune to that – particularly when we look at the November toy performance in the market. However, we remain optimistic. The December performance indicates that shoppers shopped for Christmas much later this year than past years. So our December installation was at a pivotal time.
People are getting out there and they are spending, but it is challenged. However, what we’ve seen in December so far calls for optimism. Going into 2025, we remain confident for the year ahead, for toys and the wider categories that we play in.
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