Blow plast Ltd

Abstract

The inflow of imported toys is a recent phenomenon. At present there are very few organised players in this field, namely, MM Toys, UNICHAMP & IBH. The imported toys have hit LEO mainly in the battery operated toys’ category. The problem existed on twofronts - increased promotion by the dealers & increased acceptance of the imported toys by the customers, the main reason being - a high value for money, the customers said, the imported toys were giving them. It was decided to study the problem from both the dealers’ as well as the customers’ viewpoints. Questionnaires were designed for the customers & retails audits were carried out. It was found that a ‘LEO-customer’ gave a lot of importance to variety & front display & preferred shops that exclusively sold toys. He would not mind going to shops far from his house for want of a better variety. He was Price sensitive, in contradiction with what was earlier hypothesized. LEO toys are generally perceived to be expensive, of good quality, providing high entertainment & comperetively less educational values. Customers are generally satisfied with the variety being offered by LEO. LEO is hit mainly in the battery operated category due to the coming of imported toys. This is so because of the lack of variety in this particular category & the low quality of Leo's battery operated toys. This is in contradiction with the reputation generally enjoyed by LEO on the above two fronts. Battery operated toys have a large market potential, going by the share the imported toys (mainly battery operated) have come to gain in such a short span of time. To counter this, very generous schemes need to be given to the dealers on the existing battery-operated toys. All efforts need to be made to thrust the battery operated toys on the dealers so as to occupy as much shelf space as possible for next 5-6 months. This will restrict the availability of imported toys to the customers till LEO launches a variety of battery operated toys in next 6 months (even the option of reverse-engineering the imported battery operated toys & introducing cosmetic changes & other modifications can be looked into, if the need be). In a period of one year, LEO should be able to launch many sub categories of imported toys as possible, overlooking the profitability in the short run. This is to generate a natural pull from the customer's side who attaches a lot of importance to variety. In addition to this, there should be efforts for making these battery operated toys ‘manufacturing-defect-free' as the response of most of the customers regarding the quality of battery-operated toys, specifically, has been unfavourable. The chances of the imported toys breaking into other categories are bleak. All these steps should be accompanied by enough advertising at the time of launching the new toys. LEO can't afford to lose on time since the organised players of imported toys have plans to launch many more battery operated toys in near future.