Why a Smaller Toy Agency Punches Above Its Weight
The appointments for LA are coming in, but I will be honest, they are slower than previous years. Not dead. Just slower. And as someone who has enjoyed a full diary every year so far, I notice the difference.
The reason is not a mystery. There are well over 300 vendors on that floor, and I am being conservative. Buyers have a finite number of days and they are trimming their trips, which means fewer meetings to go round and more vendors chasing them. When that squeeze happens, the smaller toy agency feels it first. I am the smaller agency. I punch above my weight, but I am under no illusion about the weight.
I have mostly made my peace with it, and here is why. The thing that earns a small agency a slot in a tightening diary is not the size of the catalogue. It is that I only ever walk in with lines I would put my own name behind. A buyer who gives me twenty minutes is not getting a tour of forty products. They are getting the two or three things I genuinely believe will work in their market, and nothing else wasting their time.
Momotoy is the case in point. I posted about it a fortnight ago. The first order has now landed, and the contest over who distributes it in Europe is heating up faster than I expected. When two parties start circling the same line before it has properly launched, that tells you more than any sell sheet ever could. That is the line working on its own merit, which is exactly what you want to see.
So I am not going to pretend the slower diary does not sting a little. It does. But a quieter calendar focuses the mind on the right question, which is not how many meetings I can take. It is whether the handful I do take are with the right people, holding the right lines. The diary will fill, it always does. And for the buyers who make the time, the trip will be worth it, because I do not waste it.
