10 Things to Avoid When Selling Toys

Ever felt like your toy business is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole? You’re not alone. Many toy entrepreneurs find themselves dodging pitfalls left and right, from product flops to logistical nightmares.

Ignoring critical aspects like market research, quality control, and online presence can turn your dream business into a costly disaster. Imagine investing in products that collect dust in warehouses or losing customers because your toys aren’t safe or innovative enough. Worse yet, poor inventory management and underestimating hidden costs can drain your profits faster than a leaky bucket.

But fear not! By focusing on the essentials—market research, quality assurance, digital marketing, safety standards, and continuous innovation—you can steer clear of these common pitfalls. This guide will walk you through the top ten mistakes to avoid in the toy business, ensuring your venture is as fun and profitable as the toys you sell.

Table of Contents

1. Ignoring Market Research
2. Ignoring Quality Control
3. Ignoring the Importance of Online
4. Ignoring Safety Standards
5. Failure to Innovate
6. Poor Inventory Management
7. Bad Marketing Strategy
8. Underestimating Hidden Costs
9.  Intellectual Property
10. Transportation And Customs Issues

1. Ignoring Market Research

If you want to be successful in the toy market, you’d better pay attention to market research. If you don’t, you’re going to run into all kinds of problems, such as:

( I ) Wasting time and resources: You’re going to spend a lot of time and waste a lot of resources developing products that nobody wants to buy. This will lead to a warehouse full of crap and a bank account that’s quickly approaching zero.

( II ) Failure to set your pricing strategy correctly: If you don’t understand what your competitors are charging and how much your customers are willing to spend, you’re going to price your products too high or too low, which will kill your sales and your profits.

( III ) Getting your butt kicked by your competitors: If you don’t understand who else is selling toys in your market, if you don’t know how to market your products, and if you can’t outfox your competition, you’re going to get your butt kicked by the people who do know how to do these things.

In short, you need to pay attention to market research. If you don’t, you’re going to run into all kinds of problems, which will affect your ability to compete and make money.

Also, let me throw in this little plug. You not only need to pay attention to market research, you need to be good at using it. A lot of companies do a ton of market studies and then never put the results to work in their businesses. They wasted all that time and money. You need to have a system in place to take the results of your market research and plug them into your product development, marketing, and other processes. That’s the only way market research will ever do you any good.

2. Ignoring Quality Control

Selling toys is a complicated business that requires you to pay close attention to quality control. If you don’t, you’re going to create a safety hazard, which will destroy your brand and might also get you sued.

To make sure your toys are good, you need to do the following things:

( I ) Set Up a Good Quality Control System

First, you need to write down what your quality standards are and the process you’re going to use to control the quality of your toys. You need to control everything about your toys, including the raw materials, the design, the manufacturing, the packaging, the shipping, etc. You need to hire a third-party inspector to check your toys to make sure they meet your quality standards.

( II ) Pick Good Suppliers

The quality of your toys starts with your suppliers. You need to pick good suppliers and then check up on them regularly to make sure they’re still good.

( III ) Train Your Employees

Your employees are the key to your ability to control the quality of your toys. You need to train them on a regular basis so they understand your quality standards and your quality control process. You need to make sure they know how to control the quality of your toys.

How do we control product quality?

To ensure our product quality, we also have quality control on raw materials and finished products in the production process. We will do a comprehensive second QC on the product before we ship it out, and we will do a full range of inspections on the product appearance, performance, function, etc. to make sure the product has no defects and meets our customer’s needs. After 2 strict QCs, the defective rate of our products is much lower than 2%.

3. Ignoring the Importance of Online

In today’s digital world, if you ignore online sales channels, you’re going to lose. Having a strong online presence can help you reach more people, build your brand, and compete in the market. To avoid this mistake, do the following:

( I ) Build a professional website: You need a professional website that is easy to use. Your website should not only have information about your products, but it should also attract customers and make it easy for them to buy.

( II ) Use social media: By posting good stuff and talking with people, you can build your brand, get people to notice you, and sell stuff.

( III ) Get found in search engines: By posting good pictures, text, videos and other content, by making your website look like a million bucks, and creating good content, using the right words, and getting other good websites to link to you, you can get your website to show up higher in search results and get more free traffic.

( IV ) Hang out in online communities: You can hang out in online forums where parents, toy fanatics, and other people who would buy what you’re selling hang out. You can answer their questions, show off how smart you are, and build your brand.

( V ) Make it easy for people to buy your stuff: You need to make it easy for people to buy from you using the web. You need to set up an easy way for people to pay you and for you to ship stuff to them. Some common online sales channels include Amazon, Shopify, and eBay.

Related Articles: How to Sell Toys Online – The Ultimate Guide

4. Ignoring Safety Standards

To save money, some manufacturers don’t pay attention to safety standards. They use crummy materials, or they put in chemicals or other stuff that’s going to make kids sick. This will expose kids to yucky stuff that will make them sick and might hurt them.
Also, watch out for toys that are designed in a way that makes them dangerous, such as choking hazards, small parts, and toys that aren’t labeled or packaged correctly.
To avoid this problem, make sure the toys you buy meet the appropriate safety standards, like ASTM, CPC, EN71, etc. If a toy meets the safety standards, it’s a safe bet that it’s not going to make your kids sick or kill them.

5. Failure to Innovate

As a major provider of entertainment and education for children, your ability to come up with new things for kids to play with will directly affect your ability to compete in the market and your brand image. However, some people who sell toys have forgotten to come up with new stuff and now they’re selling the same old crap. They’re getting killed in the market, people think their brand stinks, and they’re going to be out of business.

If you want to be the person who can’t be beat in the toy market, you have to always be thinking about what’s next and how you can be different. Here’s what you need to do:

( I ) Pay Attention to What People are Talking About
You need to know what the new thing is and what people are saying about what’s new in toys. You can learn about new toys and what people think about them from social media, especially Tiktok and Instagram.

( II ) Work with Your Suppliers
Get to know your suppliers and find out what’s new and what’s hot. If you’re smart, you can take what your customers are telling you and use that to work with your suppliers to develop new toys that people will want.

We work with the largest toy showroom in China. It has over 3 million toys from 2,842 different toy factories on display as the newest products of the year. Every week, we update our customers on what’s going on in the industry and the latest products. We help them to stay on top of what’s happening in the market and beat their competition.

6. Poor Inventory Management

Inventory is a big deal when you sell toys. If you screw it up, you’re going to have a warehouse full of crap that nobody wants, or you’re going to run out of stuff to sell, or you’re going to have too much money tied up in your toys. Any of these things will screw up your ability to make money.

If you have too much stuff, you’re going to spend too much money on storing it and you’re going to tie up too much of your money so you can’t buy more toys. If you run out of stuff, you’re going to lose sales and you’re going to lose customers. Therefore, you need to have a scientific and effective system for managing your inventory so you can avoid these problems.

Here’s what you need to do:

( I ) Use a computer system to track your toys: You need a computer system that can track how many toys you have right now, tell you when you’re going to run out of toys, and can automatically order more toys for you so you don’t run out.

( II ) Make friends with your suppliers: You need to be friends with the people who sell you toys. You need to talk to them a lot to make sure they get your toys to you on time and so they don’t run out of toys.

( III ) Count your toys a lot: You need to count your toys a lot to make sure your computer system is right and to make sure the toys in your warehouse are the same as what your computer says you have.

( IV ) Figure out how to get rid of the toys you can’t sell: You need to figure out how to sell the toys you can’t sell at full price. You can sell them for less money, you can give them away, or you can do something else to get rid of them fast and get your money back.

How do we help our customers?

• We can help you buy a little bit of stuff at a time: If you need a little bit of stuff, we can sell you a little bit of stuff, so you don’t have to buy a lot of stuff, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money on stuff.
• We can help you get rid of the stuff you can’t sell: If you have stuff you can’t sell, we can do something to help you get rid of it so you don’t lose so much money.
•  If you need your toys in a hurry, we can ship them to you by air and sea at the same time: If you need your toys right now, we can send them to you fast and cheap.

7. Bad Marketing Strategy

Selling toys is a tough business that requires you to have the right plan and then go out and do the right stuff. However, there are a lot of people who sell toys who are doing the wrong stuff and that’s why nobody knows who they are, nobody’s buying their stuff, and they’re not making any money.

Here are some of the things they’re doing wrong:

( I ) They don’t know who their customers are
The people who buy toys are kids, but there are a lot of different kids out there and they all want different toys. If you don’t know who the kids are, you’re not going to make the right toys, and you’re not going to do the right stuff to get the kids to buy your toys, and you’re not going to make any money.

( II ) They’re spending their money on the wrong stuff
If you spend your money on the wrong stuff, you’re not going to sell any toys and you’re going to waste all of your money. You need to spend your money on stuff that’s going to get the kids to buy your toys. For example, if you want to sell to kids, you should spend your money on social media ads and stuff that kids like to look at.

( III ) They’re not using the Internet to sell their toys
In the last few years, the Internet has gotten really popular and that’s where people go to buy stuff. If you don’t use the Internet to sell your toys, you’re not going to sell any toys. You can use the Internet to sell your toys by putting ads on social media and by putting your toys on websites where people can buy them.

Related Articles: 15 Tips to Help You Increase Toy Sales

To avoid these mistakes, here’s what you need to do when you make a marketing plan:

• Do a bunch of stuff to figure out what kids want to buy.
• Do a bunch of stuff to get your ads in front of the people who are going to buy your toys.
  For example, if you want to sell your toys to the parents of kids, you should put your ads on websites and social media channels that parents look at. If you want to sell your toys to kids, you should put your ads on websites and social media channels that kids look at. Also, you can get other people to tell other people to buy your toys.
• Do a bunch of stuff to put your toys on the Internet so people can buy them.
  Example: Toys “R” Us has a website where they tell people what toys to buy and how to be a good parent, and they have a place where people can leave reviews about the toys they bought. If you do a bunch of stuff like this, you can sell a lot of toys and not go broke.

If you do the right stuff, you can sell a lot of toys and make a lot of money.

Related Articles: How to Start a Toy Business?

8. Underestimating Hidden Costs

Selling toys might seem easy, but there are a lot of tricks inside the cost of selling toys that can make it so you don’t make any money or you go broke. Therefore, you need to know what these tricks are and how to figure out how much money you’re going to spend.

Here are the tricks:

( I ) How much it’s going to cost to get your toys to you: Getting your toys to you is a big cost in selling toys, especially if you have to buy your toys from someplace far away. The cost to get your toys to you is affected by a lot of different things, like how much gas costs, what the exchange rate is, and if there’s a war going on.

( II ) How much it’s going to cost you to get paid: You can sell toys on the Internet and get paid with a credit card. Every time someone buys a toy with a credit card, you have to pay some money to the people who make the credit card work. This will make it so you don’t make as much money.

( III ) How much it’s going to cost to be in the toy business: Selling toys makes you pay a lot of taxes. You have to pay business taxes, value-added taxes, income taxes, and a bunch of other taxes. You also have to buy a bunch of licenses, like a business license and a food business license, and then you have to pay for them.

( IV ) How much it’s going to cost to pay your employees: Your employees are the people who do the work that makes you money. You have to pay them money to do the work that makes you money. You also have to give them some other stuff that makes them happy. This will make it so you don’t make as much money.

( V ) How much it’s going to cost to fix the toys that are broken: When you send your toys to the people who buy them, some of the toys are going to be broken. You have to pay some money to fix the toys that are broken.

9.  Intellectual Property

The Chinese toy market is a big market, but it’s also a market where people steal other people’s ideas and make toys that look like the toys that other people make. This is a big deal if you buy toys from China and sell them in the United States, because the people who make the toys that you’re copying are going to sue you and take all of your money.

The toys that people copy are usually the ones that have Mickey Mouse or Spiderman on them. If you sell toys that look like the toys that other people make, three bad things will happen to you:

• People will think you’re a bad person and they won’t buy your toys.
• People who work for the government will come to your house and take all of your toys and throw them in the trash.
• The people who make the toys that you’re copying will take you to court and make you pay them a lot of money.

Therefore, when you buy toys in China, you need to do a bunch of stuff to make sure the people who are selling you the toys aren’t making them look like the toys that other people make.

10. Transportation And Customs Issues

When you send the toys to the people who buy them, you’re going to have a lot of problems. Your toys are going to get broken; your toys are going to be late; and your toys are going to get sent back to you. These problems will make it so you don’t make any money or you go broke. Therefore, you need to do a bunch of stuff to get the people who sell you the toys and the people who send the toys to the people who buy them to do the right stuff.

Here’s what you need to do:

( I ) Pick a good company to send your toys: You need to pick a company that sends toys to people and that doesn’t get the toys they send to people broken. You also need to buy some insurance in case the company you pick sends the toys you bought from the people who sell you toys to the people who buy your toys and the toys get broken.

( II ) Do a bunch of stuff to get your toys through customs: When you send your toys to the people who buy them, you have to send a bunch of stuff with the toys to the people who let the toys into their country. If you don’t send the right stuff with the toys, the people who let the toys into their country will send the toys back to you.

( III ) Make sure the toys you send to the people who buy them are the right toys: Before you send your toys to the people who buy them, you need to do a bunch of stuff to make sure the people who let the toys into their country will let the toys into their country.

( IV ) Talk to the people who sell you the toys before you send the toys to the people who buy them: If you talk to the people who sell you the toys before you send the toys to the people who buy them, the people who sell you the toys will do the right stuff and you won’t have the problems that make you go broke.
If you do the right stuff when you send the toys to the people who buy them, you won’t go broke.

Common trade terms:

EXW: The seller is responsible for delivering the goods to the buyer or the buyer’s agent at the seller’s factory.

FOB: The seller is responsible for delivering the goods to the buyer or the buyer’s agent on the ship at the port of shipment.

DAP: The seller is responsible for delivering the goods to the buyer or the buyer’s agent at the destination.

CIF: The seller is responsible for delivering the goods to the buyer or the buyer’s agent on the ship at the port of shipment. The seller is also responsible for insurance and the freight to the port of destination.

DDP: The seller is responsible for delivering the goods to the buyer or the buyer’s agent at the destination, including clearing the goods through customs and paying the taxes and fees.

We can provide you with a one-stop solution for buying toys. We can take care of everything from when you order the toys to when the toys show up at your house. We also work with a bunch of companies that can deliver the toys to you in a bunch of different ways, like EXW, FOB, and DDP.

Conclusion

In conclusion, success in the toy market comes down to a few key things. If you do your market research, ensure your product is high-quality, sell online, make sure your product is safe, and innovate, you’ll avoid a lot of mistakes. If you manage your inventory well and market your product effectively, you’ll meet customer demand and stay competitive. If you’re aware of hidden costs, protect your intellectual property, and navigate transportation and customs issues, you’ll be profitable. If you address those proactively, you’ll have a toy business that’s built to last and thrive.