Hamleys shop to cash in on baby boom
Hamleys, the world’s most prestigious toy store, is expected to open its largest outlet in Beijing on Saturday as it strives to cash in on the country’s baby boom.
The new outlet of the brand in Beijing, which has its iconic store in London’s Regent Street, is located on Wangfujing Street in the city center, with five stories and an area of 10,700 square meters.
The 257-year-old brand already set foot in Nanjing of Jiangsu province a year ago and Xuzhou, a second-tier city in the same province, in September.
The three locations of different scale serve as a test for the British brand to better understand the responses from various consumers, according to Jason Ji, chief marketing officer of Hamleys China.
Hong Kong-listed retailer C Banner International Holdings acquired Hamleys last October from French company Ludendo Groupe, which had owned it for two years. C Banner is a strategic partner of Sanpower, which has a major stake in House of Fraser, a British department store chain. C Banner paid 100 million pounds ($127.5 million) for Hamleys.
The store in Beijing is a “lifestyle center” for customers aged from zero to 16, and will offer more than 200 kinds of toy brands and three categories — toys, experience zones and general merchandise, said Ji.
The experience zones — one third of the total store area — include restaurants and playing zones. “We want the store to look like a theme park where children and their parcertain ents can have fun here, provided with food and beverages and other relevant merchandises,” said Ji.
For example, in the Nanjing store, Hamleys opened a car racing game zone and a zone where children can change clothes for their Barbie dolls.
The newly added general merchandise category includes maternity clothing, baby formula milk and children apparel brands such as Nike, Adidas, Sketchers and FILA.
The toys are not limited to Hamley’s signature brands. The store has introduced a number of electronic toys from Brookstone and domestic animation intellectual property brands to please local consumers.
“While we preserve our British elements, the store also incorporates local culture and local toy products,” said Ji.
Hamleys is expected to develop its e-commerce unit to reach consumers in places its stores have not had access to.
Market research provider Euromonitor International said traditional toys and games reached a retail value of 64.2 billion yuan ($9.72 billion) in 2015.
Leading US toy retailer Toys ‘R’ Us Inc’s joint venture in China said it has plans to open at least 30 to 40 stores annually in China, mostly in major cities while reaching more customers with its online stores. The company has 150 stores in the country.