Richard Goosman’s passion for the toy industry goes back quite a ways, dating back to his time at the Eugene Toys “R” Us where he met his current business partner.
"We worked there till about 2010 and when we left, we missed toys so much, we decided to start our own thing," he said.
Their own thing was Radar Toys, which started as an online retailer, competing with the likes of Amazon and others, before setting up a retail location on 11th Avenue in Eugene.
“We didn't have much money when we started. And so we bought one box of toys at a time and sold online. We never bought anything online previous to that. And eventually put our first store up in 2017,” he said.
Radar still sells both in-person and online, but the latter proves difficult at times.
“Competing with online is challenging, of course, because they can offer a lower price on quite a few different items. What we try to focus on is a couple things, one of them being just the overall experience in the store,” said Goosman.
That experience includes a few arcade games, music that caters to young-at-heart shoppers who come to feed their inner child, and decorations that include a large Boba Fett mannequin and plenty of other pop culture references.
“It's a Disneyland-like experience here, and so that, coupled with good customer service, knowing what we're talking about, because you're not going to find knowledge in a Target or Walmart, right?” he said.
Toy retailers are often competing on that knowledge, but they also fight what in some cases is a stereotype, that larger retailers like those or large online shops are cheaper.
“We have a member that had a story about a customer coming up with a bunch of products and pointing out one and saying, ‘this is XYZ price on’ I don't know if it was Amazon or whatever. ‘Will you match it?’” said Sue Warfield, president of industry group ASTRA Toys. “And [the owner] said,’ I'll make a deal. I'll match that, if you'll let me match all of them.’ She looked them all up, and the guy said, ‘Okay, never mind’ because they weren't all cheaper online.”
Despite waning consumer sentiment, she said that people nationwide are coming to toy stores with about the same amount of money to spend.
“[Business] has been good, but there's a difference between dollars in and number of SKUs sold, and that's where the tariffs have made an impact,” she said.
Tariffs are the biggest contributor to rising prices, according to Warfield, and that has led buyers to sell fewer items. Toys are often manufactured in southeast Asia. High-manufacturing countries such as China (37%) and Vietnam (20.7%) are among the hardest hit.
“We had a member that had $80,000 she'd already paid for in China,” Warfield said. “It was on the boat, but she held it because that was when there was the concern that maybe in November, another 100% was going to be added. Well there's no way she could pay that when it came in.”
The margins at Radar Toys are not substantial enough to take on the added taxes from the tariffs, according to Goosman.
“It's pretty straightforward, as we unfortunately have to pass the cost on to the customer, and so we're operating in an extremely low single digit profit industry as toys are, unfortunately, as much as we love them, is directly related to prices,” he said.
But, even when purse strings are tightened during the holidays, Warfield said the budget for toys is usually one of the last areas hit.
“Most people, if they're going to cut gifts, it's not going to be for the kids in their lives. I mean, kids are the holidays, right? That's what we love to see, the smiles on kids’ faces,” she said.
And that joy is a big part of what keeps Goosman in the industry.
“From my perspective right now, I would say 100% of it is a labor of love,” he said. “We don't make a ton of money really. We do it for the smiles and the joy of it.”
Because who doesn’t love seeing the happiness that buying just the right toy brings to the face of a little kid or a big kid?
