Rainbow Toy Awards 2013 deadline approaches

August 30th 2013 will be the final date for entries to the Rainbow Toy Awards, which will be hosted live and online on September 27th.Rainbowawards2013300

The winners gain coverage on www.rainbowawards.co.uk, and the awards ceremony will be featured live across a host of blogs.

The Rainbow Awards team has gained a significant amount of reciprocal links with the site, and already award entrants are seeing pingbacks from bloggers who have tested their entries and reviewed them online. The Rainbow awards team has also secured consumer print coverage with a variety of titles, including the Mums Survival Guide with a circulation of 500,000. All of this coverage ensures entrants products and the company that makes or distributes them are noticed by as wide an audience as possible in the run up to Christmas.

Peter Dawson commented: “Our ultimate aim of course, is to help companies drive sales. There are just a couple more weeks to get your entries in, so visit the site to download your entry form so you don’t miss out.”

If you would like to receive the latest toy trade news straight to your inbox, please enter your email address in the subscribe box above; you can also follow Toy World on Twitter and Facebook and request a print subscription here.

Warmer weather boosts retail sales

The British Retail Consortium has revealed that retail sales for June were up 1.4% following a rise of 1.8% in May.walking-feet300

Helen Dickinson, director general of the BRC, said: “Despite challenging economic conditions continuing, June saw another strong performance from the UK’s retailers. At this halfway point in the year we are able to see that sales are well ahead of the previous six-month period.”

Sales growth of 2.3% since the start of the year is ahead of last year’s annual growth of 1.5%. The strong figures are a further boost for a UK economy that is heading for growth of around 0.5% in the second quarter, and is dominated by service industries such as retail.

Clothing was the best-performing category, according to the BRC, although this was mainly due to poor spring weather leaving clothes rails packed with unsold summer outfits that were then sold at a discount in a bid to shift stock.

DIY and gardening centres also got a well-needed boost in sales after suffering a washout over Easter, a period seen as more important to the chains such of B&Q and Homebase than Christmas.

Online sales were up 14.1% on a year earlier, strongly ahead of the 10.5% long-term average. However, house textiles and home accessories were the worst-performing categories as they struggled against last year’s jubilee boost and shoppers spending more on fashion.

If you would like to receive the latest toy trade news straight to your inbox, please enter your email address in the subscribe box above; you can also follow Toy World on Twitter and Facebook and request a print subscription here.