John Baulch the Friday Blog: It’s All Happening…

The hectic start to 2026 continues. No mucking about this year – instead of gently easing back into the swing of things, we’ve been inundated with major stories from the word go, with comings, goings, acquisitions, international expansion, new distribution deals and retail highs and lows all combining to make it a lively start to the year. And that’s just the industry specific developments, without mentioning the geo-political turmoil we’ve already seen, or the growing possibility that social media could be banned in the UK for under 16s, which would certainly throw the cat amongst the pigeons for toy marketing activity. Towards the end of last year, I wondered whether we might get a low-key, boring year for once – I suspect I already have my answer.

Let’s start with the biggest toy-focused stories of the week. While we still await for news from Circana on festive trading numbers across the whole UK toy market, there was an encouraging announcement from The Entertainer, which posted a +3.5% increase over the festive season. It’s good to see the changes which The Entertainer made in the run-up to Christmas paying off immediately, although we soon found out that change is still very much an ongoing process in Amersham. On Wednesday, we exclusively unveiled a major restructure of The Entertainer’s leadership team, with Geoff Sheffield and Lisa Hollidge both expanding their roles on an ‘acting’ basis, with Brian Proctor, Heather Robbins and Sarah Cannon all deciding to depart. The changes take effect from 2nd February, and I am sure suppliers will be eager to hear more about the new structure and responsibilities at Toy Fair next week.

As retail results from the Christmas period are gradually being unveiled, it’s becoming clear that there were winners and losers. While grocers Tesco and Sainsbury’s both posted strong performances – largely driven by food sales – Argos unfortunately didn’t fare quite so well.  Sainsbury’s blamed “significant headwinds” from weak consumer confidence, heavy online competition and widespread discounting for a fall in sales at Argos over the Christmas period. So, while Sainsbury’s increased sales by +3.4% in the three months to 3rd January, Argos sales fell by -1% in the period. Argos performed particularly disappointingly in the crucial final six weeks, with sales down -2.2% compared with the Sainsbury’s chain’s +4.6% increase. Whether this performance will lead to further speculation about the potential sale of Argos remains to be seen, although conversely it could be argued that the strong Sainsbury’s numbers may give the retailer some headroom to invest in the Argos business to breathe new life into it.

Modella Capital is facing an entirely different level of challenge, after it put its Claire’s and the Original Factory Shop chains into administration in early January, putting 2,500 jobs at risk. Reports claimed that tough trading conditions and “alarmingly low Christmas trading” left both businesses in a vulnerable position. The hope is that administration will give Modella breathing space to find a new buyer for the chains. Modella only purchase Claire’s in September, so that does seem to be an incredibly short space of time to try to turn it round before deciding to offload it.

Read the rest here.