It's a long train journey from Hertford to Finchampstead, where Re:creation is based. However, it’s one worth making, because while not completely unrecognisable from the Re:creation of more recent years, there have been some major changes at the company – in terms of staff, product and in attitude.

“As I think the whole industry knows, we grew extremely quickly,” director Seth Bishop tells ToyNews. “We were almost wanting to be a large toy company; it was perhaps more important to be seen to be of a certain magnitude and to be involved in certain sectors of the market. That worked for a number of years, but in the last three to four years the climate changed dramatically – both the lending climate from the banks and the trading climate from a retail and economy perspective. And it required a completely different agenda for our business and a completely different level of focus.”

The refocus actually began back in 2009. Then, Re:creation had over 40 brands and was in around 12 different sectors. “And not just the toy market,” Bishop continues, “but we were also in gadgets, gifts, electronics, music.”

It wasn’t just on a product level where changes were happening, however. Michael Lehrter, who had already been involved with Re:creation as an angel investor began to take a more active interest in the business following the resignation of former MD Nick Joslin and the firm’s finance director in early 2011.

“We had to take some steps to restructure the company,” Lehrter explains. “We had to very carefully evaluate all the different brands and products we were in, we had to slim down on products and we also made some redundancies. We then looked to strengthen our balance sheet and secure the relationship with our bank, then basically built a plan to move forward focusing on a narrower range of products, but in key areas where we had significant strengths and very strong suppliers.”

Lehrter and Bishop also went about strengthening the sales force. Former Mattel, Tomy and BBC Worldwide exec, Ian Wickham, has arrived as sales director.

“Re:creation has the potential to consistently deliver profitable growth and to become the leading distributor in the categories in which it operates,” Wickham says.

“Our aim will be to ensure that from a sales perspective, we are seen as the distributor of choice due to the calibre of the sales team, our account management skills and the relationships we have with our retail partners.”

Bishop continues: “The way the business is now from a management point of view is really strong, because we have expert leaders in each functional area. We still have plenty of growth opportunity and we’re certainly not being conservative about our plans. But we’re going to do it by making sure that every brand is a maximised opportunity.”

BRAND LONGEVITY
In terms of product, Re:creation has significantly slimmed down and simplified its business model. It has three categories – outdoor and ride-on (which is, of course, Razor), kids lifestyle and pocket money.
“In every category, we think it’s very important that we have really solid brands that have longevity, so we can really build and invest in them,” says Bishop.

In the kids lifestyle sector, the focus for the firm is its Lego licensed range, which it believes has a lot of growth potential. Re:creation has notched up sales of over two million torches in a little over two years for its Lego Lights line, while John Lewis picked the Lego storage heads as one of its top 100 products for Christmas, with it gracing the window of its Oxford Street flagship outlet.

The next move is into the stationery sector. “We have over 60 skus of Lego product, but it’s all high quality and extremely well controlled by Lego,” says Bishop. “For us, this category is all about really building and maximising this opportunity. There shouldn’t be any reason why we can’t get Lego into the top five or even higher of the kids licensed stationery market, for example.”

Meanwhile, in terms of its toy business, Re:creation has gone back to doing what it does best, pocket money items. It is launching two new ranges – Moshi Monsters (which is all about ‘wearability’) and boys’ collectable line Dinowaurs – both of which will be backed by strong TV campaigns.

The rest of the toy portfolio was pretty much ejected, Bishop admits, and the firm is now looking to rebuild. The first step is its recent deal with US company Jada Toys for its die-cast vehicles and action figure range based on the hit video games property, Halo. Launching in the autumn, Bishop, Lehrter and Wickham are all confident in its potential and initial reaction from retail has been positive.

RAZOR’S GROWTH
Which brings us to the last, but most definitely not least, category – outdoor and ride-on. At the moment, Razor is the largest part of the business – over the last three years sales have doubled year-on-year – and Re:creation is looking to take it up yet another level in 2012.

Last year saw a Razor Pro team go out on a national competitive tour across the UK, which the firm also turned into a magazine show by taking along a film crew and a presenter from Disney XD. “We booked up whole ad breaks on Disney XD and just ran two and a half, three and a half minute mini programmes about the tour,” Bishop explains. “It allowed kids to decide for themselves whether they wanted to engage with the Razor brand experience – and it was really, really successful.”

Re:creation is now looking for bigger events where it can talk to more kids, while cinema advertising is also being considered for the first time.

Talking to Bishop and Lehrter, it’s clear that lessons have been learnt from the past – both are focused about the firm’s direction and there’s a good mix of being both confident and cautious about its growth strategy.

“I’d say that Re:creation has been in a position where we never really got out of second gear,” says Lehrter. “We believe now that we are building the fundamental strengths in the business and the building blocks to get solidly out of second gear and I’m not concerned if it takes two, three, four years to get to it – you have to manage your growth carefully. We’re thrilled that we’ve been able to recover our business as fast as we have, and be as successful as we have in an economic environment that’s been poor to say the least.”

Crucially, Re:creation has recognised what it does best and hasn’t been afraid to go back to that. “One of the things we really want to make sure we do is really perform as a distributor – that is the core of our business,” Bishop concludes.