Why you don't discount fairtrade toys

We have just come back from back to back trade shows which are always illuminating in terms of the feedback we receive from our customers

We had assumed that the hot topic for this year would be whether or not to increase your prices when the VAT goes up in January but in fact the thing which has most people talking is pricing on ebay

We have always been a fan of ebay as its a great place to start a business or to initally put a high street store online. However we have also always been quite straight forward in our attitude to discounters

We design, manufacture and supply quality toys. They are sold at competitive prices so that consumers can buy at accessible prices and retailers can still make a profit.

Whilst we have no problems with retailers promoting toys as and when they want to we will not sell to discounters. If we discover that a customer is routinely discounting the retail prices of our toys we will stop supplying them. This particularly applies to the fair trade pebble toys

We have most problems with discounting on ebay. This is mainly due to 2 reasons

• Inexperience. If you buy a toy at £5 then its cost with VAT is just under £6. Once you factor in credit card charges, google ads, SEO, paypal and all the other numerous costs associated with selling online then you cannot make a profit and build a sustainable business on a retail less than £12.99. unfortunately some people think that a cost of £5 and a retail of £9.99 means a profit of £5. NO!!!
• Discounting. the pile it high, sell it cheap style of retailing. We always have end of lines and discontinued products which we are selling off so if this is your business model please buy them and not our crochet and knitted toys

So why are we so adament about discounting? Put plainly if you discount our fair trade crochet toys you are undermining the way the fair trade economic model works

That may sound overly dramatic but heres how it goes. Our good retailers buy our toys because they can sell a reasonable volume of toys at a reasonable profit. If the toys are then widely discounted either the volume drops as their retail price is uncompetitive or they can't make a profit at the reduced price. So retailers stop buying from us, we stop buying from the workers co-operative and Samantha cannot offer work to as many people.

For many people in Bangladesh the Pebble toys offer a way out of poverty. We are not going to let discounters threaten this

So a message to good retailers, if you see someone on ebay or anywhere on the internet discounting Pebble toys please email sales@bestyears.co.uk and we will take steps to stop them. We will certainly not supply them again

Discounters. Don't buy fair trade toys. Its unethical.