Hamleys

Hamleys

Type	Private limited company
Industry	Retailing
Founded	London, United Kingdom
Headquarters	2 Fouberts Place, London, United Kingdom
Area served	Worldwide
Products	Toys
Revenue	GBP 43,000,000 (2011)
Owner(s)	Groupe Ludendo
Website	www.hamleys.com

Hamleys is one of the world's best-known retailers of toys. Its flagship store in London is the world's largest toy store. Located on Regent Street, it is considered one of the city's major tourist attractions, receiving around five million visitors per year. The chain has six other outlets in the United Kingdom and others worldwide.

Unlike many companies using possessive names, Hamleys intentionally forgoes the use of an apostrophe in its name.

The company was purchased by the French toy retailer Groupe Ludendo in September 2012. It had previously been owned by Baugur Group, which purchased Hamleys in 2003 for £58.7 million. When Baugur collapsed, control switched to the Icelandic nationalised bank Landsbanki, until it was sold to Groupe Ludendo.

History

Hamleys is named after William Hamley, who founded a toy shop called 'Noah's Ark' at No. 231, High Holborn, in London in 1760. A branch at No. 200, Regent Street, was opened in 1881; the Holborn branch was destroyed by fire in 1901 and was relocated to Nos. 86–87, High Holborn.

In 1938, Queen Mary, the consort of King George V, gave Hamleys a royal warrant. During the Second World War, the Regent Street store was bombed five times. In 1955, Queen Elizabeth II gave the company a second royal warrant as a "toys and sports merchant".

Hamleys was bought in June 2003 by Baugur Group, an investment company in Iceland. When Baugur collapsed, its stake in the toy store was taken over by the Icelandic bank Landsbanki. In September 2012 Groupe Ludendo, a toy retailer based in France with shops also located in Belgium, Spain and Switzerland, bought Hamleys for a reported £60 million.

United Kingdom stores

Regent Street

Hamleys moved its flagship store from No. 200, Regent Street, where it established in 1881, to its current address at Nos. 188–196, Regent Street, in 1981, which is the largest toy shop in the world.

Hamleys' flagship store has seven floors covering 54,000 square feet (5,000 m²), all devoted to playthings, with different categories of toy on each floor. In the late 1990s, Hamleys opened a specific Spice Girls department, dedicating their aisles to everything from Spice Girls stationery to Spice Girls dolls. The ground floor is traditionally for soft toys (including Steiff), and decked out with a diverse array of stuffed animals, from regular teddy bears to more exotic plushes such as turtles and dolphins, and enormous life-sized giraffes and elephants.

• 5th floor: Boys — Action figures, vehicles, and an open cafe.
• 4th floor: Hobbies — Model kits, remote-controlled vehicles, model railways, Scalextric, etc.
• 3rd floor: Girls — Dolls, Arts & Crafts, Hello Kitty, Dress up etc.
• 2nd floor: Preschool — Toys for young children.
• 1st floor: Games — Board games, science, jigsaws; also a Build-A-Bear Workshop and Sweet Shop.
• Ground floor: Soft toys — a wide variety of stuffed animals, and also a Marvin's Magic section.
• Basement: Interactive — Lego, construction toys, Red 5, novelties and Game.

Other UK stores

Hamleys had a store in Sheffield towards the end of the late 1980s. Based in part of the old Robert Brothers department store that closed earlier in the 1980s, its address was Nos. 36–38, The Moor, Rockingham House. It closed after a few years due to high rates and lower-than-expected trade. Hamleys is also a holding company for several other toy companies in the United Kingdom. Most notably, Hamleys purchased The English Teddy Bear Company in 2004. Originally established by Dominic Richards, it failed to prove a success for Hamleys, and all eight stores were closed down within two years.

As a result of these large expansion failures under the previous management team, Hamleys most successful expansion efforts have been through running concession outlets at various UK airports. Hamleys run smaller stores at London Heathrow Airport, London Stansted Airport, London Gatwick Airport and Manchester Airport. There is also a small store at London's St. Pancras railway station and at York Designer Outlet, North Yorkshire.

On 26 November 2009 Hamleys opened a shop in Glasgow. The 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m²) outlet was part of a £100 million extension and redevelopment of the St. Enoch Centre.

There was also an outlet store at Great Western Outlet Village in Swindon, offering a more limited range of products. The store was closed in February 2010.

In September 2012 Hamleys announced the opening of a new store in Cardiff. The store is located in the St. David's Shopping Centre, and opened on 15 November 2012.

Global stores

In 1987 Hamleys' second store was opened in New York City, however it was closed less than 12 months later.

Hamleys' European footprint exists in Denmark (three small stores) and, since 23 October 2008, the Republic of Ireland, when it opened a 3,250-square-metre (35,000 sq ft) store in Pembroke Avenue, located adjacent to the Town Square in Dundrum, Dublin. On 12 October 2012, a Hamleys store opened in Nacka in Stockholm, Sweden.

Hamleys opened its first store outside Europe in Amman, Jordan, on 18 June 2008. The three-storey store on Mecca Street is run by the group's franchisee Jordan Centre. A Dubai franchise opened with two stores on 4 November 2008.

The first store in Asia was opened in Mumbai on 9 April 2010. The 22,000-square-foot (2,000 m²) store is located in an upmarket shopping district in India's financial capital. A second store in India is located in the city of Chennai at the Express Avenue Mall. The 11,000 sq ft store has a London bus that customers can walk up through.

Hamleys' most recent new store was opened in the Saudi capital Riyadh on 26 January 2012. The 2,100 sq m shop is located in the Panorama mall at Takhassusi Street's intersection with Prince Mohammed Road.

See also

• Gamley's

External links

• Hamleys web site