Hamleys

• 1. Introduction

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  Hamleys, the British toy retailer, began life in 1760 under a different name: Noah's Ark. William Hamley opened it at number 231 High Holborn in London, and his surname eventually replaced the biblical one over the door. The Guinness Book of Records lists the business as the oldest toy store in the world. A shop that old should have disappeared many times over. Instead, its story runs through a fire, bombing raids, receivership and a long line of owners from several countries. How did a toy seller stay famous for so long? Who kept buying it, and why? And why did a brand so loved at home struggle to plant branches almost anywhere outside its flagship?

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• 2. Seven Floors on Regent Street

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  Around five million people walk into the Hamleys flagship on Regent Street every year, and the crowds grow thickest at Christmas. The shop spreads over seven floors and 54,000 square feet, and every inch is given to toys. Each floor holds a different category, and more than 50,000 lines are on sale across the building.

  The ground floor belongs to stuffed toys, including those made by Steiff. Teddy bears share the space with turtles and dolphins, and with life-sized giraffes and elephants that tower over small visitors.

  In 1881 the company opened a branch at 200 Regent Street, in the West End of London. A century later it moved a short way along the street to its present address at 188-196. By 1994 that building was the largest toy shop in the world.

  Visitors arrive by the Oxford Circus underground station, which sits close by. Many come only to look, and the shop has long been a sight in its own right. It has even appeared on screen: the final scene of the 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut was filmed among its shelves.

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• 3. Royal Favour

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  By 1837 the shop was in the hands of William Hamley's grandsons, and it already counted royalty and nobility among its customers. That early fame outlasted the family's own control of the business.

  In 1938, Queen Mary, the consort of King George V, granted Hamleys a royal warrant. The honour marked the shop as an official supplier to the royal household.

  The Second World War then tested the Regent Street store directly. It was bombed five times, yet the shop kept its place on the street.

  Queen Elizabeth II gave the company a second royal warrant in 1955, describing it as a "toys and sports merchant". Hamleys held that warrant until 2022, the year of her death.

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• 4. Fire and Receivership

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  A fire in 1901 destroyed the original shop on High Holborn. The business reopened at 86-87 High Holborn, but its fortunes were about to slide.

  The 1920s brought a downturn, and in 1931 Hamleys closed and entered receivership. The company's largest creditor was Lines Bros, a toy maker, and it stepped in to buy the business.

  Lines Bros wanted to avoid upsetting the suppliers that Hamleys depended on. It reopened the Regent Street store before the end of that same year. The High Holborn branch, opened after the 1901 fire, never traded again under the new owner.

  The buyer chose not to fold Hamleys into its own operations. It kept the shop largely independent.

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• 5. A Parade of Owners

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  In 1982 the department store chain Debenhams bought Hamleys, beginning a run of changes in ownership that has hardly paused since. Debenhams was itself taken over by the Burton Group in August 1985. Burton sold Hamleys in August 1986 to Harris Queensway, a retail group led by Philip Harris. At the time, observers said a strategic plan had been drawn up to build on the strength of the brand.

  Harris Queensway was absorbed in 1988 and became Lowndes Queensway. In May 1989 that group sold Hamleys for £22 million to a group led by Duncan Chadwick.

  The Icelandic investment company Baugur Group bought Hamleys in June 2003. When Baugur went into administration in early 2009, the Icelandic bank Landsbanki took the company over. In September 2012 the French toy retailer Groupe Ludendo bought it for a reported £60 million. Ludendo also ran shops in Belgium, Spain and Switzerland.

  In October 2015 came reports that Groupe Ludendo was negotiating a sale, possibly to a Hong Kong company owned by a relative of the owner of the department store House of Fraser. The buyer turned out to be C.Banner, a large Chinese footwear and fashion conglomerate based in Nanjing.

  The Indian retailer Reliance Retail, part of Reliance Industries, announced in May 2019 that it had acquired Hamleys for £67.96 million. On the 9th of May 2019 it signed an agreement to take all the shares of Hamleys Global Holdings Limited.

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• 6. Branches That Did Not Last

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  The 15th of June 1987 was the day Hamleys opened a store in Milsom Street in the city of Bath. It closed on the 10th of June 1988, a few days short of a full year.

  The same fate met the others from that year. Hamleys opened a second store in York in 1987 and shut it in under twelve months. In October 1987 it opened on Northumberland Street in Newcastle upon Tyne, one of the richest shopping streets in the country. That looked like a perfect combination, but the store closed in October 1988.

  The chain returned to regional expansion in later decades. In 2017 a store opened in the Princes Quay shopping centre in Hull, to celebrate the city's year as UK City of Culture.

  At the start of January 2022 there were thirty Hamleys stores across the United Kingdom. They included sites at the St Enoch Centre in Glasgow, the Trafford Centre, Lakeside, Bluewater, St James Quarter in Edinburgh and Meadowhall in Sheffield. Airport shops operated at Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted.

  By December 2023 only 11 stores were left in the United Kingdom.

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• 7. Beyond Britain

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  On the 18th of June 2008, Hamleys opened its first store outside Europe, in Amman, Jordan. The three-storey shop on Mecca Street was run by the franchisee Jordan Centre. A Dubai franchise followed on the 4th of November 2008 with two stores. A shop in Riyadh opened on the 26th of January 2012, covering 2,100 square metres in the Panorama mall. In 2015 an Abu Dhabi franchise began with stores at World Trade Centre Mall and Yas Mall.

  India became a major market. The first South Asian store opened in Mumbai on the 9th of April 2010, covering 22,000 square feet. The Chennai store at Express Avenue Mall is smaller, at 11,000 square feet, but it has a London bus that customers can walk up through. More openings followed in Ahmedabad in November 2014, Amritsar in February 2018, Bhubaneswar in January 2019 and Lucknow. In 2013 Hamleys had announced plans for 20 Indian stores with Reliance Brands.

  Southeast Asia came next. A store at One Utama Shopping Mall in Kuala Lumpur was planned for November 2013, and Malaysia now has three. One of them sits in the satellite terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport. The Philippines got its first store in 2014 at Bonifacio Global City, with Stores Specialists Inc. as exclusive distributor. In July 2015 a Singapore store opened at Plaza Singapura, followed by a second at Marina Bay Sands.

  Europe proved harder. A 3,250 square metre store opened in Dundalk's namesake of Dundrum in Dublin in October 2008, next to the Town Square. It closed in April 2018 after ten years. Stockholm got a store in Nacka on the 12th of October 2012, and Oslo one inside the Steen og Strøm department store on the 19th of September 2013. In April 2014 the Danish stores shut when their Nordic parent company, Kids Retails, filed for bankruptcy.

  Russia received its first Hamleys in 2012, and the chain now runs two shops in Moscow, one in Saint-Petersburg and one in Krasnodar. Prague followed in 2016 on Na Příkopě Street, and Warsaw in 2017 at the Galeria Północna mall. Nicosia in Cyprus and Malta each have a store. In November 2022 Tirana in Albania gained one in the Emerald mall, with toys on the second floor and party rooms on the third. Rome followed in 2023.

  On the 27th of August 2015, a store opened at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town, with six more in South Africa afterward. Mexico City received its first Hamleys in November 2015 at Antara Polanco Fashion Mall. By June 2018 Mexico had four. A proposal announced in 2018 for a New York store near Herald Square had progressed no further as of 2023.

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• 8. The Online Shop

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  In the 1990s Hamleys ran two websites. The British one sold nothing, and the American one carried a basic inventory. That changed in 1999 with the launch of hamleys.com, which offered worldwide shipping and focused on user experience, customer service, traditional toys and collectables.

  The chief executive explained the thinking to Marketing magazine. He said: "I do not want to become embroiled with the likes of Toys 'R' Us, Toyzone and eToys, which are fighting on price alone and will end up making next to no margin".

  A glitch in 2006 briefly let customers claim a 60% discount on any product. It was the sort of mishap that a store avoiding price wars could ill afford.

  In 2013 Econsultancy criticised the site as basic. It judged that the site "doesn't do a lot to represent the brand; in fact, it may even detract from it".

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