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Does anyone sell only toys?


MikeFeldman

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Hello I was wondering if anybody sells just toys? I have some 1800 triples I'm getting ready to place and I was going to set them up with gumballs and toys but I was considering possibly having some with only toys, anyone do this?

-Mikey Feldman

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A lot of the guys on here only do toys. They seem to do very well and it has some real advantages like product never going bad and some higher price point products. I am trying to get into more non-candy machines and locations for these reasons myself.

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I have 3 1-800 triples selling only toys. I just bought them from another vendor who is leaving the area. His sales records are solid and that's why I bought his locations and machines. I'd say if you have a good location for toys, you shouldn't have any trouble seeing good sales.

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I have 3 1-800 triples selling only toys. I just bought them from another vendor who is leaving the area. His sales records are solid and that's why I bought his locations and machines. I'd say if you have a good location for toys, you shouldn't have any trouble seeing good sales.

oh great, great , marvelous, where do you have them, all restaurants?

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All three are in restaurants. In fact, right before I bought part of his route, he switched on of them from 2 toy heads and 1 gumball head to all three toy heads. Seems like restaurants and toys are a good combination ;)

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I have a few 1 gb, 1 bb, one candy and they do wheel

I dont understand how you could leave a machine in a location long enough for candy to go bad, our worst location still empties the machine in 90 days, granted we fill to 60% max on 80% of the locations for charity.

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All but one location has toys.. We do pretty well.. The one location that we do have candy was because the owner asked.. It does alright.. But toys for me any way is the way to go.. Higher price point so the cogs on toys can be a lot lower than running candy

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I was turned off by toy vending for quite a while until I met the guy who I ended up buying some of his route. Once I saw the profits he was making and the fact that you never have spoiled product to throw away, I was convinced it was a good direction to expand into. I'm still doing candy, but toys look like they have a solid future in my business. The cost of goods is low, you pretty much never throw product away, and it's easier to vend at a higher price point. Even if you give huge portions on candy, if you charge 50 cents people just don't think candy is worth that price. Toys seem to have a higher perceived value with customers. I almost wish that I could get 75 cent coin mechs for my 1-800 triples and test a location or two at that price.

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I was turned off by toy vending for quite a while until I met the guy who I ended up buying some of his route. Once I saw the profits he was making and the fact that you never have spoiled product to throw away, I was convinced it was a good direction to expand into. I'm still doing candy, but toys look like they have a solid future in my business. The cost of goods is low, you pretty much never throw product away, and it's easier to vend at a higher price point. Even if you give huge portions on candy, if you charge 50 cents people just don't think candy is worth that price. Toys seem to have a higher perceived value with customers. I almost wish that I could get 75 cent coin mechs for my 1-800 triples and test a location or two at that price.

I'm glad you saw the light. I used to vend candy years ago when I first started. But over the years candy sales have gone down. Now we do no candy but gum. But some racks and you can vend at higher prices.

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk

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I'm beginning the process of converting my business over to toys. It's much easier to work with and profits are better on my toy units. Pretty much every 1800 machine in my area is running acorn caps in all three slots, and they do a whale of a business.

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Performa, do you know if the people in your area vending acorn caps out of 1800 machines are having much trouble with mis-vends? I'd like to convert some of my machines to be able to vend acorn type capsules so I can broaden my product selection. Right now I'm just using Brand stuff in the 1" round capsules. Seems to sell well, but if sales decline or if the company has a supply issue or their prices ever get too high, I want to be able to switch. I'm just afraid of mis-vends giving my machines a bad reputation.

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Performa, do you know if the people in your area vending acorn caps out of 1800 machines are having much trouble with mis-vends? I'd like to convert some of my machines to be able to vend acorn type capsules so I can broaden my product selection. Right now I'm just using Brand stuff in the 1" round capsules. Seems to sell well, but if sales decline or if the company has a supply issue or their prices ever get too high, I want to be able to switch. I'm just afraid of mis-vends giving my machines a bad reputation.

This has been talked about alot on here but I haven't really been satisfied with anything I read, I took out the riser, removed the long spring and drilled holes so the openings are as wide as they go. I bought 3 capsules from a machine up the road and that seemed to work but I haven't made any large orders for acorn caps yet. Part of me wants to order some acorn caps and make em work but part of me just wants to keep it simple and get round caps and just get my machines out of basement making money. I think I ought to order 250 caps in the near future and get to the bottom of this whole thing.

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Performa, do you know if the people in your area vending acorn caps out of 1800 machines are having much trouble with mis-vends? I'd like to convert some of my machines to be able to vend acorn type capsules so I can broaden my product selection. Right now I'm just using Brand stuff in the 1" round capsules. Seems to sell well, but if sales decline or if the company has a supply issue or their prices ever get too high, I want to be able to switch. I'm just afraid of mis-vends giving my machines a bad reputation.

I don't run any 1800 cap machines-yet- I hope to have a unit by mid summer at the latest, and I'll be turning that into a capsule vendor for sure. I have never heard of trouble with mis-vends. I'd assume if they were mis-vending, they would stop using acorn caps, but they've been doing it like this since I was a kid. I have some pictures of some on location, but I'm not sure how happy my rivals would be if I was to put their photos of their machines on the internet. His latest change (today) was he changed out his mini-mals for the new set of "Ninja Fighters".

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It depends on the location. Before vending toys I always ask the location owner and employees if a lot of kids frequent the place. I typically vend toys at family restaurants (Mexican, pizza places, buffets, wing places,etc.), grocery stores and family entertainment centers. If the location mostly has adults, I will vend gumballs and candy.

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As good as it is to sell toys, there are some bad points too. I will admit that the good far outweighs the bad, but nobody ever really talks about the bad.

1) Capsule vending put the "BULK" in bulk vending. With candy vending, a small igloo chest with bags of all your candy, plus one or two cases of gumballs is all you need for storage. Candy is easy to cart around, and you can pack lots of it in just the back seat of your car. With capsule vending, you almost need a minivan or larger to cart all the bags and bags of capsules. If you have a lot of locations with 2in toys, then you will need to cart around 3, 4 or 5 large boxes of 250ct 2in cap toys. Those will fill up your back seat very quickly. That's for a SMALL toy route. I have a lot of 1in heads on my routes too, and I put all the bags of caps into 3 rubbermaid storage boxes. If you buy large quantities of product at a time, then you need large amounts of storage space just to store it all. I have 3 sets of shelves to hold product, and I only spend about $300 every month on product.

Sometimes I long for the days when I only did single-head charity gumballs. The simplicity of those days was very nice.

2) Yes, there are some toy products that WILL spoil. Sticky hands and other sticky items will melt in the heat. If you store them in your hot garage in the summer for any length of time, the goop will melt and leak all over caps, inside and out.

3) There are some products that will not sell no matter how you try to cut it. Jewelry and aliens are some of my worst selling items. I can't seem to give that stuff away. I usually end up giving them away at Halloween.

4) Opened capsules will usually jam up the machine. I frequently have to fish opened caps or orphaned toys out of each bag of caps. I keep a separate box of opened caps and orphaned toys, and then every few months I'll recap the orphaned toys and sort them back into their respective mixes. More often than not, I will just throw away those orphaned toys, so there is another instance where there is spoilage.

5) Depending on the number of heads at the location, It might take several trips to bring in the product. When I did only gumballs, I carried a service bucket that had a large container of gumballs, cups for collecting the quarters, a few simple tools and a cleaning rag. Now I have to stack a few boxes and bags on a hand truck. Don't forget the displays or you will be making yet another trip out to the car! Also, don't forget empty bags so that you have someplace to put the old product that didn't sell.

6) Sticker and flat machines can be very temperamental. The varying thickness of the sleeves can cause some machines to jam. And when they jam, you have to field-strip the machine down to remove the torn piece of cardboard sleeve. Adjusting the gate for the sleeves is a trail-and-error situation at best, and to do it, you again have to field strip the machine down to the mechanism. That kind of work is best done in your shop, but it's very difficult to swap flat machines off a rack, and expensive to keep whole machines around for spares.

7) Don't forget about your displays! Live displays cost about $3 each give or take. Then you have to store them. After awhile, they start to look ratty and you have to replace them. If you have more locations that will be selling the same product, then you need a display for each location. I bought a bunch of displays for the aliens, and for various jewelry mixes. Now I have many many boxes of displays of dud products. Sure, I can break them open and capsulize the product, but if the product is a dud, what would I need it for?

I still love selling toys. I just think that the bad things need to be talked about as well as the good.

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  • 9 months later...

The only candy we sell are Skittles and M&M peanuts. We do better with toys outside of those 2 products. Toys do take up a lot of room and once you get big enough hauling the product will require a bigger vehicle. We have locations that have as many as 6 different 2" products and double that of 1" products. Stickers & tattos. Add in plush and candy crane materials and I fill up our full size Sprinter van.

We tried to run the business out of a Suburban at first and it lasted about 2 months before getting sick of it.

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