Was working a little late last night, preparing for a presentation I am giving today to our local Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Vancouver Island Chapter. And I realized something that surprised me a little.

World Puzzle Day is an interesting event. Founded in 2013 by Günther Simetsberger of Austria, this year marks the event’s 7th season. Unlike what the name might suggest, the event is held over a two-month period. Competitors (let’s call them puzzlers) from around the world compete to assemble as many puzzles as possible. Puzzlers are ranked based on the total number of pieces they assemble.

 It has been a very very busy year at Outset Media. When things get busy, it’s far too easy to delay tasks that aren’t urgently required. And often these tasks get delayed… and delayed… and delayed… and eventually never get done.

Posting a new blog is definitely one of those “sure-would-be-nice-but-can-wait” type of tasks. In fact, it had been so long since my last posting that I was about to pull the blog off our website.

It was our 17th consecutive year exhibiting at NY Toy Fair.  I couldn’t actually recall how many times we had exhibited at the show, but fortunately show management provides ribbons that indicate how many years each company has been exhibiting.  Quite handy little ribbons!

This was our 6th consecutive year exhibiting at the Nuremberg Toy Fair.  It finally feels like we are making some significant progress on the international side of our business.

We exhibit at 8 tradeshows in Canada and 21 tradeshows in the United States.  At these tradeshows, the goal is to meet with retailers, and show them our board games and puzzles.  But Nuremberg Toy Fair is different for us.  At this tradeshow, we are only interested in meeting with distributors (rather than retailers) as it isn’t economically feasible to ship to individual retailers outside North America.

Proofing our catalogue doesn’t rank near the top of my fun list, but is something we need to do every year.  While we have a team of excellent people working on the catalogue, I still feel the need to give it a thorough proofing before sending it to press.  This year, something I saw really got me thinking.

We just returned from our annual pilgrimage to the Hong Kong Toy Fair.  There must be something about me and travelling to Hong Kong, as once again the flight to Hong Kong was delayed, this time for 4 hours in Vancouver.  But I think it builds up the anticipation and excitement!  Plus, after reading toy expert Richard Gottlieb’s blog and his delay at JFK airport for 18 hours, my delay doesn’t sound so bad (even though there was another 3 hour delay on the return trip).

Just returned from our annual trip to the toy fair in Hong Kong.  On my way to Hong Kong, with a 4 hour layover in Vancouver followed by an 8 hour maintenance delay, I had plenty of time to contemplate this past year.  Here is a list of my top four highlights from 2016:

Highlight #1 - Warehouse & Showroom Grand Opening

Back in June of 2013, we began an exhilarating streak of 35 consecutive monthly sales records… and let me say, it was one interesting journey!  There were some months where the record wasn’t broken until the last day.  It made for some nail-biting times.

As month after month of record sales began to accumulate, I often wondered how I would feel when the streak did come to an end.  We always knew it would happen some day - to expect record sales every month is simply not realistic in the long term.

Approximately two weeks ago, suppliers and retailers got together in a hotel near Pearson International Airport for a three-day mini tradeshow.  It was the third running of TaG Central, a biannual event held in Toronto.

TaG Central is a non-profit association of toy and game manufacturers and distributors. Established in the wake of the cancellation of the Canadian Toy Fair, TaG Central borrows its model from the highly successful Drummondville Toy Show.