Munich The Bobby-Car turns 50 this year. But Florian Sieber doesn’t feel like celebrating. The boss of the Simba Dickie Group will increase the prices sharply in the coming months – also for the popular red push car. Depending on the item, consumers would have to shell out between five and 20 percent more, says the boss and shareholder of Germany’s largest toy manufacturer.
Just last spring, Sieber took over the management of the family business from Fürth with 3,000 employees from his father Michael, 65. The move had been planned for a long time. However, the two entrepreneurs could not have guessed that the first year at the top would be so demanding.
Märklin sets did not arrive from the Far East until after Christmas
“We are faced with extremely high costs,” says Sieber. In addition, he was only able to deliver far too few goods to the dealers. On the one hand, many articles from the Far East arrived too late. The children’s sets from “Myworld” from his model railway brand Märklin, for example, only arrived in Europe after Christmas.
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On the other hand, staff shortages slowed down the business. According to Sieber, there is a lack of people in the logistics center in Sonneberg, as well as in the important Märklin plant in Hungary.
In view of the problems, Sieber’s first year at the head of the medium-sized company went well. CFO Manfred Duschl announced that sales of the core business bundled in the Simba-Dickie Group had risen by a good five percent to 754 million euros. At Märklin, where the financial year ends in April, revenues have recently risen to 128 million euros – significantly more than the 112 million that Sieber had planned.
The entrepreneur fears that customers will stay away because of the higher prices.
(Photo: Simba Dickie)
Before Sieber took the executive chair in May, father and son had managed the company together for three years. The business economist qualified as a successor at Märklin. The father of the family had renovated the loss-making traditional manufacturer from Göppingen before he moved into the headquarters.
The family business owns 20 brands, including the bobby car producer Big, the games from Noris, the wooden toys from Eichhorn and the miniature cars from Schuco and Majorette. In addition, the owner family Sieber took over the Märklin model railway factory in 2013.
Like Simba-Dickie, many other toy brands have so far mastered the pandemic quite well despite many challenges. According to the Association of the Toy Industry, Germans spent a good 3.8 billion euros on toys last year. That is four percent more than in the previous year.
Simba-Dickie is desperately looking for staff
“Even if toys are beneficiaries of the pandemic as a sensible employment opportunity,” said Ulrich Brobeil, managing director of the association, “the good development of the industry is not solely due to Corona.” of customers meet.
Nevertheless, the toy business is not a sure-fire success, warns the industry association. According to Brobeil, the high expectations of the Christmas business were not fulfilled as hoped. According to the manager, this could be due to the enormous general price increase. The industry is not particularly optimistic for the current year: the industry association expects at most a slight increase.
At Sieber, meanwhile, human resources are at the top of the agenda. In the Märklin factory in Györ he would rather hire 100 employees today than tomorrow to cope with the flood of orders. In the logistics department in Sonneberg, he has set himself the goal of filling two positions every week in order to be able to dispatch the goods more quickly in the future.
But whatever happens, the father apparently left the son a well-ordered house. The owner family does not give any details. Despite all the turbulence, the financial situation is “good, solid and very stable”, according to CFO Duschl.
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