Retail
The toy chain ToyChamp and furniture seller Jysk are acquiring eleven of the 29 Fun stores through a joint bid. Toys will continue to be sold at nine of those locations.
The Belgian toy store chain ToyChamp has announced that nine locations where Fun stores were located will continue to sell toys. The stores will be renamed and renovated. Six will be converted into a ToyChamp store, while the other three will be a relocation of a local Dreamland branch.
Last Friday, Fun, which had been in difficulties for some time, was declared bankrupt. Later that day it was announced that the trustees of the bankrupt chain had given the green light to a joint bid by ToyChamp and the Swedish furniture chain Jysk for a total of eleven of the 27 Fun stores. The chain employed more than two hundred people.
It is not clear how many employees can work at ToyChamp. In a press release on Sunday, CEO Koen Nolmans assured that the aim is to maximize employment retention in the six stores that are being converted to ToyChamp. For the three other locations, this concerns a relocation of a Dreamland store. The chance of re-employment of the staff of those Fun stores may be smaller.
With the takeover of the Fun stores, Nolmans continues its rapid rise as a toy seller in Flanders. In April 2023, he acquired control of the Dreamland stores, when supermarket group Colruyt sold a 75 percent stake in the toy chain to him. Those stores continued to operate under the Dreamland flag.
Blind spots
The Fun locations offer Nolmans the opportunity to promote its own ToyChamp brand more prominently to consumers. ToyChamp currently has nine stores of its own, which will now number fifteen. That is still a lot less than in the Netherlands, where Nolmans has already developed a chain of 24 toy stores.
According to the company, the Fun locations offer the opportunity to fill a number of blind spots in certain regions. This concerns the stores in Merksem, Oudenaarde, Sint-Denijs-Westrem, Dendermonde, Lokeren and Sint-Joris-Winge. In Mechelen, Roeselare and Veurne this concerns a relocation of the local Dreamland store.
The Fun stores were open until the end of last week for a sale, with the aim of continuing to pay staff wages. The toy chain had been owned by Sogesma, the Walloon group above the Trafic retail chain, since 2018. (pse)
