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July 2009 | Vol. VIII - No. 7

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ASTRA Attendees Speak Out About TDmonthly

Retailers and Manufacturers Tell Why They Need Us Now

By: Alison Marek
7/1/2009

With increased costs and lower budgets, both retailers and manufacturers have had to change the way they connect with each other. Many have curtailed trade-show attendance, relying on smaller venues such as ASTRA Marketplace and the online meeting place that TDmonthly Magazine provides. Our video crew spoke to attendees at the ASTRA show to find out why ToyDirectory and TDmonthly are essential to their businesses, especially in a challenging economy. You can read a quick summary of their remarks and/or watch their full video testimonials below:

HOW RETAILERS USE TDmonthly and ToyDirectory:

“I highly recommend TDmonthly Magazine ... when we first opened up our store about four years ago, I started doing the sourcing for my store through TDmonthly. … It's very simple to use, very intuitive …”
— Eric Masoncup, Geppetto's Toy Box, Oak Park, IL

“We really found that TDmonthly was on top of the industry. …The videos of current products ... give us an idea of what the product is like, how it's interacted with …. Another feature of TDmonthly that I'm particularly fond of is ... the stories of other retailers.... It's just a great product.”
— Hans Masing, Tree Town Toys and Brain Station, Ann Arbor, Mich.

“One of the main features that I like best is they have these little short [video] clips of demonstrations from different companies … If I want to see what a certain product looks like, I can do a little search on it and click it and run it and see what it looks like. …”
— Terry Myers, Kaleidoscope Toys, Round Rock, Texas

HOW MANUFACTURERS USE TDmonthly:

“We find that they're very beneficial in delivering qualified leads to our sales team. We have great turn and closure percentage on our leads from TDmonthly, so I highly recommend them.”
— Barb Rainville, Maple Landmark Woodcraft

“It's a very cost-effective way to get my message out to retailers. Very, very, very cost effective! ... I can’t say that enough. I’m really happy with their sales staff and everyone and their patience with me ... Overall, a very satisfied customer!”
— Cathie Cashman, Swatch Group

“TDmonthly is absolutely fabulous! It's a terrific portal for manufacturers to connect with the retailers. And it's a great way to get their products out and for the retailers to find out about it.”
— Meghan Ristau, Woodland Magic Imports

"We've been using TDmonthly for five years. ... We've got quite a few customers from the email blast. ... And you're also very cost effective. That's a big plus right now!"
— Andrea Nasstrom, Acting Out

“TDmonthly has been an excellent vehicle to get information out to both retailers and consumers … We constantly hear from consumers that they've seen the TDmonthly spots. …”
— Beau James, Corolle Dolls

“We've advertised for TDmonthly for the ASTRA show and seen an instant increase in our traffic to our site. We've gotten dozens of hits … that were flagged from TDmonthly and it was a positive experience for us.”
— Daniel Monahan, Dano2

“We use them to gather some of our leads ..... I highly recommend small businesses to use TDmonthly.”
— Bob Knight, Find It Games

“…We've seen quite a bit of people responding [to our ads]... It's been a great resource for us and we're looking forward to using it in the future and would recommend it for anybody else in this industry to use them as well.”
— Michael Richie, Mindtwister USA

“We get regular customer referrals and great promotion out of it so we're really big fans of TDmonthly.”
— Wayne Rothschild, Neat-Oh! International

“Almost from the beginning, we have taken the opportunity to advertise on TDmonthly with banner ads, skyscrapers and other combination promotional venues. We’ve always found it a good investment and have had customers, both international and domestic, let us know that they've found us on TDmonthly, so we know it works.”
— Chris Ryan, Noodlehead

“We have been advertising with TDmonthly for over a year and have received a lot of good leads from them... We have also been a sponsor for them. … Go ahead and advertise with TDmonthly, because you'll see results.”
— Ed Kuntzman, Imaginatives

“We use TDmonthly and find it to be a very helpful service to spread the word about our new products and existing line. They are very persistent in helping us to make sure that we're creating news ... We are really pleased with the support they've provided us in the past and look forward to having them help us in the future.”
— Robin Lehnert, HaPe International

“Just Jump It has not done a whole lot of advertising over the years, but the one place we always do advertise is with TDmonthly... We have a 3-month promotion going with a skyscraper banner that gets lots of hits. We've seen business come directly from the website … We're also doing a fourth-quarter promotion where a mailer goes out to, I believe, 2,000 retailers …”
— Chris Kalberer, Just Jump It

"TDmonthly is a wonderful magazine, a wonderful website. They've helped us so much [to] sell our products and be really helpful in getting us out there and getting our name out there. …”
— Brooke Sherman, Kid O Products

“Several years ago, when I first started out, I found TDmonthly to be an invaluable tool to me as an inventor. … It was the go-to place for me for informative articles [and] contacts in the industry.”
— Mary Kay Russell, Kubit2Me

“We love the press that we get from TDmonthly…”
— Beaver Raymond, Marshmallow Fun

“Here to talk about TDmonthly and how they raise awareness of our products, their beautiful videos and a great website.”
— Alexander Pariente, Safari Ltd.

“One thing TDmonthly has done for us is to get out and have people that are within our audience, our customers, other people in our industry, where we can clearly send a message about who we are, what we're doing and what our objectives are ... It’s a pleasure to work with TDmonthly and we'll continue to do so in the future.”
— Scott Severson, The Shrunks Family Toy Co.

“We use TDmonthly on a regular basis. It provides us all kinds of background information on the marketplace ...”
— Richard Gill, Discovery Bay Games

Watch more than 150 product demo videos from ASTRA 2009!

Writer's Bio: ALISON MAREK is an award-winning writer, director and cartoonist whose work has been published by Fairchild Publications and DC Comics (Piranha Press), broadcast on Showtime and other cable networks, and viewed worldwide in film festivals. See her short films and print work on www.alisonmarek.com. Watch her nefarious villains in the web series www.MuggsMovers.com. Get inspired by her cartoons "Daily ARFFirmations to Unleash Your Inner Fido" at www.ARFFirmations.com. Phew! And then ... Read more articles by this author