Well, toy news has gone seriously crazy since last year. I’m sure if you’re into it you’ve heard about the industry only having dipped about 2% since last year with gains in the action figure and dolls department.
I’ve been a busy bee myself. While everyone else was taking a break after the holiday rush, I was cracking away at programming something. I hadn’t done it in a while, and it took a bit for the brain juices to start flowing, but I had a thought: what if I could update product info in Google docs and have it automatically list to a selling marketplace?
With Google docs being so ubiquitous in today’s online landscape, and with all the intelligence built into the development of Google Sheets, I thought there might be something there.
And sure enough, I struck GOLD. I’ve been able to fully automate listing new products to Amazon and eBay, pulling in orders, creating a warehouse picklist, and updating price and quantities all within Google’s interface. I did need to do some stress inducing studying on API connections using one of my old websites. I even built out a little script that 1) hides the actual location of my images on my server, and 2) brands the images one the fly with my logo as a watermark. Of course, most major 3rd party marketplace platforms shun watermarks from sellers… especially Amazon, but hey, if I had it 10 years ago, I would have ruled them all!
It was a tough battle, but now that THAT’s out of the way, I find I’ve got more time to breathe, and that means more time to talk TOYS!
I’ll finally be able to make some toy reviews shortly, and give you my insight into the direction of the industry as news continues to unfold.
In the meantime, enjoy my new FigWiz logo that I slapped together on a moment stopping whim.
-Reggie