Marina Ushakova: our toys participate in national programs
Mart, a regular participant in Mir Detstva, comes to the exhibition year after year with new ideas; and every year the company attracts a large number of visitors to its stand. We can state that Mart, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, is one of the long livers of our business community. Company CEO Marina Ushakova told us what had helped the company remain one of the market leaders over the years.
“Our annual participation in Mir Detstva is like an autumn portion of vitamins which recharges us for the next year. Every time we meet our partners and colleagues here and we see how they appreciate our new products, and this, of course, stimulates us even more. The industry is facing a challenging coming year and we realize the current problems in the market. We count on new products that will bring us profit next year and on our regular established product range already recognized by the customers and still popular.
“These are, first of all, our Hansa Creation, very realistic stuffed toys. We refreshed this line up considerably after we signed a contract with the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) which supports programs aimed at preserving rare animals, besides the travelling and new geographic discoveries. We have designed a number of special characters for this RGS project named Rare Animals of Russia under Protection of the Russian Geographic Society: the beluga whale, the leopard, the polar bear, and the wild cat manul. A percent from the profit coming from the sales of these toys will be directed to implementation of the RGS programs. Every toy has a special label attached “Protected by the Russian Geographical Society”. This is a very important and honorable project and an interesting case when toys are used in the important national program.
“We decided to use the best characters in the puzzles which brought to life our new Faberge brand. Mart has designed and produced under this brand a unique collection of puzzle pictures consisting of 160 elements named Décor Your Room. The puzzle pictures make it possible not only for parents but also for children to make interior design items: framed pictures showing the scenes from the “life of the toys”. In order to make it possible, every puzzle box contains a special hanging loop and a transparent adhesive film besides the puzzle pieces. A lot of vistors at the exhibition showed a great interest in this product. We are going to enlarge this category.”
Your company has demonstrated quite a number of new products this year. Which of them were the most interesting for visitors?
“Cosmos, our new product, attracted great interest among the exhibition visitors; this product is close to today’s agenda and fits in the concept of perspective development of our country. The line-up which is topically connected with the space exploration is a classic game set with sound and light elements which contains an off-road vehicle, a rocket, a space station and men figures. We’d like to make the children dream of space and big achievements again. This is a big program declared by the President of Russia, and we are very glad to support it by offering children this game.”