With Valentine’s Day around the corner, Blue Orange would like to show their love and appreciation to the February 2016 Store of the Month—Toys On The Square in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania! Congratulations to Steve, Grafton, and your team for your dedication to selling and playing the Blue Orange games.

Toys On The Square has been selling toys for over 25 years and has been buying games from Blue Orange since 2003. The store also doubles as a pottery painting studio to further inspire creativity in their customers. However, one of their greatest marvels is their toy selection. One might say that they have all the warmth and customer care of a family owned business while maintaining a vast arrangement of toys one would find in a larger company. Customers are known to walk in the store and gawk at the grand supply and variation of toys that stock their shelves.

I had the pleasure of talking to Steve about his experience working at Toys On The Square. Grafton, Steve’s friend and Toys On The Square store owner, first hired Steve to work at Toys On The Square. Ten years later, he asked Steve to help him manage sales. Since his promotion, Steve has been meeting up up with our sales interns to test our games for the Toys On The Square shelves. He admires the Blue Orange Team’s way of meeting with the store owners in person and showing them how to play the games they are selling. Steve makes sure to also play the game with his customers so they know that they will enjoy what their buying.

Needless to say, Steve is an enthusiastic “game guru” who loves to throw out the manual after the first read and put his own twist on the game. His favorite Blue Orange games are Spot It! and Fastrack. He’s so good at Fastrack that he beat our previous sales intern, Max, at the game.  Steve makes sure to know every game on the shelf. In fact, if he doesn’t know a game, he will break open the box and play it with a customer right there!

The best advice Steve can give to future toy store owners is to keep a wide variety of toys for all age groups. “You almost need a little bit of everything to be successful,” he said. However, he does understand the value of catching a child’s attention at a young age, before they get sucked into the technological tidal wave of the modern age. He believes that playing a physical board game gives “a broader range of experience” than just playing something on your phone. Rather than just tapping a screen, the player has to engage their senses and use their motor coordination while fully communicating with their opponent. Therefore, it’s important to show young children the value of a good physical game, so they can best develop those skills and facilitate human connection.

It is little wonder why Toys On The Square won February’s Store of the Month! Check out their site here or drop by their store in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. Congratulations again to Toys On The Square! Your dedication to Blue Orange and your customers is undeniable! We wish you the best of success in the future years to come!