Macon ‘toy lady’ brought kids joy during the pandemic. Now, her store celebrates 15 years.

After starting an online toy store with her friend in 2004, Florence Allen was walking with her husband through Ingleside Village when she saw a storefront available.

“I jumped off the cliff and got us a lease,” Allen said with a laugh.

William’s Fun Smart Toys officially opened in 2006, and the store moved to its current location at 2356 Ingleside Ave. a few years later.

The store celebrated its 15 year anniversary Friday and Saturday with discounts and giveaways as well as a book signing on Saturday by Kim Zachman, author of “There’s No Ham in Hamburgers.”

However, a little more than a year ago, Allen said she wasn’t sure whether to keep the store open.

Hitting a plateau

Entering 2020, Allen, like many business owners, looked back at the previous years to assess the toy store’s success.

She said the store had experienced a plateau in the past few years. They weren’t losing money, but they definitely weren’t growing, she said.

With the lease to the building coming to an end, Allen said she had to make a decision whether it was time to close the store.

Before she made the decision, Allen and her husband went to a toy fair in New York in February 2020, and she said the fair reinvigorated her spirit and encouraged them to keep the store open.

In the next several weeks, the way Allen ran her business changed drastically when the coronavirus pandemic hit Middle Georgia.

Surviving the pandemic

Allen had just bought a lot of merchandise at the fair in New York for the Easter holiday in April, and Allen said they experienced a moment of panic.

“I’m sitting here. I’ve got this merchandise. I’ve got these bills to pay, and I’m being told to shut my doors,” she said.

Her daughter suggested they revamp their social media presence to promote business, and they went from posting two to three times a week to three times per day, she said.

“It’s a hard thing to keep up, but we did it. And then, I guess after a week or two, I started noticing people messaging and calling wanting to know what we had in stock,” Allen said. “I had an area set up at the front of my store where I just had it covered with bags that people were coming to pick up, and that just kind of got us through the moment until we start letting people back into the store.”

The store didn’t see a steady flow of customers until around August, but Allen said the social media success encouraged them to start selling their products online again.

“We wound up having people find us that didn’t know we were here, and we’ve been here for over 10 years, and so we gained new customers,” she said.

They were also reunited with old customers who they hadn’t seen in a while, she said.

The need for toy stores

Amazon and other online retailers faced their own challenges during the pandemic, and Allen’s toy store provided a local retailer where people could find activities for their children without having to worry about shipping problems.

“There was this need of, ‘Okay, I need more things that are going to entertain, be a creative outlet.’ A lot of what people were looking for were creative things that were a creative outlet for their child,” she said.

Her store provided a way for people to entertain their children with toys that offer educational opportunities while they had to stay home from school, she said.

“This pandemic put the world on pause, in so many ways, but I think it’s in so many good ways. Families kind of came together as much as they could,” she said. “I think in looking back through all the hardship and people are still having a hard time and I’m not trying to make light of it. I think people are gonna look back, and they can see some of the good that came out of it.”

Allen was deemed the Toy Lady shortly after she opened the store by a mom who was explaining to her little boy who Allen was, and Allen wears the name on a cord that keeps her mask around her neck.

She said she loves being the Toy Lady and is glad she could help some families come together during the pandemic to play a board game or put together a puzzle.

“I was just a little bit overwhelmed at how people came out and supported me. It was, it was kind of an overwhelming feeling that I’m just not here toiling away and not being noticed,” she said.

This story was originally published May 18, 2021 at 5:00 AM.