“There’s a huge worldwide demand, so it’s a struggle to supply all markets. Go Go Pets has been the biggest thing since Ninja Turtles,” finance director Kiran Shah told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Character holds UK distribution rights to Go Go Pets, a range of interactive hamsters, which respond to noise and touch and retail from an opening price point of 10 pounds ($16.47).
Shah said Christmas demand for some of Character’s Peppa Pig and HM Armed Forces collections was also likely to exceed supply.
The firm’s other lines include Postman Pat, Let’s Cook, Scooby Do and Doctor Who.
Character supplies the biggest toy retailers — Home Retail’s Argos, Toys R Us, Tesco, Wal-Mart’s Asda and Sainsbury.
“The major buyers have been very reluctant to place any material orders in the lead-up to Christmas. But November has been busy, they’ve realised they are short of stock and now they’re placing orders for everything they are short of,” said the finance director.
However, three-month lead times on product ordered from the Far East meant some product shortages were inevitable.
Character was hit hard by the collapse of key customer Woolworths in late 2008 and swung to a pretax loss of 2.2 million pounds in the year to end-August 2009, compared to a pretax profit of 5.1 million pounds in the previous year.
Sales fell 16.6 percent to 68.6 million pounds.
But the group said it made an operating profit of 1.6 million pounds in its second-half, ended the period with net cash of 3 million pounds and is paying a final dividend of 1 pence a share after omitting the payout last year.
Shah said the firm expected to make a profit in its current year.
Shares in Character, which have more than doubled over the last year, were down 3 percent at 65.5 pence at 1008 GMT, valuing the business at about 23 million pounds.
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