With Women’s History Month wrapping up, it seem apropos to highlight one of Las Vegas’ highly successful female business owners, Lizzie Newsome. Newsome, along with husband Trevor Yopp, own Kappa Toys in Fashion Show. She first opened Kappa Toys, with its distinctive turtle icon, in Container Park downtown and later expanded to Fashion Show, opening an online store as well.
Newsome grew up on the East Coast of the U.S., and also lived across the pond, which resulted in her wide-ranging childhood. “It’s actually been a huge advantage in my industry because I had a lot of exposure to different cultures and toys because I moved when I was a kid. So I would see TV shows from other cultures and get into different characters that don’t necessarily have the most popularity in the U.S., but … with the globalization through the Internet, a lot of those characters are coming over here,” she says.
Newsome attended college in Austin, Texas, and got into the business soon after. “My first real job out after graduating ended up being at an independent toy store. So that’s really how I got involved.” Both she and her husband worked at the store, and they eventually ended up buying it before relocating to Vegas in the mid 2010s.
Today, Newsome herself owns 51 percent of Kappa Toys, interacting with employees, customers and toy suppliers regularly and building relationships with all three groups. The toy store itself stocks a huge variety of retro toys and candy, both iconic Japanese brands and newcomers, plus Kappa Toy-branded items, appealing to children and adults.
“So often now, when kids come in, it’s their first time in a toy store ever … it doesn’t exist in the city they’re in. And I’m so passionate about re-creating the classic toy store experience, not just for adults but for kids.”
Product
It’s hard to choose from the large array of brands at Kappa Toys, but here a few that Newsome recommends looking at: Amuse’s colorful plush alpacas and hamsters (so satisfying to squish); Smiskis, a glow-in-the-dark, whimsical surprise figure that comes in many different poses and is appealing to both children and adults; and wildly popular brand tokidoki’s line of Unicornos and Mermicornos, formed from an intersection of the magical world and ours. Truly, though, the store creates a magical world of its own.
Benefit: Join the Kappa Toys loyalty program and get a ticket for every $1 spent. Cash in the tickets for toys, discounts, Kappa Toys gift cards, and, voila, even more fun.
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