New owners reveal plans for Totally Awesome in Colliergate

Jo, 38, and Sarah Patton, 37, along with their five children, have taken on a fresh challenge by becoming the new owners of Totally Awesome Toy Shop in Colliergate.

This comes after previous owners Aamir Yusuf and Lisa Fox spoke to The Press about their desire to find the right people to take on the shop before their retirement to Crete.

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Jo, who currently works as a digital lead for an educational charity, plans to run the shop alongside his current role – working in the shop on weekends and closely with the team during the week.

According to Jo, much of his passion for games and toys came through parenthood and playing together with his own children.

He said: “So much of our homelife is playing together – you learn a lot about people and their personality through games. We’ve parented our own children through games – it helps to connect us and others.”

With a heavy focus placed on interactivity and play, Jo has decided to further expand the hands-on nature of the shop – removing some stands to create a better flow through the space and give people the chance to browse.

Jo, Sarah, and their two youngest children - Gabriel and Tom (Image: Alice Kavanagh) He also plans to introduce a robotics station at the back of the store – something which he hopes will appeal to the growth in STEM subjects – and give children a hands-on experience of play through engineering and robots.

He also plans to open the basement of the store up as a bookable game space where he envisages the room playing host to groups of friends, who will be able to rent the space, choose a game together, and play it in the shop.

Jo continued: “We want it to be a toy shop for the city – rather than going to Amazon, we want to encourage people to come to us for birthdays and Christmas gifts.

Using the play space (Image: Alice Kavanagh) “Because we’re independent, we can be agile and responsive – if someone comes to us and says, ‘oh I played this game on holiday in Menorca’, we can get it in for them.

"It’s more than just board games and card games in here – we want to be a Playatorium.”

Totally Awesome is also keen to work with local designers and stock products from York - hopefully hosting product launches and giving locals and tourists alike a chance to own something that will be unique to the city.

Whilst Totally Awesome York will be independent, the new owners plan to maintain a connection with Aamir’s former stores in Halifax and Hebden Bridge – creating a network of independent shops and maintaining the well-loved branding.