After 20 years in business, the owners of Toys N Stuff have decided to call it quits.

Carol Bromby, who owns the shop with her sister Jackie Rodill and their mother Harriet Kenien, said that when the leases for the store and warehouse came up for renewal "the time was right" to move on.

"We're ready for a change," she said.

While the closure of Trimingham's and the increasing trend of people bringing items in themselves or via local shipping consolidators has stressed the local retail sector, Ms Bromby said that her shop was still seeing see small year-on-year growth and it is "absolutely" viable to still own a retail business here.

At the same time, however, she said that efforts to encourage people to Buy Bermuda at Christmas were "fairly unsuccessful" with Friday night shopping "awfully quiet" compared to previous years.

"People felt there just wasn't enough variety and enough places to shop locally," she said, adding however that her family would have made the same decision to exit the business even if Trimingham's was still around. For them, the question came down purely to the timing of their leases running out even though their landlords have offered to renew.

The family, which aims to exit the business in March/April this year, is now in talks with several parties to sell the Toys N Stuff as a going concern.

If it cannot be sold as it is, several parties have already expressed an interest in taking over the store's lines which, Ms Bromby said, meant there should not be any void in the market for any length of time.