Owners of a toy store in Mayfaire plan to close the business by this summer.

Signs advertised 20- to 50-percent-off sales in the windows Thursday at Towne Toys, 6864 Main St. in Mayfaire Town Center.

Formerly part of the Brilliant Sky toy store franchise, Towne Toys will likely close by the end of July or in early August, the month the store’s lease runs out, said co-owner Annika Bixby. Before then, the store is continuing to receive some toys orders and will have an ongoing discount of at least 20 percent, she said.

A number of factors went into the decision, both personal and business-related, Bixby said. One of them is the decline in the number of films produced in the Wilmington area.

“For Iron Man [3], they bought thousands of dollars worth of merchandise for props in the movie,” Bixby said. “The cast and crew also came in; [Iron Man star] Robert Downey Jr. or his staff came in and bought from us regularly. And that’s just one production. There were multiple productions where we had people coming in regularly to buy from us because we were locally owned, and when that left the revenue left with it.”

The state’s tax credits for films, which have been replaced by a grant program with fewer dollars involved, required spending at businesses in North Carolina.

But another factor was Internet competition from sites like Amazon.com, Bixby said.

“We cannot compete with those prices,” said Bixby, whose husband, Michael Bixby, is the other owner of Towne Toys.

Not having to focus on the store will also give the Bixbys more time to spend with their two children, Annika Bixby said.

In an email Thursday, Paige Somervell, marketing director and specialty leasing manager for Mayfaire Town Center, said of the soon-to-be vacated space, “We’re working with a number of exciting tenants. However, we cannot make announcements until leases are signed.”

A locally owned clothing and accessory store, Top Toad, recently opened in Mayfaire Town Center, and the center is adding 90,000 square feet in seven new buildings near the center's movie theater anchor tenant, space that could include locations of national retailers.