Since 2007 when Radiohead bravely experimented with an honesty system to sell “In Rainbows,” I have been fascinated how such economic initiatives revolutionise business models, influence demand and propagate ideas.
As you know, we like our experiments (Free influenced the founding of our Company) and trust our community so it seemed an interesting (and scary) idea to use an honesty system in the pricing of our “How to Start a Soft Play Centre” seminars to demonstrate the value of spending a day with us in January.
According to Wikipedia, an honesty system is:
“a philosophical way of running a variety of endeavours based on trust, honour, and honesty…granting freedom from customary surveillance…with the understanding that those who are so freed will be bound by their honour … not (to) abuse the trust placed in them.”
Although we know our seminars to be extremely popular and valuable (you can read feedback here), the challenge we face in fully adopting a fully fledged honesty box system is that unlike Radiohead, we have released no albums (believe me, that is a good thing) and unless you have attended our seminars (where capacity is limited to fifteen) you have no way of measuring value in advance.
Therefore, reflecting the principles of trust, value and honour in pricing the seminar became the most important considerations. After much thought, we decided to maintain the current price but at the end of the seminar, ask attendees to value the day they shared with us. If they think the value of the information we share is not worth £100 (+ VAT), we will refund the difference; this does not cover failure to attend where we offer alternative dates. Don’t worry, if you join us and value the day at more than £100, we will not ask you to pay more (unless you really really want to).
Like all experiments, we can’t predict the outcome but we hope this shows our confidence in the value of the information we share, the trust we place in the users of our website and those attending our seminars; this also hopefully makes it even easier to get your hands on all the independent information you need when starting a soft play centre.
Ultimately, we also hope that by again trying something new and risky, we inspire and / or encourage soft play suppliers and indoor play centre operators to experiment with business models and adopt ideas from outside the indoor play industry.
As always, our future is in your hands…over to you.
ShareAndComparePlay.com is the Indoor Play Supplier Comparison Website that Saves Play Operators £10,000s. The only source of independent reviews on every Supplier to the Play Industry, ShareAndComparePlay.com works to revolutionise the Play Experience for Children and to enable Businesses to profitably understand and meet the future needs of Families.
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