Our future...

Since its inception, ShareAndComparePlay.com has introduced transparency, collaboration and child-focussed design to the Indoor Play Market; we believe that these values provide the best way of the revolutionising the market for operators, children and families.

The information our community and we have provided has transformed the industry, standing as the only independent source of information when previously the reliance was on play suppliers who sold equipment to survive.

In this, we feel tremendous satisfaction and thank everyone that has contributed to forums, attended our seminars and advertised their services.

Each review matters, each star rating provides insight into the quality of suppliers and each bit of information shared halves the challenges and doubles the potential rewards.

Unfortunately, in such small and niche markets, doubters remain, harbouring significant power and influence; those that seek competition rather than collaboration, those that resolutely put self interest before progress, perhaps not realising that in the end, the alternative to progress is decay.

And so to the evolution of our solution, these are just a few of the changes that we will soon be making with the sole aim of building on our core values and better serving both the market and the debate:

· We will be removing website advertising for soft play suppliers, the tables determining the best suppliers will remain

· We are re-designing our well reviewed and popular seminars and making them available for purchase digitally

· We will be introducing a new consultancy service regarding business plans (the only source of independent advice for business plans in the market)

· We plan to use our unique information set to introduce a new service reviewing Indoor Play Suppliers, an independent design review and comparison service to ensure you achieve value for money when choosing a play supplier

We hope that you are as excited as we are about these enhanced services; we believe they will provide inspiration, information and innovation in our beloved market that needs it so much.

These changes will occur in the next few weeks, please let us know if you have any thoughts or feedback.

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.

The Antithesis of Transparency

I was in the process of posting about transparency when I noticed a Tweet about an “Exclusive Supplier Scheme,” the antithesis of transparency and its benefits.

In days gone by, professional buyers would sit in ivory towers and in would parade a bunch of professional salespeople whose job it was to become the preferred or exclusive supplier (I understand this to an extent when a partnership approach is needed between companies to enable investment, this is not often the case in markets, especially in indoor play).

Perhaps those days aren’t as distant as I would like, however, the majority of exclusive contracts lead to the following:

· Lack of innovation – Why innovate when you are guaranteed to have no competition for two years? This kind of old world deal is the best way to kill a market, stifle innovation and discourage new suppliers into the ecosystem.

· Poor customer value – I pay £250 p/a for my current account, partly because it allegedly delivers great deals on Home and Car Insurance, better rates on foreign exchange etc. However, the problem is it doesn’t because whenever I comparison shop, I see that I can get far better deals elsewhere on virtually everything.

The same happens with exclusive supplier schemes. Promises are made up front (perhaps with the best of intentions) but Economies of Scale rarely materialise and the supplier has to claw back some of the initial outlay and so value diminishes for the end user.

· Opaque practices – There seems to be something dark about the nature of exclusive supplier deals, as though people sit in an unlit room and decide who to approve because they know better than the market. In a transparent world, at least the criteria of how the decision was reached would be published, as would a report to show why each supplier was determined to offer best value; is it available? Furthermore, if suppliers can pay to gain exclusivity, this should be made absolutely clear as it clearly compromises any perceived independence.

The alternative seems pretty simple and a lot more attractive to me.

Competition increases innovation. Competition increases value. Information and access (transparency) facilitate more effective competition / markets.

The Internet and Social Media enable alternative and more effective methods of achieving best value (e.g. Groupon), encouraging innovation (e.g. innocentive) and better serving the customer (e.g get satisfaction); why do associations instead often insist upon ivory towers, committees and autocracy?

With regard to soft play suppliers, “the PPA recommends using a member of the respective association, as this guarantees the necessary standards are reached.”

Simply not true.

There are some good suppliers that are members of the API (a body that is linked to the PPA) and some not so good. However, there are also some good suppliers who choose for very valid reasons to not participate in a scheme that is achieved virtually nothing for Indoor Play.

The same goes for the PPA; they represent a tiny fraction of play operators, there are some good play centres that are members but there are a lot more that are not. To pretend that membership implies sole conformity to desirable “standards” in either case is at best, misleading.

We started our website because we believe that all companies start equal and the market decides who flourishes, you are now aware of the alternative.

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.

Honesty box for independent "starting a soft play centre" seminars

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.

Follow us at Twitter.com/shareandcompare or (Un)subscribe to our Blog by e-mailing us.

Children, please teach us how to Play...

Although an Indoor Play Supplier Comparison website, the broader purpose of Share & ComparePlay.com is to help transform the Play Experience for Children whilst enabling businesses to profitably meet the needs of Families.

As part of this broader role, we hope to lead the Industry towards a more innovative approach to the Design and Provision of Indoor Play Equipment.

In recent weeks, we have started this Evolution in Play with a Competition that is outlined in the Press Release below.

As you can see from the above Photographs, the “Industry Figures” have already met and we will be releasing more details in the next few weeks; needless to say, significant change was on the agenda and ideas were plentiful.

One small change that was decided as part of this Open Collaboration was to change the name of the Competition to “When I Play, I Want…”, an open invitation to Children to tell us what they want when Playing.

If you would like to get involved or have any contribution to make, please let us know, we would love to hear from you.

The Share & Compare Play Team.


Press Release

Background

In a recent interview with ShareAndComparePlay.com, Rupert Oliver said that he was saddened by the lack of innovation in Soft Play since he founded the industry in the 1970’s. In his opinion, commercialisation has stifled creativity and restricted the potential of play, he wished for a return to children being at the centre of play design.

Similarly, as we recently watched three children build their own play area using only grass, ducting tape and a cardboard box, we realised that the Indoor Play Industry frequently misses the opportunity to provide environments where children create their own play experience that complements Soft Play equipment designed by adults.

Free Play

Inspired by these events, we conducted initial research and discovered support for so-called ‘Free Play’; http://tinyurl.com/mfo645 this excerpt from an article published in the Scientific American Magazine is an example of our findings:

“Data suggests that a lack of opportunities for unstructured, imaginative play can keep children from growing into happy, well-adjusted adults. “Free play,” as scientists call it, is critical for becoming socially adept, coping with stress and building cognitive skills such as problem solving”

Not only is Free Play an important part of a Child’s development, it represents one of the most exciting opportunities for the play industry. If we can learn to observe, learn and subsequently Design Play Experiences based on the natural inclination of children to explore and play without restriction, we will benefit not only as a society but as businesses meeting latent needs.

Rupert’s comments combined with several months of research caused our team to ask what role we could play in bringing “Child Focussed Design” back to the fore; we are pleased to say that “When I Grow-up, I Want To Be…” is the resulting Play Design Competition.

We hope that in naming the competition we have captured the sense of possibility inherent in children. We are often taken aback by the scale of the ambition or the way in which “What they want to be” changes on a regular basis; maybe after this we will have a few more children saying “I Want to be, a Play Designer.”


The Competition

Launching in August, “When I Grow-up, I Want To Be…” is an open invitation to Children to use their innate creativity and imagination to Design the Play Experiences of tomorrow with a promise that as an industry we will listen and learn.

Using Social Media, Children, Parents, Schools and Indoor Play Centres will be invited to use videos, drawings, photographs and prototypes to communicate what their dream play area would look like. Unrestricted by convention, economic feasibility or what is possible (previous answers include “Rocket boots”), the ideas we hope will inspire businesses and individuals to create play experiences that reflect the needs of future generations.

The launch event will see Industry figures designing their ideal play area and sharing ideas online; the real experts (Children) will then be given six months to change the future of the Play industry and numerous events will take place during this process.

In January, a Panel of Experts (including Rupert Oliver http://tinyurl.com/dbqtf7) will shortlist up to twenty entries and the Play Community will be invited to vote for their favourite entries and decide the winning entry.

Prizes will be awarded for the first three entries with the Design with the most votes winning a prize of £1,000.

Participation

This is an invitation to Play Operators, Suppliers, Parents and Schools to participate by listening to children when they tell us how we can provide play experiences that challenge, inspire and prepare them for a world significantly different to that in which Soft Play was born.

For example, Play Operators are invited to sign-up to promote the Competition with their customers and run activity clubs. In return, they will be listed as Partner of the competition (and be recognised as a Company interested in creating better play experiences) and be given the chance to learn how to prepare their businesses for the future.

Details for the competition will be listed shortly at http://www.shareandcompareplay.com and regular updates will be provided via Twitter @shareandcompare, http://www.youtube.com/user/shareandcompareplay and http://www.facebook.com/pages/wwwshareandcompareplaycom/38182708219

We hope you that you choose to participate in whatever way you can, please register your interest at ShareAndComparePlay.com to keep updated.

We are open to all ideas and suggestions regarding all aspects of this competition and are looking for Corporate Sponsors and Partners who will benefit in several unique ways; please contact PaulSmith@Shareandcompareplay.com for more information.

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.

Follow us at Twitter.com/shareandcompare or (Un)subscribe to our Blog by e-mailing us at contact@shareandcompareplay.com