Top 10 reasons why Indoor Play Centres Fail

Last year, I received complaints from suppliers of Soft Play Equipment after an industry figure posted the following comments on Twitter:

“Sad day, another new playcentre has gone! A fantastic dream, in the hands of a liquidator. Sad news! Once again, sold by a certain manufacturer knowing they were building another a few miles down the road! I want their heads on a plate!!!”

“Please don't think about starting a playcentre without talking to the xxx first, certain manufacturers will give you incorrect advice!”

After these comments were once again referred to in a recent conversation, I started thinking about why it had upset so many people (is it the emotion, the tarring of all play suppliers or the use of the situation to try and build business / credibility for this organisation?) and perhaps more importantly, how inaccurate the comments are in identifying the reasons why play centres fail (do you blame a kitchen supplier when a restaurant ceases trading)?

It is without doubt tragic and sad to see Entrepreneurs suffer financial and emotional hardship, I say this from personal experience of starting several companies. Unfortunately, it is a fact of life that businesses of all sizes and in all markets occasionally fail; the rate of failure for play centres is actually lower than for other businesses.

In reality, you could argue that the indoor play market has not suffered enough creative destruction, that as an industry, we haven't failed enough, learnt from and innovated upon the lessons of the past enabling a thousand flowers to bloom, the business model has not evolved to become more resilient and offer better value to the end customer; perhaps this is partly because it is all too easy to blame play suppliers (and others) for our failings.

So here it is, based on over fifteen years in the market, my top ten reasons why Indoor Play Centres fail:

1. Poor Management and / or Leadership
2. Ill-informed Business Plan / Business Model
3. Failure to achieve sales targets / over reliance on traditional sources of income
4. Lack of Experience
5. Lack of Cash / Finance and / or incorrectly structured debt
6. Loss of interest / passion by the owners
7. Location / too much competition
8. Overspending at the start of the project
9. Limited value in the offering / nothing unique to differentiate one play centre from another
10. Bad luck or timing

If your Soft Play Equipment collapses (that should never ever happen), the supplier goes out of business with your deposit or they just don’t show up, they would then make my list of top twenty reasons but other than that, sorry, they are not to blame.

I will begin to post details of how you can mitigate the risk of the above; after all, the entire industry should want every play centre to be a success.

PS. Choosing a Soft Play Supplier is an important part of your start-up process, this guide (How to Choose a Soft Play Equipment Supplier) will help you select the right supplier for you. Of all the criteria you use to make your choice, I suggest you don’t worry about whether they supplied a local play centre (indeed, to many it is seen as sign of a good supplier).

Emotion may mean that you want to stop them from supplying anyone else locally, that just doesn’t make sense. The play equipment will be a component of your success (or otherwise,) it simply won’t be the determining factor; you should want your supplier to be successful as well so that they can innovate and help you grow.

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.

Connecting the (Indoor) Play Community

Since it was established in the 1970’s, the Indoor Play Community has been a fragmented and disparate group of organisations taking an individualistic and short-term approach; we can see the results today, a community that consistently underperforms its potential in a fight for survival.

The characteristics of such zero sum markets are typically decisions based on short-term self interest, fear, incomplete information, emotion and attachment to the familiar rather than business rationale and creative embracing of the possibilities of change; ultimately, this limits potential and investment causing markets to shrink and in time, disappear.

Not a pleasant picture and so in 2009, we started ShareAndComparePlay with the objective of raising the standard of play provision in the UK; we hoped that this in turn would encourage investment and innovation, reversing the trend.

Although our small company started life as an exciting experiment, the three key values we embraced to achieve this objective were freedom of information, transparency throughout the value chain and collaborative working.

In some ways, our progress has been in advance of what we anticipated whilst in others resistance has meant that we have taken time to find alternative methods of spreading the word. In recent months, we have been working on several key initiatives to broaden the impact of such values and more of our services are being designed to better support existing operators; if we can help operators to become more successful, the circle of possibility raises upwards.

One such initiative is the collaboration between ShareAndComparePlay and Play Operators to form a new Community of Play, Play Connected. As the name suggests, our medium term aim is to create a more connected industry incorporating suppliers, operators, associations and parents / children who use the play experiences that we create.

The first meeting has taken place with astonishing results for the participating operators, the open nature of the meeting resulted in breakthroughs in terms of access to Management Information that can potentially transform the profitability of the play industry.

The next meeting is scheduled for April when more details will be agreed regarding the organisational structure but an interim progress report (requested by several people) is as follows:

· All organisations in the Play Community will be encouraged to participate; membership will be free although certain standards will have to be achieved to become a full member (membership is restricted for a little while as we implement the programme)

· ShareAndComparePlay.com and Play Connected will work together to introduce the best possible value deals from suppliers of all items needed to start and operate an indoor play centre; suppliers will have to pass an approval process to be certified by Play Connected

· The benefits that each member receives will be in direct proportion to the contribution that they make to the community

· Play Connected will explore innovative ways of generating additional revenue streams for soft play centres at both an individual and collective level

· The organisation will not be run by committee; we would like in time to create a full time role but it will generally be a democratic organisation ran by its members

· Play Connected will work with ShareAndComparePlay.com to produce quality content that will raise the profile of indoor play and encourage investment

· The structure of the collective is to be clarified but it is likely to be a co-operative of partners working towards common objectives

· Play Connected will aim to provide “Thought Leadership” and research in mission critical areas such as Information Technology, Social Media and Child Wellness

Our hope in time to provide a path to success for indoor play; we aim to inspire creativity, best practice and innovation throughout the play industry so that ultimately we can provide the best play experiences for children.

If you look at successful industries throughout the world, there is an acceptance that no organisation exists in a vacuum. In IT for example, the degree of interconnectedness will often determine the level of overall success, we hope this is the first step towards using these principles to grow the pie for all.

We will update again soon but if you have any comments, questions or wish to register interest in participating, please get in touch.

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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Social Media Marketing & play...

How indoor play centres can use the Internet as a Marketing tool...

View more OpenOffice presentations from Shareandcompareplay.com .

An extremely busy but enjoyable week began with presentations to the Regional Meeting of the Play Providers Association http://www.playproviders.org.uk/ on the subject of Internet / Social Marketing.

It was an enjoyable and valuable experience with the majority of play operators being interested in how they can revolutionise their business by developing a Social Media strategy. In the spirit of the message we were spreading, we have shared a summary of the slides at Slideshare http://tinyurl.com/nd6lpa

We only had time to present a brief overview of the possibilities that are available to soft play centres but we hope that we prompted thought and action; please let us know your thoughts so that we can continue the discussion.

Shareandcompareplay.com is the Indoor Soft Play Comparison website.
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