Making Play Time Pay

If there was one lesson this small Australian business has learned in four years it would be “persist, persist, persist!” As Child Friendly Solutions founders Anne Doyle and Michelle Barraclough have found, eventually persistence does pay off.

Anne and Michelle are members of a growing breed of women who are not willing to sacrifice motherhood for a career, and so combine both by running their own business, even if it takes four years for the business to get off the ground.

Child Friendly Solutions manufactures and sells compact Play Panels to occupy children in retail and commercial environments.

Anne conceived the Child Friendly Solutions concept after many frustrating attempts to go shopping with her two small children in tow. She hooked up with Michelle and the two set about finding someone to manufacture their play panels and an investor to fund them. Both tasks proved difficult, expensive and time-consuming.

“We spent time in Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong and Taiwan with suppliers, trying to find the right play attachments and plastics manufacturer. We loved going to China for the shopping, but we found the business culture over there to be quite challenging.” Anne said.

In the end, they decided to import only a few of the play attachments from a quality international toy company in China and manufacture the bulk of the product in Australia. “By the time we took into account import duty, freight, travel costs & translators, it was far more cost effective to manufacture in Australia and now we’re proud to say we have an Australian-made product,” says Anne.

Finding an investor was just as tricky. “We ran ads, met with venture capitalists, and asked everyone we met if they knew anyone with a spare couple of hundred thousand dollars, but every time we thought we were close, it didn’t work out,” says Michelle. “Some of these potential investors had us produce endless spreadsheets, detailing our costs and projections down to the last cent. At the time, it seemed onerous jumping through all those hoops for investors, but it forced us to really immerse ourselves in the financials. Our projections are now really solid.”

But Michelle has this advice for other businesses seeking investment. “Present potential investors with a sound business proposal but don’t let them string you along for too long. The time came when we had had enough. We rang all the investors and simply asked them if they were going to invest – yes or no. Half said yes, half said no and finally we were on our way. It’s amazing that we avoid the direct questions when it comes to asking for money.”

Anne and Michelle also had the foresight to trademark the terms Child Friendly and Family Friendly. Their aim is to promote awareness amongst retailers of the importance of being more child and family friendly by licensing them to use the terms in their promotions. As parents start to seek out Child Friendly stores, the trademark will become an essential part of the retailer’s marketing strategy, similar to the Heart Foundation “tick”.

Child Friendly Solutions has seven other products in development.