How an awful stay in Sydney Children's Hospital gave us a great business idea & a way of giving back

Our little man Jack in Sydney Children's Hospital with Dad - On the mend & inspiring mummy's business

Back in 2005 when our son Jack was only 22 months old, he tried to walk across the living room floor and fell over. Then he vomited. A day later we rushed a limp and very sick toddler to the local emergency ward where he was quickly transferred to the neurological team at Sydney Children's Hospital.

And so began an awful week that culminated with a 6 day stay at Sydney Children's Hospital while Jack battled a double dose of meningitis and encephalitis.

Fortunately he made a 100% recovery and, as little children often do, bounced back quite quickly. But even though he was sitting up in his hospital cot reading books and watching videos after a few days, we needed to stay in hospital until he was completely stabilised.

During the long days of play punctuated by many naps, my business partner Anne came and sat with me and we got quite a lot of planning work done for the business. On our way back from the cafe one lunch time, we walked through reception and stopped to look at the enormous board that listed the hospital's many sponsors, both corporate and local businesses.

Back on the ward, we walked past a room with a big sink, a massive pile of toys and a nurse up to her elbows in suds, washing all the toys by hand. She grimaced. Keeping the toys on the ward clean and germ-free was all part of the job.

We looked at each other and the idea hit us - the Play Panels would be perfect for hospital wards where they could be spray cleaned every day with minimal effort from the nurses, and wouldn't become lost or stolen. And instead of the hospitals paying for them, we could ask businesses to sponsor the Play Panels, adding a branded badge to each Play Panel so that the sponsors could get a little bit of advertising exposure in return.

Eight years later, we have over 120 Play Panels in 12 hospitals around Australia, sponsored by corporates such as Westfield, Huggies and Children's Panadol, and by many small local businesses such as gyms, osteopaths, pharmacies, cafes, photographers, even a web designer!

This was the first Play Panel we put into the Emergency Department of Sydney Children's Hospital in 2005. That little girl had just vomited and I think you can tell by my face that I was willing the photographer to hurry before the next bout!

So if you're a hospital and you'd like to be part of the program, or you have a business and would like to become a sponsor, we'd love to hear from you.

As a sponsor you are able to brand the Play Panel with your corporate logo, website or message so you’re not only doing something great for the kids, you’re also able to gain valuable brand reinforcement for your business.

It's a win-win-win situation for the hospital, the kids and your business.

You can learn more about the whole program by clicking here. Or call us and we'll happily talk you through it.

Kelly is your go-to gal on this project, so reach her on (02) 9984 0769 or kelly@childfriendly.com.au. We'd love to have you on board.

Child Friendly Solutions Hospital Sponsorship Program Details

PS. Jack recovered beautifully and is now a robust, rugby-wrangling, piano-playing ten year old!

Jack after his hospital stay

Jack our star rugby winger

Child Friendly Solutions has been assisting Australian retailers with in-store play solutions for 10 years including Big W, K-Mart, Westpac, Toyota and Forty Winks. You can find Child Friendly Solutions Play Panels, Play Tables and other play equipment, as well as lots of information on becoming a child friendly retailer, at www.childfriendly.com.au 

Could you be a Child Friendly Solutions Distributor?

One of the key drivers of our success over the last ten years has been to share the sales effort with our fabulous distributors and agents.

We have distributors who sell our acclaimed Play Panel and Play Centres in the medical, child care & shop fitting industries but we also have a number of great agents who prefer to sell our products online.

Of course, we are always looking for new distributors and agents to sell our play products. With the majority of our sales now coming via the internet, you don't even need a warehouse to stock our product. If you make the sale, we'll ship the goods direct to your customers and pay you a commission on the sale.

If this is something you'd like to learn more about, call me or send me an email and I'll be happy to send you some more detailed information including pricing and our generous commission structure.

We'd love to have you on board!

Michelle

0411 865 184

michelle@childfriendly.com.au

Child Friendly Solutions has been assisting Australian retailers with in-store play solutions for 10 years including Big W, K-Mart, Westpac, Toyota and Forty Winks. You can find Child Friendly Solutions Play Panels, Play Tables and other play equipment, as well as lots of information on becoming a child friendly retailer, at www.childfriendly.com.au 

Parents Room Makeover - Eastland Goes Whimsical

Everyone loves a good makeover, especially with Before & After pictures to tell the story, and our Parents Room Makeovers are no exception.

When Eastland Shopping Centre in Victoria approached us last year, they gave us a brief that was a little different to any we'd had before. They wanted to incorporate a full wall mural with an In The Night Garden theme and design the whole parent's room around it.

Well, fortunately we love a challenge! The trick was to make sure the room felt stylish and comfortable, as well as having that gorgeous sense of fun.

BEFORE . . . cold, clinical, a typical parent's room

AFTER . . . neutral shades for floor, fittings & furniture makes the mural pop out in all it's whimsy!

You can see more Before and After pics of other parent's rooms on our website.

What could we do with the parent's rooms in your shopping centre?

Child Friendly Solutions has been assisting Australian retailers with in-store play solutions for 10 years including Big W, K-Mart, Westpac, Toyota and Forty Winks. You can find Child Friendly Solutions Play Panels, Play Tables and other play equipment, as well as lots of information on becoming a child friendly retailer, at www.childfriendly.com.au 

Child Friendly Is Off To The Show!

No, not THAT show. The other show. The Retail Expo & Conference!

It's been four years since we last exhibited at Retail Expo and I must admit, I'm really looking forward to it.

What's not to love about an Expo? You get to speak in person to your suppliers (something that is becoming rarer in the age of the tweet!), check out all the fabulous new products and services for your industry, listen to some inspiring presentations that are sure to inject some serious motivation into your business, and eat the Minties and Fantales off other people's stands (because other people's lolly bowls are always so much better than your own!)

So where is all this motivation and lolly-eating going down? At the Sydney Convention Centre in Darling Harbour from 24-26 September. We will be at Stand B13 with our excellent range of play equipment specifically designed for retail stores.

So if you've been thinking about what you can do to keep customers with children in your store so they will actually have the opportunity of buying something from your store, come down to see us, say hello, and look over our wall mounted play panels and other clever ideas for keeping children entertained.

(And also? We'll have Tim Tams!)

See you there :)

Esprit - a great example of a retailer who knows how to keep their customers in store spending.

Medical Waiting Room Play Areas - Dos and Don'ts

Calling all medical practices and hospitals! It's time to ban the box of one-armed Barbie dolls and sad looking teddies.

You know how important it is to create a safe, hygienic area for children in your practice waiting area. However you may not be aware that it is a requirement of the RACGP Standards for General Practice that your practice waiting area caters for the specific needs of children.*

You might also not be aware that the toys in your waiting area could be making children a tad more 'germy' than they already are. Back in 2004, we sent off a couple of toys from a medical waiting room to a lab for testing. The results were just a tiny bit scary with staphylococci and dangerous coliforms found on all toys, one of which was of a strain resistant to antibiotics. Eeeek! 
(If you're a details-person, you can read the full report here.)

So do you still have a box of wonky plastic blocks, dog-eared books and broken Buzz Lightyears in your practice but are not sure how to create a safe, hygienic play area for children?

Our company has helped hospitals such as Sydney Children’s, Westmead, RNSH, as well as over 300 medical practices around Australia to create safe, hygienic, tidy play areas so we’ve seen it all!

Below are some ideas you can implement in your practice to ensure that you’re not only providing a ‘best practice’ play area in your waiting room, but also conforming to accreditation standards.

DO:

• Provide play equipment that conforms to Australian Standards
• Ensure the play equipment is of durable, commercial quality so it doesn’t break within a week or two
• Install play equipment that is self-contained & firmly fixed to avoid choking or tripping hazards

DON’T:

• Bring in toys from home – they are not safe or durable
• Provide toys that your reception staff need to constantly tidy – it’s an unproductive use of their time
• Provide toys that can’t be cleaned easily and daily – too long between cleans is a cross-infection risk

And of course, you know where to go for Australia's best supply of waiting-room-friendly play equipment. Child Friendly Solutions of course! (as if you had to ask :))

* Criterion 5.1.1 Practice Facilities, Indicator H. RACGP Standards for General Practice 4^th Edition, Oct 2010, pg 101.

Image courtesy of brittanaslove
Child Friendly Solutions has been assisting Australian retailers with in-store play solutions for 10 years including Big W, K-Mart, Westpac, Toyota and Forty Winks. You can find Child Friendly Solutions Play Panels, Play Tables and other play equipment, as well as lots of information on becoming a child friendly retailer, at www.childfriendly.com.au 

Small Business Tips - Selling, Cold Calling & Other Unsavoury Tasks

Ah . . . if only cold calling was this easy!

I hate cold calling. Doesn't everyone? Well, almost everyone. There is that rare breed of career salesperson who just loves getting on the phone. They don't mind the rejection because they see every 'no' as a step closer to a 'yes'.

I am not that person. I don't like it. Not one little bit. I'd rather staple my hand to the desk than pick up that phone.

But then I didn't like getting up in the middle of cold winter nights to feed my baby either but guess what? I did it. Because that baby depended on me for sustenance.

Well, Child Friendly Solutions has been my other 'baby' for over 10 years and, like any small business, it needs sustenance too and the thing that feeds it is sales.

Fortunately our business is now in a position where it can survive on internet sales. We have become the most skilled order takers on the planet. But do we want to just survive? No. We want to grow this business. It needs to feed two families! Pressure much?

When we first started the business, my original business partner was our sales guru. She was that rare breed I mentioned above, able to pick up a phone and make a sales appointment without breaking a sweat. (Or finding forty other VERY IMPORTANT THINGS that needed doing before picking up the phone, like me, Mrs Procrastinator!)

But our core business is built on those original sales to all of those lovely corporate clients and hundreds of small business customers. And if we want to continue to grow, we need to continue to pick up the phone.

Would you like the good news now?

It's not as hard as you think. Here's my trick. When you call that perfectly nice stranger who probably has zero tolerance for pushy sales people and zero time to waste, don't sell to them.

That's it. Don't. Sell. 

Instead, your objective is to get them agree to receive some information. Believe me, they will be so happy that you're not trying to 'sell' to them, they will happily hand over their email address and quite possibly their first born.

That's when you get creative. By all means, send them information by email. But if you don't hear back, follow up with a physical mailer. Everyone loves receiving something in the mail, especially with a handwritten envelope which they are more likely to open. We sometimes pop in something fun like a bag of snakes they can share around the office or a chocolate egg if it's Easter.

The other critical step is to stay in touch with that customer every 90 days or less, whether it be by phone call, email, snail mail or social media. Send them an article, let them know about an industry event, retweet one of their tweets, but just stay in touch. This will ensure that when they're ready to buy, you'll be front of mind and not a distant memory.

The guru on the 90 day technique is Wendy Evans. Her book, How To Get New Business In 90 Days & Keep It Forever, is the most dog-eared, highlighted, scribbled-on business book in my library.

Now I'm the first to admit, this stuff is hard to get going on and difficult to sustain. So were those midnight feeds! But if the result is a sustainable business with a strong sale pipeline and regular revenue, it's worth it.

And now that my real baby is growing into a toddler, it really is time I started taking my own advice and start feeding my business baby again.

Hello telephone old friend . . . . 

Child Friendly Solutions has been assisting Australian retailers with in-store play solutions for 10 years including Big W, K-Mart, Westpac, Toyota and Forty Winks. You can find Child Friendly Solutions Play Panels, Play Tables and other play equipment, as well as lots of information on becoming a child friendly retailer, at www.childfriendly.com.au

8 Reasons You Need This Speaker At Your Retail Conference

Well it's that time of year when all you retailers out there are planning your annual conferences. 

What band will you dance the night away to at the gala dinner? Will you serve kool mints or minties during workshop sessions? And perhaps more importantly, who will be in your speaker line up?

The latest retail trend being embraced by Australian retailers such as Westpac, Big W and Esprit is Family Friendly Retailing. So what is it and why are these major retailers implementing Family Friendly practices in their retail environments?

Michelle Barraclough is Australia's leading expert on Family Friendly Retailing. With over 10 years helping major Australian retailers such as K-Mart, Myer, NIB, Westfield and Esprit to attract and retain customers who shop with children, she has a wealth of knowledge to impart to retail audiences on this important trend.

So what will your audience of experienced conference-goers learn that they've never learned before?

1. The 4 benefits of becoming a Family Friendly retailer:
   - increasing sales
   - improving customer service
   - attracting & retaining customers
   - reducing stock damage
   
2. Examples from major Australian retailers who have become family friendly including Esprit, Toyota, Westfield, Sydney Airport and more
    
3. How any retailer, large or small, can become family friendly
    
4. What works & what definitely doesn’t
    
5. How to create a family friendly environment that is safe & won’t impose on store design or space
    
6. How to use a child friendly space as a visual merchandise opportunity
    
7. Your legal and OH&S responsibilities regarding children in store
    
8. Tips for training staff on how to deal with children (and their parents!) in store, including how to turn browsers into buyers.

In other words, your audience will get a swag of ideas they can take back to their stores and implement immediately, as well as loads of inspiration from the case studies on retailers who are already incorporating family friendly practices in their stores.

Here's what happy clients said about Michelle's presentations:

"Michelle's presentation was excellent. She was able to capture the attention of all participants and they came away from the session revitalised and inspired"
ENS International

"Michelle, you were a really popular speaker and received the highest evaluation across all the two days of sessions I believe. Every respondent rated you as Excellent (84%) or Very Good (16%), which is a real testament to the useful, practical content of your message and your ability to get the information across in an informative and engaging manner."
Barbara Sullivan, Director, Import Export Show

So what are you waiting for? Call me to book Michelle or to find out more about Michelle's unique presentation.

 You can phone me on (02) 9984 0769 or email me at kelly@childfriendly.com.au.

Kelly