2019 D Playpouch - Business SA Design for Export Awards
Celebrating
South Australia's
Design-led
Exporters
Celebrating
South Australia's
Design-led
Exporters
Celebrating
South Australia's
Design-led
Exporters
Celebrating
South Australia's
Design-led
Exporters
Main menu:
AWARDS > 2019 Gallery
2019 COMMENDATION
BUSINESS:
Play Pouch Australia
PRODUCT:
Play Pouch, Aqua Pouch, Bebe Pouch, Mini Pouch
AWARD CATEGORY:
Product or Service Design
INDUSTRY SECTOR:
Products - Sports and Lifestyle
DESIGN:
Play Pouch
EXPORTING to:
UK, UAE, EGYPT, NZ,
1: BRIEF DESCRIPTION:
Play Pouch Australia products are innovative, stylish & super practical. We stive to simplify family life, ecourgage creative play & create acheivable pack up solutions for children. The Original Play Pouch is the ultimate toy storage bag & play mat in one. Also available in the range is the Aqua Pouch, Mini Pouch & Bebe Pouch.
2: DESIGN CHALLENGE:
The Play Pouch is approximately 1.45m wide when open as a play mat. Due to the edge strip it can contain thousands of pieces of Lego. The edge strip also prevents pieces from sliding off the mat when children are sifting through for their favourite piece. Up to10 children can to sit around the play pouch which encourages postitive social interaction, creative play & achievable pack up when play time is over. Instead of all the pieces spread out over the floor from an up-ended tub. Play Pouch contains the spread. Simply pull on the ropes on either side & all the contents are neatly gathered into the Play Pouch. This allows for more teaching time in schools and quality family time at home!
3: DESIGN SOLUTION:
Kate C had a vintage sheet & string version as a child. When we realised there was nothing like this on the current market ( in 2011) We decided to re-design the old concept for modern life. We added the edge strip to contain the pieces/toys & for the rope to be hidden inside of. The 4 eyelets allowed for smooth pull up action and the pocket and zip on the front is a great place to store the small hard to find pieces. We also used durable cotton canvas for longevity & on trend prints so the Play Pouch would look nice in the home. Kate O was making them initially & when the popularity & demand grew, we had the mammoth task (both pregnant with our 3rd babies) of finding an offshore factory.
4: DESIGN IMPACT:
After a bad manufacturing experience & not wanting to damage our reputation or brand we waited until our product was perfected before launching in retail in 2016. We were unique to the market & experienced exponential growth in the first year by turning over almost 4 times the revenue by 2017. Exporting in Israel, UK & dealing with many distributor enquiries we realised that our products were in high demand. This was a big learning curve as we also soon realised that it was important to research distribution partners & make sure that they would help grow the business & represent our brand & values in the same way. We had the products now we needed to understand the business & be strategic.
5: OTHER KEY FEATURES:
In light of the above the distribtion partners were only successful for just over a year before we decided that we needed to start over and refocus. We continue to receive many distribution offers but thanks to the help of mentors, Business SA, Austrade and our own learning journery we are now much more strategic in our approach and plan. We have just returned from a trade show in China which confimed the popularity of our producs for this market. We have new business partners who we are working with us on entering the Chinese market and global markets & look forward to seeing our team here in South Austraila grow! Our products are still currently distributed via our UK distributor, direct on Amazon UK, direct into ACE hardware in Dubai, UAE, Doha, Eygypt & Saudi Arabia. We are now in the process of developing our product range further and our main focus is on international export and becoming a global household brand.
