EPISODE 23 - JOE PALERMO

Welcome to the Impulse Spotlight where we meet with product development professionals and shine a light on the products they are most proud of.

In this episode, we meet with the Vice President of New Product Design at PlayPower Inc, the world's largest commercial playground and recreational equipment manufacturer. Prior to joining PlayPower our guest spent 20 years creating award-winning products for consumer product manufacturers including Tomy International, Newell Brands, and Stanley Black & Decker. Outside of work he is an avid outdoorsman enjoying activities like hunting, finishing, running, camping, and hiking.

Joe Palermo leads a team of designers, engineers, and project managers bringing new and innovative play equipment to market under the PlayPower brands, Playworld, Miracle Recreation, and Little Tikes Commercial. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, Joe now resides in Massachusetts with his wife and eight children.

Joe is passionate about inclusion and is most proud of the teams he has helped build and the people he's been able to empower, allowing them to grow while doing something they love.

In today's episode we take a look at the PlayHill playground equipment by Playworld breaking down the multiple teams of people who combine their ideas and efforts in order to produce the exact layout desired by their clients. Outside of the actual design work Joe also highlights other elements of their product design such as preparing assembly instructions, technical documentation, and meeting safety and compliance standards.

Join us as we peek behind the curtain and take a look at the industrial side of making a fun park for children.

Show Notes:

To watch a video about PlayHills, please visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2p7xXIeFow

To learn more about PlayHills, please visit https://playworld.com/playhills/

Joe would also like to give a shout out to the following people (in no particular order):

Mike Eby, Wendy Frey, Ray Seybert, Leander Shaffer, Eric Tritsch, JT Foster, Dustin Stratford, Hap Parker, Craig Mellott, Jamie Moffat, Jennifer Gates, Kylar Pontius, Levi Hauger, Bishop Aikey, Steve Stahl, Logan Corrall, Ashley Bower, Adam Krick, Megan Mertz, Ron Gibson, Zoltan Aranyos, Allen Reichenbach, Kyle Swanger, Matt Weaver, Michele Sayko, Greg Lannan, Roxane Zerbe, Kristi Teats, and the entire Lewisburg Manufacturing team.

Podcast Transcript:

Hey Joe, Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me troy excited to be here

Sure sure so i always start out by telling everybody that i started impulse almost 26 years ago work for another product development company that had all facets of product development under 1 roof industrial design engineering prototyping and this was back in the day when prototyping was like new age technology tooling and everything so how did you get started in product development.

Well it is interesting and i would love to ask everybody that question too particularly in my field so i am formally trained as an industrial designer i have learned over the years that my story starting out is kind of unique actually i feel like most people find out about industrial design from a high school gardens counselor or something or if they are lucky maybe a lot of them going into similar fields engineering or architecture and say hey you have eventually they discover somebody said hey you ever heard of this field industrial design and they are like wow that is what i really want to be doing and it is this round about that learn right but i come from a family of 8 kids my oldest brother who is 12 years my senior actually went to university of cincinnati for industrial design he there when i was like 5 or 6 and i already had a creative bent as a kid i was always kind of well i definitely drawing and sketching a lot but building things you know i used to make robots out of cereal boxes and things like that but you know i had my young experience of sketching cars with him as college roommates when i was 6 or 7 i think and so i was kind of exposed to it very early on i will say probably spent the better part of grade school and high school doing other things but knew i was always interested in it so i actually went back at the i had to my family had moved to connecticut but i went back to the cincinnati area for college to go to you c because i knew they had such a good program so i yeah that kind of kicked out of my experience university of cincinnati has a great co op and professional practice program allows you to work in a range of different environments before you graduate so i worked for hasbro doing toys for a couple quarters at the time it was the kenner brand that was still in cincinnati before they moved to potocka rhode island and i i did mailing systems that a company called pitney bowes for a while i worked in the car industry for dia chrysler and actually my last time around in school and co op i worked for my brother's consulting firm by that time he had his own consulting firm in atlanta called formation design group and so really enjoyed that trying out a range of different industries very fast paced really cutting my teeth and growing my skills as a designer so that kind of dovetailed nicely into my first professional experience which was in the boston area where i live now i work for a firm called 11 and so i had some early consulting experiences eventually moved over to a company called newel brands and worked for a few different ivisions there i was about 10 years total when they would merge with another company i had gone to i did hair care appliances there i did some outdoor products and tool stuff spent about 6 years or so doing small kitchen appliances and for 5 years or so after that i did baby products with a parent company called tony international but with the first year's brand mainly here in the massachusetts area and when i started out in that experience my wife and i had 5 kids so was definitely living and breathing that stuff at home and you know gave me if not the insights to the great ideas definitely an appreciation for the great ideas i will say and yeah i have been in the commercial playground industry for going on 2 and a half years now so.

Yeah i was going to ask what is your current role and and what kind of products are you developing these days

So yeah i mean i am the head of innovation essentially the vice president of new product design for a company called play power we make essay everything commercial playgrounds related we have 3 major north american brands playworld miracle recreation little text commercial we also have a brand in europe called hogs we will do anything related to the playground space including site amenities we do indoor play equipment as well we will do shade structures you know almost anything you name it related to parks and recreation we also have a company called easy doc that does those big rotationally molded fable docks that you see at marinas and things like that and that is an answer interesting competitive advantage to have for roto moulding in the commercial playground space but they are specifically commercial products right so we do not do any of the kind of kid craft or maybe it is AI forget the name of the company that does some of those wooden residential playgrounds that you have in your backyard i would have guessed that the industry existed before i got into it certainly the age range of my kids now and by the way now we have 8 so i have a young newborn and we do have 2 special needs in there that gives me i will say some special insight into the the world of commercial playgrounds where we are trying to design for the absolute broadest range of these within a community you know having that that age range of kids so my oldest is 15 and a half down to the the newborn you know has a joke with everyone that we have all the age grades that we talk about with the indian within the industry covered in my house but we have certainly spent a lot of time at the playgrounds over the years and again i have i could have guessed that the industry existed right everything that you and i interact with that is man made has been designed whether we are aware of it or not right i we could not have pointed out any of the brand names to you and to this day they are probably mostly b2b facing brands but if you look closely and you start to pay attention you can see some of these brands and maybe 1 or 2 very savvy people might know some of them but having been in it for 2 and a half years now it is an absolutely fascinating industry it is b2b in the sense at least for play power and i think most of our competitors we sell our products through distributors sales rep agencies that are their own independent houses that are a range of characters i guess i will say in and of themselves some of them are just kind of newly getting started it might be mom and pop or 1 or 2 people that are maybe just doing sales some of them come from a background of contracting and installations that are more savvy with that although the others of them are more turnkey kind of full service product developers and are really managing brands of their own so it is interesting it is b2b in that sense so you buy a commercial playground from 1 of our dealers not directly from us our end user or a customer sorry i should say the end users of course are the kids and the parents and everybody else who is going to use the equipment right but our customers tend to be parks and recreation departments and municipalities schools we do products for early childhood and that 6 to 23 month range so those are the big kind of age grade segments that is generally 2 to 5 years where a child is kind of developing their their minds and bodies until they you know have a certain level of athletic and social prowess if you will when they come into about 6 years of age they are they are coming more and mental maturity in their brains and so 5 to 12 years as the other big age segment and then 6 to 23 months at the early end but yeah so we are selling indirectly through those other parties to those end customers and then ultimately obviously the kids and parents and everybody are the end users of the equipment but there is so many layers of design within this industry i think 1 thing that is important to point out i mean i suppose like other consumer products companies that i have been a part of over the years we have a catalog of products in past lives those things have become less and less relevant as anybody can find your products online right and things like that the catalog is still pretty important to us with our stakeholders you know they will keep it on file you know if they are calling us back in a few years they parks and wreck department e.g. they want to make another playground that is usually the kind of the first thing they go to but a lot of these staple things whether they be slides or swings you know we keep in the catalog for years and years they are built to last years and years but we do upgrade them and innovate them over time so it is my team is really the team that i will say is designing the lego blocks if you will so we make those initial pieces and then when i came into the industry i am hearing all folks from all different angles and points across the product development cycle telling me their designers and what does that mean you know we have people that specifically designed the cad blocks then that allow the pieces that let us see let us say my team makes in solid works or designs you know or finishes the engineering of then they make actual cad blocks that can go into our proprietary cad software that allows our reps to design the final playground right and then we have a team of people that just does pre designs that we offer to the reps like here is some suggested configurations for these different needs and for these ranges of play events and things like that and of course we have outside partners like landscape architects who are designing the broader park environment space they of course are designing and they oftentimes can be very picky and we will spec specific brands and specific types of equipment that they want to see in in the ultimate playground environment so there is all these layers of design that make it very fascinating i suppose like the entire resume and i am just talking about the physical product side right i am not even talking about marketing copy or anything editorial graph it is think that that is what kind of fascinates in the most but but it does fall to my team the original innovation and the play experience much like all the consumer products i have worked on over the years that is what we are focused on and so the team that i lead includes industrial designers like myself includes mechanical and structural engineers all the solid works modelers and drafters you know we do all the data entry into our mrp systems that allow things to flow through our factories and and our design and engineering teams are co loc located right there in the manufacturing space so that is great it gives us the ability to build things very hands on and interact with the people that are making them we do all the technical writing for what are oftentimes very extensive install guides that are equivalent to a book sometimes you know if we are delivering a large piece of equipment you know it is not as if we just finished the innovation and and hit print on an injection molding line or something like that and then ship it to a walmart target on amazon and like it is anything but that not only are we delivering something to you sometimes that is as large as a building but we do not know who is going to be putting it together it could be a group of people just with some impact drivers that has never made a breakout before so we got to give you very specific instructions as to how to assemble it and we do try to make that as easy as possible so i have been surprised actually the level to which much of our stuff is completely pre assembled into full blown weldments so you are not doing so much of that scavenger hunt and type of thing out in the field but then you are going to offset it with kind of the freight costs and the logistics of all that right so but we write all those very detailed install guides we do of course have graphic designers that are doing any on product graphics and we have a number of different play events and panels that involve you know graphics prototypers people that specifically are building our full scale functional models we have product safety and compliance specialists within the team there is a it is a heavily regulated industry similar to baby products which i was doing before and i mentioned the parent company i worked for tony international did toys as well and we always used to talk about how different those 2 businesses were right in some ways i think part of tony's business model to have the the stable baby products industry alongside the toy industry which could be much more frenzied at times you know giving different fads and things that would become popular in e and flow but 1 of the main differences was how heavily regulated baby products were for good reason right people are very concerned about the safety more so with anything than their newborn infants and toddlers right but in the public playground space it is extremely important as well so we have an atm standard for playgrounds similar to some of the different categories of baby products and everything that we make is certified to that standard there is an outside 3rd party group called ia which i think is the international playground equipment manufacturers association that certifies to those standards but it falls to my team to put in all the final documentation and applications for those service certifications and then we have project managers that manage everything soup to nuts so 1 of the things i am most excited about on top of just getting to do the original innovative ideas is having that kind of complete oversight over the entire process and and you know the ability to kind of innovate and and make sure that things are being done right all the way through the entire process.

Sure sure you had mentioned well it sounds like it is they can your playgrounds can almost be modular like you said that the distributors can kind of come in and design their own i assume they are not designing the nuts and bolts of but they can pick and choose features and things like that to add on and then.

100 % i mean it would be hard pressed to find any 2 playgrounds that we sell i mean you can better i am going to say that are you know 100 % alike they are almost all different to a degree so it is that is a lot of the magic of it i think you hit it right on the head troy and with this product i am going to talk about today that is 1 of the biggest challenges that we had was the you know we got a new and innovative idea that we want to get to market with very quickly and then everybody's so excited about i cannot wait to show it to the field but we want to come out with the full suite and compatibility with all these other things that we make right out the gate so they do not have the limitations that might i will say limit the early adoption curve though

Sure sure just real quick we will get into the product 1 more question so when they design their playground you have to then make the instruction manual or the installation manual after that so it is it pretty custom every time you are manualkay all the stuff that organized

There is 1 if there is 1 other nuance that is worth mentioning right now at this time my team also does all the engineering for our custom playgrounds there is a separate team that does the upfront concept design work play power for fully custom playgrounds but that is a thing in and of itself so in addition to offering all the standard catalog equipment that reps or customers can pick and choose from and make their own playground we also offer fully bespoke you know if you want your playground to look like a giant elephant or you want it to be celebrating this local sports team with this mascot or anything you know we can make that kind of i will say clean slate solution for you and the design team is doing constant proposals reacting to things out in the field that people want and it is kind of a growing trend to i will say these mega play spaces that we are building that it is not just you know maybe a merry go round or a slide in a sea you know out in the out in the grass or something like it was maybe when we were younger you know some of these plate spaces that we are building today i call them veritable amusement parks you know and if you live within whatever you consider reasonable driving range to i mean this is it is free it is the public place space and your kids have access to you know a tower with 38 ft slides coming out of it and all these other amazing things it is it is so fun it is it is and it is amazing area of the business to be involved with but it is also an incredible amount of work and same thing applies there when we deliver those playground when we deliver those pieces of equipment to our customers we have to write very detailed install guides even for those even as much as there are a 1 off to allow them to be successful in the installation in the field so that is that is another i guess unique aspect of the team and and as i said my team does all the engineering for those custom playgrounds as well TM Troy Mason 20:15

Very cool so tell us about the product you want to talk about today

Yeah. throughout the internal development process we were calling it hill play certainly was inspired by the experience of playing out on a real hill in nature you know human beings have climbed on mountains for millennia as we say in the the launch video you know the the the experience of you know being king of the hill all the different things that you can do on the hill you know pulling on roots climbing up we wanted to kind of recreate that with let us say standard and in most times when you hear that word in the industry if i say traditional play equipment means steel fabricated play equipment so we kind of replicate that experience in nature with traditional play equipment but the reason that we wanted to do that was to make it that much more accessible to people i will say before play hills came came on board here is a big trend in the industry to build these and it still is you know to build these earthwork mounds you know involves a lot of grading and compacting and not every 1 of our rep agencies or installer groups has has these capabilities by the way but it is certainly not a revenue stream that play power was participating in now it is a lot of work to create these kind of mounds in the earth and then ultimately probably layer those with artificial turf in a play space and not every space that you are working with has the ability to do that at least cost effectively so we wanted to be able to offer this play experience with traditional equipment for that reason and then i would say as we got into it we discovered so many great things about it that you could do that you could not do with the earthwork hill right so well first of all i mean 1 of the top priorities for it obviously having that soft feel of the natural grass so these are lined with artificial turf designed to feel like real grass there is a combination with a lot of other materials you know not the least of which is perforated sheet steel but we have rotor molded sensory components along the way some kind of musical drums and things like that and we even use little molded mounds of our port and place rubber surfacing it is like another soft textural event as obstacles and touch points up the hills they have ropes built in there is handholds built in all these different things that kind of accentuate the original play experience i will say but 1 of the best things about it is when you have a prefabricated hill that is a ramp or a platform more or less then you can do all these things underneath it so you can have some of those same handholds underneath and they can have the experience of almost a bouldering underneath there or they you know we have hammock i think there is a hammock under 1 of them and basket swings and things like that you can do underneath and else and you have this whole underground sort of fort like environment that goes with a 2 which k loves and it creates all these neat kind of social spaces the base of each hill is also angled right at transfer height for you know a kid or anybody in a wheelchair to be able to transfer easily in and out of onto them you know which is something that is more difficult to do without the kind of prefabricated structure and then you asked before about modularity 1 of the things we have built into this from the very beginning and you will hear the term in the commercial playground industry post and platform or post and deck all the brands typically have these if you go out to a public playground you will see these kind of post index systems with railings and it is 1 of the ways that you know having ramps up onto those structures that you can be very inclusive and allow kids in wheelchairs and with all range of needs to be able to come in and play in these spaces we have a 5 " steel post platform system and a 3 and a half inch platform system that have standard deck heights and the play hills are made to to be used right within those systems they are made to be used right within a recent line of products that we have launched called ropes gapes which are rope climbers they can be built right into that this is all done under the playworld brand and the playwld brand 1 of their 1 of our recent flagship products is this 1 piece slide called the mighty descent it is 1 it is made of 1 piece of rotationally molded plastic in this giant machine and has the ability we call it the social side like 5 or 6 kids can kind of go down it at a time happens to be the same kind of size and configuration and relative angle as any 1 of these play hills so it can be swapped out in a configuration with 1 of these play hills so it is got all that kind of compatibility built into it from the very beginning but the you know some of the reasons i think it is game changing for the industry on top of it being that prefab no assembly sort of solution that i mentioned and no expensive earthworks it is definitely got a unique value to places that they you know relatively flat environments out on the plains or down in florida or somewhere with a is not a lot of hills right i think urban environments can be a challenge to have some of this kind of topography there so it is a great way to kind of get some of those some of that kind of play experience to some of those maybe underserved communities in that way so we are really excited about it

That is really cool so i will put links to stuff in the show notes but just for our conversation is this like a 1 big dome piece or is it more like an angle or a slope that is bolted on to another piece like can you kind of describe what it looks like a little bit

Yeah so it is all the above i mean picture like a big i do not have the dimensions right in front of me i want to say it is maybe 5 or 6 ft wide it goes up to an 8 ft height and the overall bed way if you will if i was comparing it to slide is probably 11 or 12 ft long so it can be as simple as we created these hubs to kind of go in the middle of them if you want them to be free standing i am talking about them being bought modular just now i am saying imagine that ramp shape climber just bolting right on to 1 of our post and platform systems you can put it on an existing system it can be freestanding with 1 of these hubs that we have to go in the center and in that sense it would almost be like a ladder going up to the top of it so well or you could climb up it climb up the hill and then go down that kind of center hub or you could go up the center hub and maybe go down it and then we there is a a variety of shapes of these internal hubs we created 1 of them that is 3 sided so 3 of these play hills can kind of go up to it and actually that was 1 of the the the design team i will say has had this idea going back for a few years now when i first started in the studio we had a scale model of it that we we typically build these kind of 112 scale models in the studio out of you know bristol board and cardboard and pipe cleaners and all those things kind of different things you know we might be some 3D printed parts on it a lot of hot glue in this case but we had a model i will never forget of the original kind of hill idea that was almost like this pyramid sort of shape with the hills kind of coming up to each other and then you can ask the question what do you do with those corner fill areas and that is that is something that we are looking at now as well but the short answer and the answer to your question is we have these hubs that are built so you can make an entire freestanding unit it could be as simple as 1 hill again looks kind of like that angled bed way with a ladder going up to it or it could have 3 or 4 or 2 or 3 sorry in this case hills going up to it or it can be bolted onto your post and platform system you can mix in these other play events events like the 1 piece social slide that i mentioned and so it is very diverse in terms of the number of different things that you can do with it it and certainly when you get the number of different hills kind of coming up to each other and what that is where you really can get that kind of like king of the hill type moment and allow some of those different things to happen right so, yeah how many it sounds like there are different units i guess or lack of better term how many how many different pieces are there so i got to probably i do not know i have all the information right in front of me to go through all the features and benefits of the entire product line but first wave of these products there is about 5 of these different prefab hills that range and price the agility trail is i think is kind of maybe the agility of the rail trail or 1 of those would be more of like our opening price point we have some that are close to being just a a singular surface of turf kind of going up at an angle this agility trail has i think we were calling it a scramble net that is that a net structure that is kind of built some 11 or 12 " up above that surface of the kids can do interesting things on it is in this grid pattern they can kind of work on their coordination and strength and creativity as they move through that or slide underneath that kind of thing the alpine trail has a little more of some mixed in features of those like rubber tri mounds that i mentioned in handholds and all of them have kind of these different like obstacles and things that you are you know challenged with utilizing or going around as you go up there is a product called the rail trail which has these 3 bannister rails on it that you can kind of to hang on and pull yourself up you know offers kind of a kind of daring opportunity and then then there is these 2 i will say higher end ones that are you know they they have like this almost triangular breakup of perforated sheet steel that you can kind of see through and get a completely different feel on mixed in with the turf and on both of them i think the the structure is made to kind of angle outward like a pyramid at the top and then it is a little more convex or concave sorry towards the bottom but they have a mixture of different sensory elements and angular grab bars and rope kind of handholds on them you know just offer a range of experience as you go up in some of those roto molded plastic elements or kind of musical like drums that you can bang on and things like that and then of course we have the 2 hubs that i mentioned there is the 2 sided hub the duo hub and the try hub and then there is an adapter actually that offers the transition point but also creates the physical adaptation to those post and platform system that is kind of the original line that we are talking about that sounds simple maybe those 7 or 8 products but then all the variance of them and all the hardware and all the different things that go into making it compatible with all these different systems was really the engineering lift that we had to go through

Sure sure so yeah with all the products impulses helped develop like every development journeys different can you walk us through kind of the development of this and you know kind of the steps involved to get from that idea you had i think you said 3 years ago to finish product

Yeah and so like many of these things right the idea itself is floating for a while and before we commit resources to it within my team i will say and put it on our roadmap and say here is when we are going to start this and here is where we intend to finish it our typical development cycle i will say is about 12 to 18 months we have a milestone process much like many other companies probably very similar if you have seen any sort of stage gain process it starts with our milestone zero and we have a project brief in a business case and maybe in a very early concept or that scale model that i mentioned right then we go through milestone 1 at the the end of which you freeze your concept milestone 2 is the design freeze milestone 3 is your engineering freeze and then getting 2 milestone for which is your final production launch again in a typical program i would say that and especially for a big program like this it would range about 18 months this project was very unique in terms of the reception that we were getting on it from a very early point i will say even maybe before our play test and 1 of the things that is unique about our process i mean every product or every company does their own version of consumer insights and research and testing right but we play test everything so the first thing that we do when we feel we have a really good idea and virtually everyone across the team has has good prototyping skills to be able to pull this off right but and we will typically build it as close as possible to the materials as we can but we will we up you know a minimum viable sort of model and then immediately invite invite kids especially the range of kids that we know are our target audience here to come and play on it and beat it up and we will see real quickly what is working what is not when we have that play test but i will say actually here is 1 of the examples where we knew we had a really great and a really unique idea even before the play test definitely by the time we got to the play was this was something that was going to be a big hit for us and i will say going into our collective sales meeting with our outside rep agencies in the early part of this year i think it was late january or so we are sharing that concept at a higher level and even with some of the results of the play test and the reaction to it was you know so staggering that paired with our i will say aggressive growth targets for this year you know it was an ask at the CEO level you know how can we launch this earlier what do you guys need to make this happen which was a very interesting challenge right it was already an extremely elaborate lift and a complex idea and a ton of engineering as it was then to let us say how can we maybe bring this in 3 months because we had sort of planned on launching it at the big industry trade shows this year there is 2 major trade shows in the industry 1 of which is n rpa the national wreck and park association show and the other 1 ala they both happened in about mid october time frame so those are kind of planned to be our big launch moments but the you know playground business is a little bit seasonal as you can imagine the warmer months is when the bulk of the activity is happening whether it is sales or installation so we said and everybody agreed this had the ability to move the needle on our volumes and our targets that we could hit for this year as well as if we could hit the peak season can we get this out by midsummer and so i went back to my team talked through the challenge and you know it was a challenge you know just working through the engineering lift and how we could deploy our own resources i will say smartly to get there was was a big part of it but arguably the bigger part of the challenge was bringing the you know all the cross functional stakeholder groups together to kind of had that same conversation right so we needed to the proposals team and the cad team that does those cad blocks that do all their stuff to head all the assets ready because what good does it do us to have these things conceptualize and then not have people be able to actually put it in their proposals and their designs that they created we needed the marketing team to kind of create all the assets that would explain the features and benefits that would tell the story of the products we needed the application operations team to be ramped up to be able to make these and to have all the different things in their system and all the instructions and documentation from my team to be able to do that so it was calling all those different cross functional groups and to i will say kind of a scrum process you know even at the senior leadership team level where we started you know looking at this and reporting on this project on a weekly basis presenting it to the even to the CEO of the company at least monthly to kind of scrum and get it there to the finish line and it is an experience i am tremendously proud of that we were able to do that you know we have a couple things that we are still getting on board as part of a progressive launch but the the meat of that product line that i just described to you is now out there in order to the broader world and we are seeing some very promising early response to it so excited.

Good that is awesome what what was the final timeline was it 18 months or did you bring it down to less than that or

So i had to mention you know the idea being floating for a while there until we actually put it on the roadmap our timelines inevitably become more real by the time we get to milestone 1 as you can appreciate that is when you have a real concept you really understand what you are talking about so our milestone 1 was in september i think september 21st of last year so if we brought down to july and usually there is 303 months before milestone 1 so let us say i give it that then we probably hit close to 14 months which again for a big project like this we would have typically been 18 minimum so yeah pretty pretty proud of the team for the ability to pull that off and you know there are things that we are tweaking and learning but that is true of any product even that we would have just launched so

Sure sure you know you would mentioned the challenge of you know getting everybody together from a design standpoint or engineering execution what was the biggest challenge you guys had

From the engineering execution well so even at the point of design freeze i will say when we had passed through that play test and we understood essentially what we were offering from a play experience standpoint there was still a number of different technical solves that had to come about and i am not going to go into great detail about them these these products are both utility and design patent pending at this point not the least of which was how we were going to adhere the turf to these prefabricated and welded steel structures right in a way that could withstand all the rigor that it needs to out in the field whether that is the elements or vandalism or you know just repeated wear and tear and kids playing on it but that was a big technical hurdle that i know we were worried about and had as an unknown going into the engineering phase into milestone 3 then there is even these unforeseen hurdles that can kind of come up along the way i mentioned that everything that we do is generally goes above and beyond any of the safety and compliance standards for the industry but these products were intended to be global from the very beg beginning to and there are some differences between the european which is what is called the standard and the american standard the as s t m and even the canadian c s a and as we intended to be able to fully be able to support these items in europe 1 of the things that came up in the standard in order to remove any shadow of a doubt of these things be being considered what is called a ramp where then you have to have a barrier or a guard rail or a railing on the product anything above 38 degrees unequivocally would be 38 degrees i am talking about the angle of the hill the pitch of the hill itself would unequivocally be considered a climber so we did make the decision midway through i will say when we had them at about 33 degree degrees or so to put them right up to the 38 to remove any shadow of a doubt in that regard now when you have already produced the level of engineering documentation that you have i think that that decision meeting that scrum meeting that we had on that particular decision point was back in march of this year so 304 min before launch that really threw a wrench into a bucket so that is that is another e.g. of some of the the challenges that came up along the way you know and again

Yeah that is really that is that is quite the pivot late in the game so

Yeah absolutely

Awesome just changing gears just a little bit as we start to wrap up what are some of the trends that you are you know in your corner of the product development world what are some of the trends that you you are seeing

Yeah so i talked about a little bit of a we did in the overview talked about the the niche part of the public playground world on custom right i think that those trends towards mega i will say bespoke custom solutions is a huge trend right now you know whether you are seeing larger than life giant towers i think there is some of this almost like public community or town or city nv sometimes it goes on well they have this awesome thing we want to build something even better and then have it be an expression to our community and that that is great it is certainly great for the equipment manufacturers for the larger industry as a whole and then you will you know you see people building things that are glowing in the dark now right i mean playgrounds are traditionally a daytime thing and we want them to be right we want the kids to be healthy and go to sleep at night right but you know there is also warmer climates where it is you know got awful to even be out there sometimes in the middle of the day so you can offer that benefit it is interesting and so and you are seeing i think more 1 of the things that i love about the commercial playground space it is very old school in this way generally very low tech people are coming to these spaces to unplug you know to take a breather from the technology and the deluge of information and everything that they are maybe over exposed to throughout the rest of the day but that being said there are there is a time and a place for digital experiences whether we are talking lights and sounds or things like that and some of the interactivity that that offers there is some very interesting things that we are doing and if we were to do a podcast like this next year e.g. we might be talking about 1 of them that are not just games you know and certainly not addictive sort of games but but maybe nature based experiences again play power is doing some really exciting things along those lines that i personally am very excited about inclusivity has been a trend for a long time certainly well before my day but i am so excited about all the different things that we can do to you know appeal to a range of needs and maybe approach that in a different way you know i think over the next couple of decades you will see things that allow let us say someone with a visual or hearing impairment to be guided through a space in a different way with some maybe some way finding technologies and things like that sustainability and recycled materials is coming into this industry and a huge rains coming into everywhere right but i always say you know we are putting our products literally physically out there in nature so it behooves us to kind of be on the front lines of that you can see and it is very palpable if we are not using let us say environmentally friendly materials to be out there putting them into the environment i think you are seeing some you are going to continue to see some very interesting things come into the commercial playground space as far as you know people being able to use recycled ocean plastic or things like that and for the most part play power you know with our our core as a traditional kind of steel fabricator and you know a lot of the products and raw materials that we use are recycled from the beginning and they are locally sourced and things along those lines but it is going to continue to be a very growing trend and then i expect as well this kind of fast to market trend and how can i get this entire new building and you know 12 or 14 months or something will not will not abate real quickly either and we will continue to have to to meet the needs of that as well so but just make sure your day and your life that much more challenging right so

That that is the only problem with being successful in doing 1 so quick that now you can do it

Right you are a victim of your own exactly

Teah so cool so reflecting on all the challenges and successes you have encountered over the years of developing products what words of wisdom would you share with somebody looking to make a significant impact in the product development world

Yeah absolutely i got i got to ask this question a lot certainly being in the field of design for 20 + years as i have and i mentioned to you i was exposed to it at an even younger age than that and i am always keen to try to help people along especially early on in their careers you know i i would say the top thing that i would say is to prioritize learning above all else you know everything else can kind of come with time but make sure that you are in a space that is challenging you that is pushing you out of your comfort zone when you are either you are either learning or you are dying to an degree right so keep going forward keep pursuing those kind of new learnings and new challenges do not go it alone i would say if you know if there is anything the second thing i would say would be believe in the power of that team that you know the team that when it comes to unlocking you know the real innovation i mean we did not talk about all that much the innovation with play hills there is nothing new to so many degrees it is like part of the reaction to it was it was amazing to see everybody like my gosh like why did i think of this that that is the reaction that you usually have that i think to a really great idea it is so obvious why do not we do that before but having that exact group of individuals that is there at that point in time when the need comes along or when the specific insight is finally there that can act on it and that has the proper experience to go and do that i would never underestimate that portion of it building the kind of the right team as in you know in the sense that most of those things that we consider new and innovative today are really just new applications of existing materials and paradigms or experiences right so it often comes down to assembling just that exact right group so yeah i would say prioritize learning and you know be collaborative go after the the right team and if you are an entrepreneur the same thing i mean i think this is advice you know it is not based on you know being part of a corporate design environment by any means but go out and find those people that have that missing thing or that bring that special thing to the table to make to make it happen

Yeah those are good words it is awesome awesome this would be great um we finish is there anything else you want to mention with regards to the product or product development in general

Well i would say just you know whenever you are being asked to do something fast like the story that i just told and even if it is 1 that everybody is excited about you have every reason to be successful there is always going to be challenges that come up along the way there can be a temptation i will say there is always a temptation to try to take shortcuts right in my experience though there is there are no silver bullets you know and that is true of innovation it is also true of your careers you know do not go on a wild goose chase trying to find some magic solve or something or even something that you know you know where you feel like it has to be absolutely perfect right just start creating just start doing something you know start getting your hands dirty start doing things that make you happy and you know more than likely others will find value in it and you will you will always have a following and you will come out with something great on the other end.

Yeah yeah good stuff where can people find more about the project you are interested

Yeah so i can i will send you all the links troy if you are able to put in any of this in your notes or whatever actually i would love to send you a list of the team members to that were involved in this project i know i said it to you from before we started the recording but this was not so much a personal story of innovation as much as a a huge team effort and a huge development story but you can find the full line of play hills products and all their features and benefits and descriptions on play roll.com um there is a great video there on youtube i think that is linked to there you can follow us on all the socials if you are so inclined talk to your local rapper people in your community that are interested in building a place space and ask them to look into play hills i mean give my number if you want to give me a call so

All right awesome joe thanks for doing this.

Excellent thank you.