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1 November 2007
15 October 2007 - Our goal, making parents feel their children are being well-behaved. - It is as simple as that. Considering that business would best be transacted if no child was present, getting to a place where children act in a way that relaxes parents and the staff of the business leads to success. Consider the parent/customer dynamic, where in a bad parent can be a good customer or a good parent a bad customer, most businesses set themselves and their customers up for failure. How often do business owners and their staff shriek about poorly behaved children??? Too often! Get on board by getting children to be happy and quiet and near their parents during your business transaction.
15 September 2007 - Fall Preview - The great toy search is on for 2008. While continuing to sort through catalogs, attend trade shows and visit small specialty stores, we are always on the lookout for the best toys for waiting rooms. Meeting our guidelines is TOUGH!!!! It is more than finding toys without lead paint. Here are some of our guidelines.
15 August 2007 - Toy Recalls abound, our toy selection is not on the list. Not that our toy group will not ever have a recall, but the fact is, that's part of our program, knowing, monitoring and keeping track of toys and toy safety. If you are a typical business with a bin full of toys, you need to be making sure none of your toys you have out for your customers children to play with are on the CPSC list! http://www.cpsc.gov/
While you hear about lead paint, infectious disease, magnets and danger, we highly recommend you look for and be diligent about CHOKING issues as this is one of the highest risk factors with toys.
7 August 2007 - New Customers, new locations, we're very appreciative of our growing customer base. Chili's Restaurant in Pittsburg, Fredericksburg Furniture Barn in Fredericksburg, Texas, Nextcare Urgent Care facilities in Arizona and more Honda dealers, Flow Honda, Sims Honda, Honda of Kirkland and Gwinnett Place Honda too. Thank you all for joining our team of providing safe and effective toys for your customers!
7 June 2007 - Action Figures promote change in waiting room toy practices. Something For Kids has introduced several action figures to promote better practices for businesses when children are present. 
The Disease Demon says, “parents fear their kids will get sick by playing with your dirty toys.”
The Legal Lynx says, “surely, none of your toys are on product recalls or fail a simple choke test. . . right?”
Spike the play thug says, “I love playrooms and play structures. I can beat up smaller kids while their parents are off shopping.”
Timmy the Terror says. “I can destroy any sales process. Aaiiiee Ha Ha Ha!!!.”
 The Sales Warlord says, “help! I can’t get up. There’s a 30 pound weakling standing on my chest!”
5 June 2007 - Our Top 10 Worst Waiting Room Toy list sparks increase in web downloads of our free waiting room toy handbook - We're seeing an increase of web hits to our Why pages, especially to our handbook and tip sheet for what works best in waiting rooms and sales environments when families are present.
16 May 2007 - Out With The Old - Some things businesses do to be child friendly are just plain bad for business. Being child-friendly is a marketing term, not a management method for assuring business success. Here's our top 10 list of crappy ways of conducting business when children are present.
8 May 2007 - Waiting Room Toy Handbook Published Online - You can now read the entire handbook in html - click here to start Managing Children in Your Business How to Be Safe and Effective in Managing Families to Your Best Possible Outcome
At 42” tall, he can spike anxiety in your waiting room in a matter of moments. With the cunning of a master thief he can steal away prospects from your showroom and the sale you almost made. In this handbook you will find the tools to put a smile on his face, his parents and yours.
27 April 2007 - Toy Bins & Liability Issues - Bins and boxes of toys in waiting rooms is now no longer an accepted practice. While common in waiting areas for years, hazards have now preempted the benefits of having toy bins for children. Infectious diseases became an early concern as hospitals removed toy bins from their facilities, but now, other safety issues have become paramount in concerns, chiefly choking issues. 15 April 2007 - Change of Mailing Address - We have a new mailing address.
2 April 2007 - Thank You BECU - BECU aka the Boeing Employees Credit Union, one the nations largest credit unions has begun deploying Something For Kids across their 40 locations. After a successful implementation at several of their grocery-store financial centers, BECU has realized our service is a great tool to have on hand, from quieting customer's children to attracting new customers to speak with. Thank You BECU! 28 February 2007 - The New Year is Good! We are off to a fast start in 2007 despite the snow . . . the wind . . . the rain . . . and the snow again! It's storming snow right now as I type away. We have added to our number of states where customers are using Something For Kids and have introduced a new Fisher-Price electronic game to our mix. We are currently working on updating our Classic station too. So keep us in the loop as to your likes and dislikes. 22 January 2007 - Pictures & Testimonials Wanted We are adding pictures and testimonials to our website and would gladly use something from my customers. We will also add a link off the picture to your business. We’re not really looking for the proverbial “it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.” We’re hoping for something observational about something you saw or something that happened with our station and toys. We love stories! If you send pictures or words, please include this small release statement.
27 November 2006 - What Makes You Happy? By now we've learned much about parents and their children and the staff of a business that has to interact with them. What makes each of them happy is uniquely different. Not surprisingly, happiness is key to satisfaction. Inserting the right "beacon" into each persons reality is essential to driving satisfaction up. In your business, don't assume you can make people happy. Bribing your customers, their children and your staff can create a short term positive affect to their levels of satisfaction. However, in the long term, expectations have been negatively shaped by the bribes and you are faced with an escalating dilemma to keep their satisfaction in check. The clear message is this, you can provide a guide towards happiness but you should not create a system in which you depend upon buying it. So what is a beacon? A beacon is a guide. In this case it can guide parents, children and your staff towards happiness and satisfaction with you (yes) but most importantly with themselves. So mining your business landscape with beacons is essential to your success. Your personal landscape will benefit as well for spreading these beacons. Figuring out how to get people to laugh with others (not at them), providing the opportunity to see beautiful objects or beautiful acts of kindness are basic guides. But they can be traps too. Saying, "look at the beautiful thing I possess" or providing disingenuous service is a warning beacon, not a guide. 15 November 2006 - La-Z-Boy is opening their new flagship store in Wellington, Florida on the 17th and they are featuring Something For Kids as their key management tool for streamlining the sales process when children are present. Something For Kids can now be found in 27 states and 2 provinces in Canada. We have recently picked up Utah, Vermont and Tennessee and added several customers to Texas, Wisconsin, We have stations deployed from coast-to-coast with a rapidly expanding base of customers spreading out from the Pacific Northwest. 4 November 2006 - Waiting Room Toy Safety Standards. Got off the phone yesterday and had to take a day to digest what I was told. Something For Kids is radically changing the expectations of how businesses manage their toys and playrooms. While state health agencies have prescribed measures for maintaining and disinfecting toys and play areas for day care centers for quite some time there is no set standard for waiting room toys. And while JCAHO inspects health care facilities, no standardized written practices and procedures has ever been adopted. Now we hear the basic elements of our program are setting the safety standard that companies may soon be adopting. Our "best practices" are a click away at
16 October 2006 - New Studio Pictures for web. New pictures for web and catalog have been taken and are beginning to populate this website. Keep checking in for new pics. I personally have been visiting customers to see our stations in the field and to gather testimonials. The most gratifying part of our job is to walk into a business and see our toys being used. 6 October 2006 - Fishbowl Playrooms aggravate anxiety issues. I just toured a brand new Toyota dealership. While I don’t have the design horsepower of whatever image team cooked this place up, I do know that they still lack the same skills their manufacturing team has long embraced. Essentially, I can tell they do not understand process flow, especially when it comes to moving families through a sales process. The new image concept being rolled out across the nation appears to embrace the “children-in-a-fishbowl” idea wherein parents deposit their children into a glass encased room somewhere peripheral to the showroom floor so that they go off through a sales process. The fishbowl plan, as the fast food industry has learned is not necessarily congruent with sales processes. As the great philosopher Yoda would say, “Essential to a successful business process, entertaining children is not.” What is essential is that parents “feel” their children are being well-behaved and that they are safe. The feeling of safety and good behavior is key to lengthening a parents willingness to stay in a sales process. So why the fishbowl? Businesses are still attempting (wrongly so) to project themselves as “child-friendly” when it really no longer means anything. The fact is, businesses would run better without children in them. Parents bring their children because that is their prerogative. So the Toyotal fishbowl means the brain trust at Toyota Image lacks the fundamental knowledge that isolating children is a bad thing. This surprises me since Toyota as a manufacturer understands process flow so well. What businesses must do is embrace business processes that lead to their ultimate goals which in Toyotas case are more sales, bigger profits and higher customer satisfaction. In this case, throwing valuable floor space and design at putting children in a fishbowl is really image without intelligence. 2 October 2006 - Credit Union Sales Tool Fall is here and it seems to be heating up! While true, there is a chill in the morning air here in the Pacific Northwest, interest and new customers continue to pour in from all over the United States and in Canada. We'll keep you posted this month. BECU's Jessica Juhl recently told us, "Something For Kids was the best thing since sliced bread." THANK YOU JESSICA! 15 September 2006 - Request your waiting room toy compliance report!
What's that button on our home page? We've given our customers a quick and easy way of requesting a Compliance Report. Our report details our practices and procedures and shows a compilation of toy exchanges and inspections for all toys that have traveled to and from their location. One of our key values is providing diligence in safety by regularly inspecting toys for a slate of issues and then documenting what we have done. Can you imagine the liability issues that most businesses face? Have their toys ever been safety inspected? Are any on product recalls? Do they ever keep safety records? It's only a matter of time before businesses become more responsible in engaging children. 10 September 2006 - We're reaching out to more states and more types of businesses. August provided yet another exciting month of growth! We continue to expand with BECU, a great local credit union and one of the largest in the country. Several auto dealers from across the country have signed up including Whisler Chevrolet which means we have added another state, Wyoming to our list. And we want to welcome Ladies First Fitness & Spa from Palmdale, CA into our family of customers as well. Ladies First marks another business category in which our service works. Thank you for your belief and trust in our managed toy service. Loudon County School District checked in and let us know the station we have provided their administrative office is doing quite well. Thank you! 8 August 2006 - American Honda Motor Company takes notice. Thank you Paul Freyermuth of American Honda Motor Co. for including me in his Future of EXCELL Mastermind meeting. It was very cool to hear and learn about the automotive industries focus on customer service from the manufacturer and dealer perspective. A public school district just signed on this week as did a social services agency, thus spreading the type of businesses and organizations who use our service into 2 broad and HUGE new categories'. 25 July 2006 - Great Testimonials! As we passed the two year operating mark on April 1st (no fooling!) we knew interest in our service was taking off, certainly the last few months since then have been blistering in growth. What really rocks is the testimonials we hear from our customers. We recommend checking with any we list on our site to get testimonials direct from them. WE TRUST 'EM to be straightforward and positive about our service. Our customers are part of a new breed of businesses who take having children in their business very seriously. They want to manage kids to benefit their business process and they want eliminate the liabilities of having unsafe and un-inspected toys and play structures in their business. Many have spent thousands on play rooms and fancy structures only to fail in their goal. 11 July 2006 - Signup of new customers is at our fastest pace ever. June finished as our biggest month of growth ever. Thank you to all of our new customers. Congratulations to America's Mattress in Albertville, MN; they just opened and are featuring a Something For Kids PAN 12 in their retail environment. We also have a trial run in progress at Seattle's Metropolitan Market Sand Point store. Early observational results are unquestioningly positive. 23 May 2006 - Porcella Urban Market is a very cool place. Check it out. We have quickly become known as "the rocket guys" because of our giveaways at the last couple of trade shows. It has given us the chance to talk about our service to a lot of people and business has been very good because of it. One of our newest customers is Porcella Urban Market in Bellevue, Washington. If you live nearby, go and visit. Porcella is a very unique and fun place to visit. Find them on line to at http://www.porcellaurbanmarket.com/index.htm. 10 April 2006 - Oregon Dental Conference was a big hit for us! We had a GREAT TIME at the Oregon Dental Conference. We figured it would be prudent to encourage a little fun & mayhem and the rockets we gave away accomplished our goal. Missiles were flying throughout the show and above it too. Lecturers were seen threatening to fire our rockets at sleepy attendees. Our show booth rock and rolled the entire time and our goal of reaching 400% ROI looks like it will be easily met. Wow! Credit the guys down at Capitol Toyota in Salem with getting me to read a book which got me thinking differently about trade shows. If you want to know more, contact me.
Crowds were abundant. Exhibitors told us we were the hit of the show! 21 March 2006 - New Gigawall 8 debuts. We delivered our first GigaWall 8 toy stations today to Performance Toyota and Performance Honda in Fairfield, Ohio. Thank you Jim LeMay.
21 March 2006 We have added the Oregon Dental Conference in April to our show schedule. We're bringing along the ultimate-super-fun-crazy-trade-show-giveaway. Yes, we are after all in the toy business. To see our show special, click here. You lucky dentists. You get to have all the fun! 20 March 2006 Welcome First American Title Insurance new office in Arlington. 9 March 2006 Welcome California Chicken and Antrim Way Honda. We just committed to the Northwest Food Service Show in Tacoma and hope to see you there. We're planning on HAVING FUN so don't forget to stop by for a very good time. April 30 through May 2. Did a quick phone survey with several customers this week and heard the following. "Keeps the kids very quiet" "You're a hoot, I just read the bottom of your Toy Exchange box!" "My kids play with it every time they're in the restaurant." "Oh . . . why didn't I think of this." "You have a very well executed program." "I'll take two." 24 February 2006 Welcome Checkered Flag Honda in Norfolk, VA. We continue to see growth in auto dealers, especially Honda dealers as of late. Our latest slogan has been very effective at differentiating what we do verses those selling waiting room toys and furniture. Indeed, "Don't be child-friendly; get family-smart" does a very good job of letting business owners know they can do a better job. We continue to find that people think making their business child-friendly is a worthy goal. That's not true! You want to make more sales, lower anxiety and improve your customers waiting experience. It is absolutely nutty that more businesses don't focus on their real goals.
9 February 2006 Floyd Medical Center completes installation of Something For Kids across their entire facility. 3 February 2006 Thank you IQ Credit Union. IQ now has Something For Kids in all of their branches! 24 January 2006 We'll we finally added the big state of Texas to our list of states in which we service customers. We're working now with a big time retailer on how to shape and manage their retail environments to best make sales (when children are shopping with their parents). We've added to our play area section a great pic on why play areas detract from the sales process. Make sure you check it out at http://www.somethingforkids.com/play_space.htm. 10 January 2006 November and December were very busy months for us. We have many new customers and have been developing 2 new stations. We have just produced our new catalog too. Here's a peek of our new floor station.
12 December 2005 See us this month in Automotive News, Auto Dealer Monthly, Womens Wear Daily and Footwear News. WOW!!! We have published our new Top Selling Tips for Managing Family Shoppers so click on over to http://www.somethingforkids.com/AutoDealers.htm and scroll down to the hyperlink to download the PDF version. 9 November 2005 Visited several accounts and place stations at IQ Credit Union in Vancouver Washington. Went down and saw the folks at Capitol Auto Group (www.capitolauto.com) in Salem and dropped off information at many auto dealers along the way. I was great to see our stations in use and loved by so many. Thanks all and see you soon again. 21 October 2005 Spent some time this week speaking with customers across the country. We pick up comments on our exchange cards too such as this comment from Santa Paula Chevrolet this month which says, "The kids love your product. Great Job!." We've also talked with dealership owners on the other side of the country. Katie Shorkey from Courtesy Jeep Suzuki in Pennsylvania said our station transcends age groups and works better than they ever imagined. We really appreciate those comments. It validates our mission. Thank you!
22 Sep 2005
Several developments here at our World Headquarters. We now are shipping our toy exchanges in a cool new two-way box that was designed to meet our growing needs. Pictures of the new box are posted in various spots on the website so have a look around to see them. Spoke with Ryan Motors today - they were able to open back up after being closed for 2 weeks. Not all of their employees are back in their homes. Imagine, Ryan Motors is in Hattiesburg, many miles inland from the gulf coast. They are all in our hearts. We also finished up a huge annual toy survey that investigated toy failures and wear of our toy-tracked toys. We have a great set of statistics on why certain toys fail and have offered up some of that information to our toy vendors. We are finishing up our new catalog. If you want one sent out to you, just send me an email at info at somethingforkids. We're now listed in Healthcare Design at http://www.healthcaredesignmagazine.com/Directory.htm?CD=2352 and we have been surveying our auto dealers for which trade pubs they most often read. We have also signed Vanderloop Communications as our public relations and promotion firm. They will begin handling our PR beginning this fall. 13 Sep 2005
Excellent idea, and great toys!
Went to PALLINO in woodinville, wa...my son enjoyed it!
05 Sep 2005 Our hearts go out to all affected by the Hurricane. One of our customers, Ryan Motors is in Hattiesburg. While not on the coast, the town was hit very hard. The TV and News crews have spent a lot of time in New Orleans, but a vast region has been clobbered with little information leaking out about how they are all doing. We are keeping them all in our hearts and minds.
19 Aug 2005 Hello all, I hope summer has been going well for you. Business is growing and we have an extensive number of toys being shipped to and fro. We have implemented our ToyTrace Software this summer and can now produce instant reports on toy history, toy inspections and other data. We have been introducing some new toys into the mix. Certainly, we've been pleased with the number of orders for our 12 toy station which is suitable for large waiting rooms. We have joined the Child Life organization too. Take care and we'll see you soon! gb 27 Jul 2005 I continue to receive a lot of calls about playrooms and play areas setup inside businesses. Our position on these areas and rooms is to discourage businesses from having them. These play areas are prone to hindering your business process more than helping it. Our hot point key issues on these areas are: ONE - Providing an unsupervised play area can lead to problems between bigger overactive children and demur, smaller children. TWO - Parents will have to leave the business process to either check on their children or supervise them. THREE - These rooms and area need maintenance. Who regularly checks, inspects and documents it all? Instead of small worn out toys, you know have a big expensive worn out play room. FOUR - If you are providing a place for children to play, specifically away from their parents, are you assuming a responsibility role for keeping track of that child??? In the end we know it's best to keep the child with the parent though any business or waiting room process.
16 Jul 2005 I see that the Port of Seattle was by the website on Friday. The Port runs Seattle Tacoma Airport. I have had several discussions with other airports and learned early on from the operators of the SLC airport how toys in the gate hold areas can really help out. Since families are arriving early and passing through security with time to spare, the gate hold area becomes an anxiety filled problem area for kids. Much of the space that is not leased directly to vendors is set a side specifically for the airlines and our stations would work perfectly in that setting.
15 Jul 2005 Thanks for the comment; we get a lot of great comments on the phone and it's nice to see it in print too. A bunch of sign ups this week - adding Michigan and Alabama to our geography map!
14 Jul 2005 love ya
30 Jun 2005 Steve came in yesterday from visiting our customers and told me the guys over at Lake City Toyota call our service "serenity in a box" 29 Jun 2005
Please tell your doctor about us. Referrals are the #1 way we get new
customers. Thank you. gb
29 Jun 2005 Evelyn my 6 year old actually prefers going into the bank instead of the drive-thru nowadays because of your toys. THANKS FOR THE DISINFECTANT WIPES. I wish our pediatricians knew about you.
28 Jun 2005 Hi all - I'm the owner of this biz and I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate you stopping by for a look. We just opened up this Blog page today and have posted a few of the comments we have received via our customers, contacts at trade shows and emails. Please add your comments and thoughts to the Blog and I will respond to your questions. Thanks for your support and encouragement. gb 22 Jun 2005 Neat idea. My husband and I were able to have a real live conversation at the restaurant last evening without being interrupted by our children. Kudos to Oobas for using your service.
20 Jun 2005 How come I didn't think of this. Brilliant!!! 09 May 2005 "The stand sealed the deal because I brought my kid along with me to Toyota of Kirkland. I have a new Toyota thanks to you." 01 Jun 2005 (from Bombe Gelato in Vancouver, WA) ... beyond my wildest dreams how kids gravitate to the toy station and are occupied by it. Just incredible.
8 March 2005 I live in Ohio . . . I think this is an awesome idea, and many businesses in our area could benefit from this product.
1 Jan 2005 Yesterday while sitting in the waiting area I noticed your display, took a really good look and realized what a great product you provide to waiting rooms.
11 Nov 2004 Hi, I saw your item in a coffee shop in Maple Grove, Minnesota. Very impressed . . . |
