PLAY AROUND A new player in the toy industry

PLAY AROUND

A NEW PLAYER IN THE TOY INDUSTRY

Play Around is a new player in the world of toys, created just under a year ago and already launching important international projects. LM interviewed Massimiliano Piazzolla, Managing Director of Play Around, to learn ore about their latest projects.

Massimiliano Piazzolla

The play around concept was launched in January 2020 in Hong Kong. What is your asessment of the first 10 months?

The launch of Play Around in Hong Kong last January was in some way just the formalization of a path that had already begun under the radar for about a year, and was finally ready to be publicized. The excitement around this project was high and the feedback received at the launch confirmed our expectations. To our great surprise, we are proud to say that in spite of the current situation Play Around has expanded over the year and received very positive feedback.

During lockdown, Play Around signed a contractas Master ToyLicensorfor Mondo TV’s new property, MeteoHeroes. The agreement confirms our strong position in the toy industry, and related areas in which new concepts are being developed. For PlayAround MeteoHeroes is an important project that we strongly believe in.

In recent months we have also completed the development of our property Kawais, which has already signed various licenses and is ready for its promotional launch to the market.

What about cooperation with Rovio?

Our collaboration with Rovio on the development of the Hatchies concept was an excellent training ground for the application of a new model of

toy development with multi-channel

positioning. The Hatchies project was in fact distributed on through newsstands by DeAgostini and Burda, but also through traditional toys channels, with retailers like Splash Toys and Topps bringing it to their markets.

In the last phase, the Hatchies concept a featured property in the world of Loyalty Programs, with three launches in three different countries through TCC. In the wake of this success, we decided to take Hatchies online. In fact the first line of Hatchies Special Pack will be available for American consumers on Amazon US this October. The strategy of the online channel, which had already been planned, showed strong growth due to the COVID effect, as did all the related strategies.

What are Play Around’s future plans ?

We intend to deepen our collaboration with licenses with which to create a new business model that better responds to the needs of the current period. The optimization of investments in the face of maximizing the possibility of licensing on various channels, all managed with a reduced time to market, which allows toys to be released at the optimal time and perform more strategically.

We will also continue to focus on the development of internal concepts and properties to meet current and future trends, always trying to offer fresh and innovative content of interest and value to our partners.