Brand Profile
SmartLab
What’s cooking
at SmartLab
This year, SmartLab Toys is preparing to welcome a raft of new products to its range, covering everything from interactive human anatomy to the science behind tiny baking. Rachael Simpson-Jones spoke to George Scott, senior brand manager, to find out more.
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martLab is the only toy-centric ‘imprint’ from a portfolio of 33 brands within The Quarto Group, a leading international publisher of books and intellectual property products; the group acquired SmartLab’s parent becker&mayer in 2016, and the STEM toy brand along with it. Created in 2004 to offer fun, fact-filled and fictional novelties for kids aged 8-14 years old, and named for one of the founder’s beloved yellow Labradors, the brand still benefits from the knowledge and experience of its original employees, who designed the first ever SmartLab products. There’s 100 years’ experience shared among just a small handful of people, giving the company a rich history and ensuring every toy has both brains and passion behind it. George, SmartLab’s senior brand manager, has been in the world of design for a long time, making product development his entire career to date. For 15 of those years, he also taught college level undergraduates and graduate students while practising as a professional designer. “Nowadays, we pride ourselves on producing educational science kits and STEM toys,” George explains. “Not only is this our focus, but it’s also what we do best and what we love doing. All of us want to make science fun. We want kids to have such a good time playing with our kits that they completely forget they’re learning real scientific principles. Everything we do is also geared around repeat play, something
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that’s not always common with kits for kids, which can tend to be more of a one-shot deal. SmartLab wants kids to come back to its kits again and again, and one of the ways we achieve this is by crafting all our components from scratch. When kids place their finished build or experiment on their shelf or desk, it resonates and stays with them thanks to the design quality and the thinking behind the activity.” SmartLab’s approach to ideation is egalitarian in nature. George, a big fan of a kitchen analogy, paints a picture of an assortment of like-minded colleagues swapping ideas across morning coffee taken at the kitchen table. Everyone has a say in product ideation, and with between 4-8 new products launching each year there’s plenty of ideas to go round. Development itself, meanwhile, takes the form of a stovetop covered with bubbling, sizzling pans, each containing the possibility of something new. While some pans simmer gently at the back, others are red hot and near the front, ready for plating up. It’s simply a matter of pulling the right pan forward at the right time. Existing products are also regularly updated to keep things fresh, and the company is moving to an updated business model that will allow for around 10 product reformats a year, in addition to its new launches. Arguably best known for its Squishy range, a tactile and highly sensory assortment of kits that includes Squishy Human Body, The Amazing Squishy Brain
