Special Feature
Rubies
Empowering the feel-good factor In August, Rubies announced the launch of its new range of adaptive costumes designed for children with limited mobility, which the company says will allow every child to join in with role-play and dress-up. Fran Hales, head of Content & Marketing at Rubies, tells Toy World more about the importance of this range, and how inclusivity shapes the development process.
Fran, can you explain to us the thinking behind Rubies’ new adaptive costumes range? Everyone has an imagination, and every child has a right to explore that in a fun way; we are incredibly proud to facilitate this through our costumes, as one of our core company values is inclusivity. On top of this, all our licensors have really got behind the line and have been exceptionally supportive. We’ve partnered with the Marvel Superhero Series, which we sponsor, and are proud to see our costumes worn by all the fantastic athletes. As an industry leader our ethos is wholly committed to inclusivity, providing costumes which let everyone have fun and enjoy themselves. We understand that dress-up is a fundamental part of childhood development: it allows children to explore their imagination as well as different characters and traits, right at the age when they are beginning to develop and expand their own. This is a key focus of our partnership with World Book Day. We endorse costumes as an important early education tool that facilitate and encourage reading from a very early age.
What was the adaptive costumes development process like? Did Rubies learn anything unexpected or eyeopening along the way? We focused on developing the concept first, onboarding the views of specialists and consumers to optimise the designs. Our incredible creative team provided prototypes which were sent out to families with children that have a range of disabilities, and those that use different types of mobility aids, in order to get a broad range of feedback. The feedback we received enabled us to pinpoint the revisions required to ensure the costumes were both comfortable and practical, and also provide reassurance when used. Whilst the development was taking place in the background, it was imperative for us to discuss with groups and specialists how to market the costumes in a way that was inspiring and empowering. As a company, we gained so much valuable knowledge from this process, including how to talk about the costumes in an inspirational way. These costumes are now being produced on a large scale and are making an incredible difference to individual children and families who didn’t have the option to dress-up in this way before.
Having led so strongly from the front when it comes to inclusivity, how does Rubies intend to keep the momentum going?
At its heart, Rubies is all about bringing fun and joy to the consumer simply by being in touch and listening to them. We will continue to champion inclusivity and diversity with concepts that allow us to remain at the top of our game. There’s a strong feel-good factor around Rubies because of all the enhancements we’ve rolled out over the past year. Expansions, innovation to our technology infrastructure, and new additions to our teams have seen us arrive at where we are now. We continue to be proactive and adaptive as the market leader in order to remain one step ahead. With our inclusive costumes and commitment towards sustainability, we are incredibly proud of the fact our adjusted ways of working leave us much better suited towards societies’ needs both now and into the future.
Speaking of the future, can you let us in on anything regarding upcoming launches and developments? With our finger on the pulse of pop culture, we are always searching for the next ‘big thing’- sometimes in unusual places. Passion and pride for what we do are at the core of the business; they drive us to experiment with new ideas. We also encourage an open-minded workplace to allow staff to think outside the box. Moving forward, we’ll be looking at cross-over techniques and ways to intersect different markets and ranges to create new and exciting products. We’re looking at wearable ranges and roleplay, taking inspiration from fashion and apparel by seeing how that would blend in and create a fusion with costumes. There has been a shift in the way we consume content, especially with platforms such as Disney+, which has blown the Marvel Universe wide open and introduced Star Wars to a whole new generation. We also have some very exciting announcements coming your way soon: we can’t reveal them all now, but they span staffing, market expansions, logistics and new licences. There’s a lot to look forward to.
