A new year and two new trade shows to visit. For the first time ever I went to BETT and to Toy Fair, starting with BETT. BETT was huge and with the best will in the world we didn’t get to see every stand there. However, what we did see was informative – and strangely reassuring. For example, Interactive Floors that we have sold for some years are now more widely available and we saw several variations of these at the show.

BETT Trade Show

It’s exciting to think that we are already one step ahead by developing the integration of such products with other remote control systems so that we continue to offer fully integrated immersive environments and not just disparate products that don’t work in sync. That’s why we are delighted to be working on making our Snoezelen® environments even more accessible, engaging and interactive using eye gaze technology. It’s also reassuring that our Sensory Magic and CARE systems are also continually evolving – not just in their scope of visuals and sounds, but also in terms of their value, meaning, applications and the measures of these.

The visit to BETT was useful to help us learn what technology is available. It’s also useful as it highlights changes to our marketplace that we’ve noticed increasingly over the last few years. Quite a few software development companies and lighting specialists have appeared over the last few years, which are now marketing themselves as sensory solutions providers. Such companies often have impressive looking stands and glossy brochures, but I wonder how many have a true understanding of our marketplace, and how many have the global experience and proven research behind them to know the real value of a multi-sensory Snoezelen® environment. I think we know the answer to that at ROMPA – I hope our customers do too.

I digress… A short trip across London and we were at the Toy Fair. It was great to catch up with quite a few of our existing customers, as well as meeting new ones. I found at least a dozen products worthy of space in our 2015 catalogues and I’m looking forward to getting samples, testing them out and showing these to colleagues. We’re always looking for new products and it’s great to have found some great ideas already!