All posts by Kate Hays

Kate Hays

About Kate Hays

Kate has been Rompa’s Product Manager for over a decade and is always looking for exciting and innovative new products. Outside work, her two young children keep her very busy.

Back to School for the Product Team

In the community
Enterprise Week at Brockwell Junior School

Thank you very much to the staff and Year 3 pupils at Brockwell Junior School who kindly let us take part in their Enterprise Week.

It was a real pleasure for us to be able to tell the Year 3 classes about ROMPA, our areas of work, our colleagues’ roles and to share our experiences from the ROMPA world of work. We were pleasantly surprised by the excellent questions we were asked by pupils – clearly pupils were listening carefully and understanding what they were being told. The children were extremely impressive!

Thank you for your warm welcome, smiling faces and listening ears!

Kidz in the Middle

Conferences & Exhibitions,

It’s hard to believe that it’s already a couple of weeks since we were at Kidz in the Middle in Coventry.  Now that the dust has settled, and everyone is back into their usual routines and activities, please take a moment to look again at our ROMPA catalogue if you collected a copy from our stand, or at our website.  If you didn’t get a catalogue, we can gladly post one to you.  Click here to order your free copy today.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to talk to us – you were a very friendly bunch!  Thank you also to Rob from Tobii for inviting visitors to our stand to try eye tracking control and eye gaze technology for themselves.  We look forward to a long and successful partnership with Tobii – please excuse the pun!

BETT and Spring Fair Trade Shows

Conferences & Exhibitions, , ,

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

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!

Rompa at Naidex Scotland 2013

Conferences & Exhibitions,

Naidex Scotland is a leading independent living event in Scotland, the Rompa product team were in Glasgow and here are their thoughts on the event.

Kate Hays

Kate Hays

Rompa at Naidex Scotland 2013

Rompa at Naidex Scotland 2013

“Visitors to our stand were so friendly and it was a real pleasure talking to everyone.  Thank you to everyone who took the time to come and see us (especially for persisting through car park and traffic troubles) – your time and kindness was much appreciated.  During the conversations had about our high standards of customer service, our products, our installation service, you said so many positive things.  It’s really good to know that our efforts are so worthwhile.  Looking forward to 2015 – I hope I get to go to the next Naidex Scotland!”

Tania Hodgson

Tania Hodgson

“NAIDEX was so exciting for me. I have recently finished my Occupational Therapy Training from Derby University and joined the ROMPA family in late July so it was my first time being involved as an exhibitor!”

“I was so scared but my nerves soon dissipated. We were blessed – one by one truly wonderful people came to our stand, everyone with golden hearts, wanting to improve the quality of life for the people that they care about, either professionally or personally.”

You can see our stand in the video below at 1:52.

Friends, relatives, children, healthcare professionals all came to chat. It was great to be able to explain what we do, listen to ideas and suggestions for new products, get feedback on ideas we have for future product development, and talk directly to people who use ROMPA and Winslow resources.

All I can say is a great big “thank you” to the organisers of the event, the people who came and the great company I am part of for making this such a fulfilling experience!

February Trade Fairs

Conferences & Exhibitions

Nuremburg Toy fair

Nuremburg Toy fair

Kate Hays

Kate Hays

February has been a busy month for visiting trade fairs in the hunt for new product inspiration. My first (but hopefully not last) visit to Nuremburg was wonderful. It was really great to meet up with suppliers who we hadn’t seen for a while as well as being able to put faces to names and voices we’ve known for many years. Products didn’t disappoint either. At the end of walking up and down a dozen or so halls our feet were tired but our heads were buzzing with ideas and new products! Much to our delight, we also found alternative sources for existing products so we are able to maintain sensible prices.

A little closer to home (and thankfully avoiding flights and aborted landings due to scarily strong winds), the Spring Fair in Birmingham yielded more ideas. It never ceases to surprise me how many good ideas come from the least expected sources. A by-chance conversation can bring us seemingly simple but brilliant ideas.

There’s plenty to keep us busy now we’re back in the office and therefore there’ll be plenty of new offerings for the 2014 catalogues – yes, we start work on next year’s catalogue now!