Tony McManus
Wherever you are? Right around Australia, nice to have your company. Where is Carolee? On assignment, so won't be with us on this Friday morning. However, Miles Rayner will, he is the General Manager of Activity Playgrounds, part of the series we've been doing for some time, most of this year in relation to a wonderful family businesses. And it was pointed out to me that we should have a yak with what they do, how they do it. They've been doing it for well over 30 years. Family-owned Australian businesses, we love them. Miles Rayner, good morning.
Miles Rayner
Good morning, Tony. How are you going?
Tony McManus
Tell us about Activity Playgrounds. When was it started and by whom?
Miles Rayner
Activity Playgrounds kicked off back in about 1991, started by my parents, Rick and Diane. Dad thought it'd be a pretty good idea to get into the world of commercial playground equipment.
Tony McManus
And because why? It was a bit unusual at the time. I mean, there were lots of council playgrounds around, kindergartens and things. What did Dad see as the opportunity around that?
Miles Rayner
Yeah, that's a pretty good question, Tony. He started off his working life pretty much as a registered builder, building houses. And so he's got that really good building background. And through that, he sort of had enough of building houses, thought he'd try something else and started building playgrounds for an interstate playground company. That was when he sort of got to the stage where he thought maybe he could make his own problems, the same problems they were making, but just built himself through his own business. So that's where that kicked off. And I believe just over 30 years ago would have been when a lot of the playground standards, sort of stuff, were changing. So it was opening new opportunities for what the next generation of playgrounds was looking like at the time.
Tony McManus
Miles, there'd be people right across Australia who would remember things like a swing, maybe a couple of swings, perhaps a slide. There was nothing much more than just that, and it was very quiet and simple in the day.
Miles Rayner
It would have been those hot stainless steel slides and then hot playground equipment.
Tony McManus
Well, it would, you’d slide down there, and the little kids would be burning their legs and their little bottoms.
Miles Rayner
Yeah, there's a few funny sorts of memes about that as well. But you would have seen a lot of those sort of round treated pine sort of playgrounds. They're sort of nearly at the end now. We don't come across too many of those that we pull out. But yeah, it's changed a lot over the last sort of 40 years.
Tony McManus
Tell us about in Australia to run a business like that, given the competition that presumably is out there, Rick, what are the challenges? Rick, I called you Rick. Sorry, I didn't mean to do that. That's Father. But the challenges around that would be, I would imagine, pretty tough.
Miles Rayner
Yeah, it is tough competition. We believe Victoria is probably the toughest as far as playground manufacturers go. There seem to be most of them here in Victoria compared to the rest of Australia. So if we can get some of the market share here, we seem to be going pretty well. There's always the overseas component. There's some really, really strong competitors in the overseas market that are constantly pushing into Australia as well. That's where the family business, Australian-made, Australian-owned, really comes into it when we get support from our customers as well.
Tony McManus
Is that something that clearly works in your favour? And Father, you, the family running it now, focus on that as a very important component of what happens.
Miles Rayner
Yeah, definitely. Having that family touch, and obviously it's a bit of a cliche, but sort of treat everyone at work like family in these sorts of smaller businesses. And so it's funny, I was doing the numbers this week about how many family members Dad's employed over the last sort of 30-odd years, and we're getting up to over 20 now between cousins, aunts, uncles and partners and all sorts of stuff. So there's been a significant amount of people from family related areas that he's employed.
Tony McManus
Does that bring on some inherent challenges as well?
Miles Rayner
Yeah, I think that dad was never sort of one to beat around the bush, she goes, it's always fraught with danger employing friends and family because it creates other challenges on how you employ them and when you've got to potentially let them go as well. It's good to be able to rely on family as well when you need to.
Tony McManus
Which is a lovely part of it. If grandparents, mums, dads go into a playground anywhere around Australia at the moment, how do they know that this is an activity branded playground and equipment?
Miles Rayner
Good question. We've got a few different ranges of equipment. We've sort of makes it a bit hard to just sort of specify that is exactly Activity Playgrounds. Generally, if you look for a manufacturing ID plate on any bit of playground, you can find out who made it and when and how to get in contact with them if you need to.
Tony McManus
And manufactured locally.
Miles Rayner
Our playgrounds, yes. We manufacture here in Wondon of Yarra Valley and do pretty much every component of the playground, minus the fibreglass and plastic components.
Tony McManus
And that's done where?
Miles Rayner
Sorry, the fibreglass and plastic?
Tony McManus
Yeah.
Miles Rayner
That's done in our plastic tube section in Victoria, and our fibreglass is done by King's Fibreglass in Bayswater.
Tony McManus
Fantastic. And so presumably you're dealing with councils, schools, primary schools and others.
Miles Rayner
Yes, so the primary part of our business is councils now. It was schools for a long time back in 2007-ish, John Howard came up with this massive grant for all schools Australia-wide. And that's really where activity playgrounds kicked off, with a much larger volume of playground equipment that lasted for a few years. And then things got a bit quiet after. And then, the business sort of wound down a little bit over that next sort of number of years, until sort of more recently, when we've really kicked off again.
Tony McManus
Miles, it's a wonderful project. The ideal is when you go into a lovely garden area, park area, that combination of garden, park and equipment for young ones, that's where it really lives, I think. A combination of all three. Park, garden, equipment.
Miles Rayner
Yeah, correct, Tony. The element of a playground is sort of only one part of a play space, as they're called now. So often when these jobs go out to tender, it's a play space, whether it's at the local level, district level, or regional level, depending on the size of the play space. And often it comes down to incorporating those three items you spoke about, which is quite often done through a landscape architect.
Tony McManus
Is Father still closely involved, Miles?
Miles Rayner
No, he took a pretty big step back about four years ago. He's had some minor health issues since then, but we still see him. He lives next to work, which is good. He's always close by if we need. But it's generally run by me these days.
Tony McManus
Good on you. Well, it's a lovely story on the basis that A, it's local, and B, you're doing some amazing work. And it's one of those great things. Often, people will say, Dad started the business or Grandpa often started the business, but he's never, ever far away. Or she is never far away. Because I bet at some point, mum would have been around the place as well.
Miles Rayner
Oh, you're spot on. I was actually talking to dad this week, and he was reminiscing about mum's involvement in the business all the way up until recently as well. But her role in the business was to be the accountant. And so as a designer by university degree, she's had to teach herself accounting and bookkeeping along the way to keep things afloat. And when GST came into it, she had to teach herself how to do BAS statements and the GST components. So she's quite an amazing woman.
Tony McManus
That's wonderful. The joys of family business. Just finally got a little note here. The idea of insisting on top-quality safety issues around playgrounds. Where does that sit?
Miles Rayner
Safety is sort of at the forefront of everything that we design. We need to make sure that Kids are safe when we welcome them to play on our playground equipment in the local parks and schools. And so on that front, the playground equipment is actually heavily governed by a set of Australian standards, which is quite clear with a whole bunch of different rules and regulations around how we can design equipment. make sure that the user, in this case the child, doesn't get hurt using the equipment.
Tony McManus
Very important. Miles, great to talk to you. Thank you for your time.
Miles Rayner
Thanks, Tony. Appreciate it.
Tony McManus
Miles Rayner, General Manager, Activity Playgrounds. See, it's a Simple Things, another Australian-owned family business association.
