Play is the ultimate act of creativity. It lies at the heart of every successful toy or game and it’s what makes the whole design community in this area so incredibly inspiring – and the reason why I want to continue to be a part of that start-up buzz, now that my own business is pretty well established.

KidsKnowBest is four years old, and while we are still learning all the time, we have clocked up a certain amount of expertise, as well as some funding avenues, that we want to put to good use by supporting new businesses focused on the youth and family market.

From my own successes and failures, we have learnt the hard way that having a great idea for an invention for kids is only an idea, and it doesn’t make you great at running a business. Even if you do have business expertise, navigating the worlds of the big toy firms and competing with their significant R&D resources can seem like an insurmountable hurdle.

We have decided to do something about it with the launch of our Growing Pains Accelerator, which is supporting brands and businesses focused on the youth and family market. The plan is to help five businesses, either start-up or mid-stage, with mentoring, collaboration and practical services worth at least £150,000 to each one.

If you’d suggested to me in 2016 that I’d be in this position, I’m not sure I would have believed you. Back then I was a hairdresser with a vision, and I knew very little about what we were getting ourselves into, but now I’m pretty confident that we can help.

I co-founded the business with my friend Rob Lough and we called it KidsKnowBest, a market research consultancy with a unique positioning: we ask kids for their opinions about things, and use our findings to help brands connect with young audiences.

The inspiration came from Rob’s daughters after a cinema visit to watch a film that was panned by critics but which they loved, making their dad realise the power of a child’s opinions and the importance of listening to them.

We’ve hit our stride with clients including Disney, LEGO and Puffin Books, and our team has grown to well over 20 people, all immersed in the kids’ space. Plus, we’ve secured £1 million funding to help continue our expansion in 2021.

We knew all along our proposition was solid – KidsKnowBest’s first client was someone I got talking to on the Tube who, it turned out, worked at Penguin Random House. She is still working with us today. But we haven’t forgotten the early days of our business, scrabbling around for funding, making mistakes, learning how to pivot, the importance of capitalising on our successes and when to cut our losses.

Now we want to pass our knowledge onto others. We want to help them get there quicker than we did, and to contribute to the industry by supporting new voices and new ideas. Levelling the playing field will mean a more diverse and far richer industry.

Having a great idea is just the beginning – finding the resources to scale is also vitally important, and hard to do. This is why our programme supports inventors at all stages of product development, to help them with the research they need to put kids and family needs at the centre of their proposition.

We welcome applications to the Growing Pains Accelerator from anyone who designs and creates toys, digital apps, literature and other content – as long as it’s aimed at kids or families.

Our ambition is to champion new talent, to help grow the next generation of innovative entrepreneurs to build their business strategy, and to build the audience’s needs and behaviours into your offering.

There are some fantastic ideas out there that can make the sector a wonderful space, and they really shouldn’t fail because of a lack of business expertise.

If you would like to apply for the Growing Pains Accelerator, email Joel here. 

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ToyAid, the charitable initiative set up by KidsKnowBest’s Joel Silverman and Wow! Stuff’s Richard North, has raised £143,075 as part of Global’s Make Some Noise – the registered charity of Global Media Group.

Companies pledged support to ToyAid via sales of ‘ToyAid-able’ toys, video games and entertainment products as well as licensing fees and business services.

“There are so many individual thank yous that myself and Richard wish to make; hopefully in person in the not too distant future!” said Silverman.

“A special thanks must go to Ian Downes, Tracey Richardson and Norton PR who all stepped up to show their support from the outset, but of course the biggest thank you goes to every single company that has donated money and products to this amazing cause; in no particular order: Smyths Toys Superstore, SEGA, Playmobil, TOMY, Spin Master, ViacomCBS, Ravensburger, Golden Bear, EPOCH, Rubies, Plum Products, Rubik’s, Interplay, KidKreations,  Canal Toys, WickedVision, Topps, Winning Moves, Big Potato Games, Retail Monster, Dr Zigs and Products of Change.

“Now ToyAid is complete, I really hope everyone has positive times ahead and the toy industry as a whole is remembered for the support they gave in a time of need for many families. I never in my wildest dreams thought this would reach £10,000 so to raise over £140,000 is just fantastic.”

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ToyAid – a new initiative created by Wow! Stuff’s Richard North and KidsKnowBest’s Joel Silverman – is looking to engage the wider toy industry in raising funds for Global’s Make Some Noise charity.

For the month of June, ToyAid will be running a campaign asking customers to “Buy Some Toys for Make Some Noise” and raise as much money as possible to help individuals and families hit hardest by the pandemic.

This will be achieved through minimum pledges from toy and entertainment companies and money from the sales of ‘Toy Aid-able’ toys, video games, entertainment products, licensing fees and business services.

“We’ve had amazing pledges from companies across all sectors of the toy and entertainment industry,” said ToyAid co-founder Joel Silverman.

“Special recognition to Smyths Toys superstores, who kicked things off by pledging an incredible £50,000 to this cause! Richard North, of Wow! Stuff, my co-founder at ToyAid and I would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who has pledged to ToyAid so far. We’ve had over 30 companies sign up for their support, and we haven’t even officially launched! We’re delighted to be working with Global’s Make Some Noise and Global’s radio stations on this initiative.”

Richard North added: “Joel and I have been overwhelmed already with the support of our ‘First Responders’. When we get through this difficult period, and we absolutely will, we’ll know we stood together, shoulder to shoulder as an industry, and did something together for the benefit of young people and their families. No-one will take any money for the organisation or running of ToyAid, every penny we raise goes to the charity”.

To see how you can help, visit toyaid.org.

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At the start of Summer 2016, Rob Lough called me one Saturday evening in an excitable tone about how he had taken his twins (Alexa and Olivia, 5) to see a movie that nobody wanted to see and the critics had absolutely annihilated!

Being slightly drunk, I listened to him ramble on for a few minutes about how he read this review in the papers and everyone had said it was terrible (for the record, Rob agreed). However, his twins loved it! So did the other few kids in the cinema.

It was Rob’s eureka moment. ‘Why am I reading reviews on movies from middle aged men when they were not their target audience?’ I told him it was a silly idea and joked that five year olds couldn’t write.

I went to sleep that night, thinking who would believe a five year old? Why would it really matter what they thought? For the next few days, I couldn’t get Rob’s idea out of my head. I looked further into it and every review I saw had been from a movie critic; are they really interested in a family film? Do they have children? There was no sign of any child input, anywhere. I asked Rob to meet for a coffee.

After hours of chatting about his twins voicing their opinion and how cute and valuable that is, we realised the only way people would know the honesty was not in what a five year old would write but how they would speak and show their emotions regarding what they have just seen.

The idea of children reviewing movies had been born. By kids, for families.

Rob and I spent hours, days and weeks honing the idea about how we could make this work. It has developed from just kids reviewing movies to kids reviewing anything they would be interested in!

Our motto is: ‘You wouldn’t buy your new car because an eight year old liked the colour, so why should you buy a FurReal Roarin’ Tyler toy just because Moira, a 37 year old mum, said so?’”

Our first weekend filming was spent taking our friend’s children to the cinema to see Finding Dory (I was seriously tired; Rob told me off for not being on top form for a kids film, I thought this was normal on a Sunday morning?)

We took eight kids to the cinema that day, then back to Rob’s house with their parents, sat them down in front of the camera and asked for their honest feedback. Some were shy; some didn’t stop talking; others had some golden moments! We knew we were onto something and, if we could get this right, we would be building a groundbreaking brand. Who wouldn’t enjoy watching kids voicing their opinions on what really matters to them?

I still had no idea how I managed to get involved into something that involved children. I don’t have them myself (yet) and am not in the family space. Why was Rob asking for my help? Why am I so interested? Being a hairstylist in Mayfair, my network is fantastic. I realised with Rob’s knowhow in the tech world and my black book, we could really get KidsKnowBest off the ground and in front of the world’s eyes.

Rob and I worked tirelessly to perfect our idea and how to get everything ready to launch. We received fantastic backing from an angel investor and brilliant tech support from uCreate.it.

Every single day we have developed our brand and the website. KidsKnowBest has been working with some of the world’s biggest and best movie houses, app developers, book publishers and, above all else, toy manufacturers and innovators.

Still at the start of our journey, there is so much more to come from KidsKnowBest. The team is growing and the idea is constantly being developed.

We aim to release an app this year where children can upload their own video reviews. KidsKnowBest want to get every product seen and rated by those who matter.

For the moment I am still cutting hair in the Mayfair salon. Hopefully I can soon join Rob and our team so we can all want to work on it every single day to make sure KidsKnowBest is everything it could be and more.

We want to change the game and with every new deal we sign, every new video we create and every new subscriber we get, the dreams we laid out in that coffee shop become more of a reality.

To put your toys and games in the hands of our kid reviewers, feel free to drop me a line at Joel@kidsknowbest.co.uk.

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