"Our company is founded on three principles—quality, quality and quality."
-Tom Potts, CEO of Community Playthings, 1954 - 1993
Whether or not you know us, your commitment to early childhood education puts us on common ground. Like you, we care deeply about children and their environment.
Community Playthings began at a cooperative in rural Georgia, when a handful of young fathers set up a woodworking shop. Most of their equipment was cobbled together on the spot: a belt sander, a cut-off saw built around the rear axle of an old Model T, and a few other primitive (and hazardous) machines. The product line consisted of unit blocks and hollow blocks, hand-decorated figures, and several wheeled toys.
Shortly after that, the cooperative’s members, along with the fledgling business, joined an established educational community influenced by Froebel, Pestalozzi, and other progressive thinkers. This gave Community Playthings a foundation that has guided it as a business ever since: letting children be children, and putting their needs first.
In its early years, Community Playthings bumped along haphazardly, mostly because of a perpetual shortage of labor. Everyone had to be ready to do anything. Chuck, one of our first foremen, spent hours sharpening saws. Kathy, a teacher, was enlisted to create our logo. Then there was the market: childcare in the 1950s was an undeveloped arena, and the industries that have since grown up around it didn’t exist.
Jump half a century, and childcare is a household word. Our customer service department handles at least 15,000 calls a month. What was once overseen by a handful of people now fills several busy offices, including product design, quality maintenance, shipping, and website development.
But it wasn’t just the emergence of childcare that spurred our growth. It couldn’t have happened without a commitment to quality. Because so many of us are caregivers ourselves, we know that whatever you buy from us needs to be well made: simple, durable, and safe.
Simplicity. We take our cues from children: They’re genuine and straightforward. How can we make products to match? We use natural materials like solid maple. We steer clear of complicated and contrived, and aim for intuitive and teacher-friendly. Our goal is to design open-ended products that inspire imaginative play.
We also try to keep things simple in our relationship to customers. Take our policy of free shipping. It’s just what we say it is: completely free, no matter how small your order—no strings attached. In fact, we’ve even negotiated with our trucking company to give you “inside delivery,” which would normally cost at least $45 extra.
Durability. Our products do not leap from a concept onto the assembly line. Somebody once called it “thoughtful design”: when a new idea comes our way, it is extensively researched, often through interviews at centers like yours. Who will use the new item, and where and how? Will it work in a variety of settings? How and where could it break?
In other words, we sweat the small stuff, even if it means adding months to the design process. When you get our equipment for your classroom, you know it’s going to take a beating from generations of children. We can assure you it’s also going to last.
Safety. As a teacher or director, you know how strict childcare regulations are. Even the smallest oversight can become a legal issue. You can’t afford accidents. Neither can we. And so we test, and test, and test again—in controlled environments, and in the field. There’s no way we’d be in business if we couldn’t vouch for the safety of what we sell.
And product testing is only a small part of the picture. Keeping a close eye on every phase of production is just as important. That’s why we make our own items from beginning to end.
By now you know what’s going through our minds when we talk about quality. But we’d like to know what’s going through yours. You’re the one who spends all day in the classroom, and your feedback is important to us. We’ll take your ideas and concerns seriously. And especially any complaints. It’s one of the reasons we sell direct.
The other reason? The value you get because we don’t go through a distributor. Factor that in, along with free shipping and the long life of our products, and you’ll know why we don’t offer discounts: they’re already built in.
Customers often tell us that they can sense our love of children through our products. In fact, all our work revolves around children. Many of us are parents, and when it comes to schedules, our families are just as important to us as our work.
If a mother at Community Playthings has a baby to nurse, that’s her top priority, even if it means she gets less done at her desk. Many young adults in our offices and workshops also spend time each day working in our on-site childcare center.
Everyone here belongs to the same team, and every dollar earned benefits every person in our community. Including our children, who are the heart of everything we do.
We never run out of work. There are a lot of bases to cover, and when things get very busy we tell ourselves that everything will get done, because what we’re doing is not as important to us as why we’re doing it. That thought reminds us of Tom Potts, who joined Community Playthings in 1955 and guided it for the next four decades. In the last years of his life, he could be found happily assembling items in the workshop, and, as he told every visitor, “thinking of the children who will play with them.”
There will always be new challenges, new questions, and new opportunities. In the last few years, a volatile economy has kept us on our toes. So have new directions of educational theory and practice. But we can promise you that one thing won’t ever change: our firm conviction that every child deserves a childhood. As long as we’re in this business, we’re committed to helping make that a reality.
