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TRANSCRIPT
Project: British Toy Making Project
Mr Robert Longstaff Robert Longstaff Workshops
Interview conducted by Ieuan Hopkins and Sarah Wood
August 2011
Transcribed by Kerry Cable August 2012
Edited by
Robert Longstaff and Laura Wood August 2013
Copyright © 2011 Museum of Childhood
Robert Longstaff
FULL NAME: Robert Longstaff
INTERVIEWER: Ieuan Hopkins and Sarah Wood
DATE: 23 August 2011
PLACE: Robert Longstaff Workshops, Longworth, Oxfordshire
TYPE OF EQUIP: PMD Marantz 661, Wav, 48Hz, 16 bit
LENGTH OF INTERVIEW: 56 minutes, 20 seconds
CAREER BACKGROUND
Robert Longstaff spent ten years working as a research biologist. He began to make
musical instruments as a hobby in 1973 and was invited by the director of South Hill
Park Arts Centre in Bracknell to be their instrument maker in residence. He spent five
years there and taught a course on stringed and percussion instruments. He started
making wooden puzzles and toys using off cuts of wood. Longstaff used to have
exhibitions of his instruments put on in Heal's Guildford store and when a Heal's
member of staff visited the workshop they saw the toys and suggested they also be
included in the exhibition.
The toys sold well and Heal's soon placed an order for more, quickly followed by
Hamleys, Galt and Boots. Robert Longstaff Workshops quickly expanded and their
achievements included pioneering the technique of laser cutting in jigsaw design.
INTERVIEW SYNOPSIS
Robert Longstaff discusses how he became involved in the toy manufacturing
industry; laser cutting in jigsaw design; the use of toys as learning and developmental
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aids; the services Robert Longstaff Workshops offer including replacing missing puzzle
pieces; the running of Robert Longstaff Workshops, and their relationship with
retailers.
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We’re recording now. So you can start with ---. <0:00:03>
Okay. Certainly. I’m Robert Longstaff and with my wife Yvonne we’ve run a
partnership making wooden toys amongst other things for the last 35 years.
We specialise in laser cutting now but generally wooden toys and traditional
wooden toys, puzzles, educational equipment and special needs.
And how did you start? <0:00:31>
Totally by accident. I spent the first ten years of my career being a research
biologist looking at the effects of farming and pesticides on wildlife so I am a
committed green person for what of a better word. I used to make early
musical instruments as a hobby and that turned into a business when I was
invited by the director at South Hill Park Arts Centre in Bracknell if I would like
to be instrument maker in residence at the art centre. And I spent five years
there making musical instruments and teaching the first ever course for early
stringed and percussion instruments and it was great fun. But we used to use a
lot of very exotic timbers for that and being a green person I hated wasting
them so we made smaller things from the bits that were left. We’ve always
been puzzle people so we started making wooden puzzles and miniature
wooden instruments and other bits and pieces and that transpired to toys. The
accident really happened, we used to go to Heals in Guildford and London and
do exhibitions for them of the instruments. And we’d just spent a week or two
making wooden toys for friends’ offspring, relatives, for Christmas and they
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were sitting around the workshop when the gentleman came to book us for the
next talk. And said, ‘Oh, these look like fun, why don’t you bring some along?’
So we spent another week making some, took them along. Much to his horror
they sold and they then actually placed an order. And in our naivety at that
time we just pyrographed our phone number and name on the bottom of them
all and within a week after that we were hit by Hamleys and Galt shops and
Boots and you name it, saying could they see our catalogue please. At which
point we thought okay, we’re toymakers. And it was as simple and strange as
that.
And in terms of you said you were a scientist before, how has this scientific
background influenced your products and the way the company’s developed?
<0:02:41>
Certainly we do it differently to most other people, as I’m sure you’ve noticed in
your wander around. I consider myself incredibly lucky. I have a form of
dyslexia which means basically if I see anything, do anything or read about
anything, I never forget it. I’m also one of those rare males who can actually
read a manual and understand it. So I can pick up something that I’ve never
known about before or a piece of equipment and read what it does and
understand it. And basically I’ve been classified as a classic left/right split in
brain usage. So I have an artistic side and a design side which is fairly unique
because it has access to a clinical scientific side at the same time. So effectively
I can sit and have a think to myself and have a multi board meeting
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brainstorming session just within my own head, which is probably why it makes
me quite as strange as I am, but it does mean things get done rather quicker
than perhaps other people do. And literally just can look at something or a
drawing or we have a conversation and I have a 3D image of that in my head
straightaway, so I know what I’m aiming for almost instantly which is why we
turn things around so quickly. You know, we deal with larger companies that
expect six or nine monthly development time, I have it ready in a couple of days
because I know exactly what I’m trying to get to and I know how to get there.
So it’s a bit different. So the toys we’ve designed have always been that little
bit different, even our traditional range of cars and wheeled toys and pull along
animals always had something unique and different to them. I’m fairly happy
to say that I see my designs copied time and time again now almost as if they’re
traditional and that’s the way it’s always been done, because they had
something that made them stand apart from the basic models, which is great
fun.
Can you sort of talk through some of the, for example the puzzles, what makes them
special compared to other puzzles [inaudible 0:05:01]? <0:05:01>
I mean at the moment that’s obviously the laser technique that we’re using.
And effectively we started hand cutting puzzles like everybody else does and I
think it was back in the early ‘80s that we took on a huge batch of supposedly
difficult customers to work with in that they are very demanding of a product
to be correct. And I think at that time we had 19 people cutting here and 14
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outworkers. And we got to the end of that year having dealt with customers
such as Boots and Mothercare and Marks & Spencer's to name a few, and
basically sat back at the end of it and thought we’re running a sweatshop.
We’re ankle deep in sawdust, you know, this isn’t quite what we started the
business to be doing. And you then look at the choices. So we talked to other
people in the industry and the choices always seems to be to go overseas
somewhere and exploit somebody else, which isn’t quite our way as you
would’ve gathered. The business has always been run as a social enterprise
even though it is owned by Yvonne and myself. It’s been run along a social
enterprise and co-operative basis the whole time, which is important to us.
May be strange in this day and age, although it’s coming back into its own now.
So we've always gone that route. So that didn’t seem the right option. So we
thought well what other option do we have on jigsaw puzzle making? We carry
on what we’re doing, we either run a sweatshop for ourselves, we run a
sweatshop for somebody else or we look to drag puzzles maybe into the 19th
century if not the 20th as it was then because we’re still effectively cutting them
the same way they were cut in the 17th century. So we looked into other
methods and my scientific background helped in that, but also my number two
here Philip Kenrick, who is a professor of archaeology and also has maths and
physics as a second, and between us we were a fairly formidable team. And we
managed to get a small grant from the DTI to look into other ways of cutting
and we started looking at diamond wires in the first instance, which was fairly
successful. We then went on to water jet cutting and then enhanced slurry
water jet cutting which was pretty good. I mean we started this with the
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premise that we needed to be able to cut a circle, a triangle and a square from a
piece of wood. They could then be rotated in the holes that they came out of so
they’re a perfect fit either way round. We then needed to cut a second one and
interchange the pieces and they still needed to rotate. Once we can do that we
can do absolutely anything.
So this was a test of the technology? <0:07:50>
Absolutely, because it’s something almost impossible to do by hand. You ask
anybody, even a skilled cutter and there are still some skilled cutters around, to
cut a square. They can cut a square. But to cut one that then can turn 90
degrees and fit back in that hole, very, very rare. And to be able to do that on
the next puzzle in the batch, almost impossible. So you have a constraint. We
helped George Luck at one stage when he’s gone into laser cutting in the same
way. But previously all the beautiful puzzles that George Luck made which
were all individually cut and hand coloured, the multilayered animal ones that
you’ve seen, but the dolphin from puzzle one had to go back into puzzle one it
couldn’t go back into puzzle two. So the manufacturing problems were
immense. We thought if we can get over that basically the world is our oyster.
We know we are unfettered then in anything we need not to do in the project.
The waterjet cutting did that but the difficulty with the waterjet cutting you’re
still putting your physical medium through the material. So whether you’re
using a saw which goes up and down and puts splinters on the back of the
puzzle, the water jet did the same, it put splinters, finer splinters but they’re
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still there. And you also had a problem that because you’re putting the water
through you get a Venturi effect behind it, so you get a slight dampening to the
wood and if you then put that straight into the packaging it can go mouldy. So
you have to then dry them as well so you have another process to put into it.
And we were doing some work with a university about the water jet cutting
and we just happened to go and visit them to do something or other else and
they showed us around their laser department. And we said, ‘Great, can’t we do
this with lasers?’ They said, ‘Oh no, no, no, you can’t cut wood with lasers.’ ‘Do
you mind if we have a look?’ So we put our little water jet programme onto the
laser and we put the piece of wood on, and when the smoke cleared we picked
up this sort of charcoal and thought okay, can’t cut puzzles with a laser, it’s a
simple as that. And we came home quite disappointed with that. And that
weekend we just happened to have some friends down and we were talking
about this over dinner and he said, ‘Well that’s interesting, our son’s doing
optical welding with lasers.’ I said, ‘I thought he was a doctor, I didn’t know he’s
gone into engineering?’ He said, ‘No, no, no, he’s reattaching detached retinas
using laser beams.’ At which point I thought hang on, this guy’s shooting lasers
through living people’s heads and they are presumably standing up again after,
and we’re making charcoal, what’s going on here? And I started reading up
everything I could about lasers. I’m afraid it does get awfully [inaudible 0:10:28]
at this stage, because up until then whether it was Star Wars or your firework
concert, a laser is a laser is a laser. And that’s by far from true. So I started
understanding the physics of lasers and it thought I felt that we’d found an
overlap between the industrial lasers which produce carbon and the medical
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lasers which would not have cut wood but cut cleanly and delicately. So it was
a choice between selling a few of the children or my TR4A that I’d just finished
restoring, and unfortunately the children stayed. So we did that to go and
borrow a laser from the university. It was all we could do to hire one for a day
and it cost that much money to hire for a day. We went to local companies
including Oxford Scientific which make bits for medical lasers. We borrowed
bits. Another good friend of mine, Paul Taylor, help us to write and bug the
software so it was not readable by anybody else, because, you know, we had no
idea what we were doing to be perfectly honest, but it was great fun. And we
went in at 9 o'clock and we asked them if they’d leave us and could we lock the
door please because we didn’t want them to see we’re just about to take their
half million pound laser apart and bolt a few extra bits on, which we did. And
sort of at 10.30am we’d sat down with a cup of coffee and the first ever laser cut
puzzle, which just worked. And it’s a little cruder than what we make now but
not very much so, but it is still better than any of the competition worldwide on
the market. So we played a bit for the day as we thought we might as well,
we’ve paid for all this let’s keep doing some. And really at that point it was a
matter of we have to sit down and digest what the heck’s happened here
because nobody else had – a lot of other people have tried and everyone said it
couldn’t be done. So we came back and we went back to the DTI and said,
‘We’ve done this, can we have a little bit more money to do some more please?
We think this is important.’ And effectively all the grants had been given up at
that time, that was the last Lottery sessions in the ‘80s, ours were long before
that. And they had one small pot of money available for joint venture. So we
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went off to Culham which is not very far away from here, to the Joint European
Application Research Centre, and showed them what we doing and said, ‘We’ve
done this, would you like to work with us, we think we can do more with this?’
At which point they said, ‘Yes, love to do a joint venture on this, we’re going to
learn a lot from you.’ I said, ‘No, no, no, we’ve done this, we want to know
where to go from here, we’ve never seen work like this in an actual material
before.’ So we came back and looked at the small print and the small print said
whatever we did we would have to publish. And I thought well do we really
want to tell everybody what we’re doing? If nobody else is doing this, probably
not. So we were lucky at that stage because it was just when the banks were
starting to lend money again and we trotted along to the bank and said, ‘This is
what we’ve done, we’d like some money please because we can’t afford to buy
a laser ‘cause we can’t afford half a million, but we’d like to build one.’ And
they asked no questions, apart from how much. And we said, ‘Oh about
£100,000.’ So we walked out with a £100,000 overdraft which we spent
£85,000 of the next morning. Bought a pile of secondhand bits and a manual
and said, ‘Okay, we’re going to build a laser.’ And within about three months
we had. And we started working with another company because it had to go
through health and safety. So they basically got it signed off for us and we took
that back in-house. And that would be back in 1985.
How many people were working on the development of the laser here with you?
<0:14:26>
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With us? Basically it was Philip and myself and we just were having a whale of
a time.
And how long did it take you? <0:14:32>
I suppose start to finish it was about six months from saying we really, really
want to do this, we’ve got to find the money somehow, to having a machine
that worked. So that was coming up to Christmas and we announced that we
would take laser cut puzzles to the Toy Fairs in ’86, which created a lot people
falling about laughing because Fisher Price had just announced in the press that
they’d spent $500,000 researching laser cutting of puzzles and said it couldn’t
be done. So, you know, how are we going to have done it, little company like
ours? It was helped I think because we actually had a piece in The Times at
Christmas of tradition and technology, because that’s really how we’ve always
gone. We make very traditional toys but in a very modern, environmentally
friendly way. And it was a nice piece, it was half a whole pink page. And as Toy
Fair opened we were just inundated with people waving bits of pink newspaper
at us saying, ‘We want to talk to you about this.’ And all of the major puzzle
manufacturers turned up within the first hour at Nuremberg to look at what
we’d done. And they were coming back saying, ‘No, no one’s going to want to
buy this it’s going to be far too expensive.’ And when they actually realised the
prices we were going for, which is more than hand cutting for sure, but the
thing was totally, totally different, we were then approached by three of those
companies within the week after Nuremberg offering to buy the company.
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Whereas at Nuremberg they’re telling everybody, ‘This will never go anywhere.’
But, you know, there was no way we could value the company because we
didn’t know what we’d unleashed and we’re what, 26 years on, 28 years on
from that, we still don’t know what we’ve unleashed. I still find new things to
do with the laser literally every day and that tends to be new techniques, new
materials as they come along. We get a lot of things that people say you can’t
possibly cut on a laser. You know, we’re now cutting ripstop nylon which in
theory should melt. It doesn’t. We have a technique and we’ve set up a laser
cutting system for a tailor that makes bespoke suits, and we’ve written a
database for that. So as he starts measuring you the database predicts what
the other measurements should be so it’s already laying out the pattern for the
material before you’ve finished measuring. When that last measurement goes
in the machine automatically switches on and the suit’s cut out within ten
minutes. So there are just things that you cannot do in any other way possible.
And our strap line was if you can draw it, we can cut it. We’re working with a
laser beam of 0.3 millimetre, thinner than a human hair. That has 400 or 600
watts depending on the machine we’re using squeezed into that beam. The
power is immense. So it vaporises whatever it touches. So unlike any of the
other processes we were talking about that puts a physical medium through so
you get breakout, you don’t with a laser. Absolutely perfect cut, front and back.
The difficulty is then how you handle that to stop any burning, any splash back.
And that’s what none of the other companies that are trying to catch us up on
lasers can do. So one of the other companies for example, I’m quite happy to
name names, has to stain the back of their puzzles brown to hide the burn.
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They cannot do double sided puzzles. And they have a much wider cut so when
you put the puzzle down you can see very clearly the cut marks. We had the
problem that when we go to an exhibition we have to write puzzles up in very
large letters because people think we’re selling art prints, because from a metre
you cannot see our cuts. And that’s what enables us to do everything from the
world’s smallest puzzle, which was a postage stamp cut into 96 fully
interlocking pieces, to the world’s largest which was over 10,000 square feet
and had over a quarter of a million pieces in it. And you still don’t see the joins
on them.
It’s the precision. <0:18:49>
Absolutely. Where we have if you like excelled from what we’re doing we've
taken a process which has been around for decades, you know, lasers have been
around since the ‘50s, we’ve cross pollinated it with very modern cutting edge
technology on how that beam is controlled, hence the medical side of what
we’re doing. And then we’ve written our own dedicated software that puts in
all of those parameters into the machine. So the machine thinks for itself. So
now you can come to me with something totally different, totally new, with the
experience I’ve got I know 90 per cent where it’s got to be on those parameters,
but once we put those on the machine takes over from there and refines it
down further. So we don’t make prototypes. If you come to me and say, ‘I
would like this made please,’ you get something you can go and sell the next
day. We don’t do mock-ups, we don’t do prototypes, they are perfect from
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scratch. So our development time is tiny compared to anybody else. Equally
our development costs are tiny. And that’s why a lot of the work we do never
has my name on it because it’s made for other companies, other brands, other
countries. You know, we went from I think in ’98 we were dealing with eight
countries for exporting, sorry, ’93. By ’95 we were over 60 countries. And that
was particularly selling back to Sweden and Germany which if you can sell
wooden puzzles and wooden toys back to Sweden and Germany I think you’re
doing something pretty good. But that was also going into education in
Sweden and Germany and I think you do that, you know where you are and you
can be comfortable whatever happens. And when we first started we were
very, very twitchy. We thought well if we’ve learnt how to do this, somebody
else can see what we’ve done. For the first six months no, we wouldn’t let
anybody through the door. And after a couple of years we started relaxing. And
now our nearest competitor as I say still makes a wide cut, still burns the backs,
and isn’t really a competitor as far as we’re concerned. But we’ve already got
two generations on from that which we’re not using on the puzzles. So if
anybody does catch us up we’ve got the next, but we don’t need to because
what we’ve got is virtually perfect already. And that’s a two-edged sword with
what we’re doing because we’ve got the best puzzle in the world, the nicest fit,
the nicest feel, the most sophisticated designs, but it’s still a puzzle. And if
that’s a puzzle for a child it has a perceived price. ‘Cause no matter how nice it
is, within a few hours it’s going to be on the floor, the dog’s going to have
chewed a bit, a bit’s going have got lost behind the sofa or whatever it is. So
you have a perceived value. And there are a lot of people in the industry who
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said to us for years, and they were quite right, we had a process looking for a
product. We made jigsaw puzzles because we made jigsaw puzzles, not
because laser was necessarily the best way or the most economical way to
make puzzles. It’s just we had a product, we then had a technique so we kept
on making puzzles with it. And we do make the finest puzzles, I’m quite happy
to blow my own trumpet on that because the amount of awards and write ups
we’ve got, other people think so too.
What do you think it is, apart from the process of how you manufacture them, how
you produce them, what do you think it is about your products that makes them
particularly special? <0:22:19>
Oh we enjoy the design that we do and again it’s all done in-house. So we have
very much a house style that people come to expect. Even when we sell
overseas, yes if somebody sends me a picture and we’ll make it into a puzzle
and send them their picture back, but lots of overseas countries want our
puzzles because they are typically English. And I make no qualms about that.
But in the same way, I’m snot selling a puzzle to a five year old. I’m selling it to
their parents or their grandparents more often, so a lot of the designs we have
will appeal to the parents. We have a lot of humour in them, which the children
may not even see but the parents will because with a puzzle, particularly on a
younger child, you have to engage a parent or an adult with that. If you just
give a puzzle to a small child it’ll chew a bit, it’ll poke a few bits about, then it’ll
get bored and go and do something else. If you spend a few minutes doing that
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puzzle with a child then the child’s fixed to that. And children do puzzles totally
different to the way adults do. A child has no inhibitions about trying a bit,
thumping it, you know, hammering it in or whatever it does, and when it fits
it’s pleased with that, it’s got it’s own reward from that and it goes on to the
next bit. But if you see a child do it and you show a child how to do it, say, ‘Oh,
let’s try this piece here,’ or whatever it happens to go, the child will remember
that and they will always do that puzzle in that sequence. But equally the child
relates the fact that you were pleased with them when they completed the
puzzle. They do the puzzle and, you know, like the dog get the biscuit, the
praise is to be there because they’ve done the puzzle. So there’s a cementing of
a relationship around this which goes far beyond just keeping that child quiet
for ten minutes. And similarly with the range of tray puzzles that we make for
example, our simplest tray puzzles the picture behind the piece and the picture
in front of the piece is the same. In fact we were the first company that all our
puzzles always have something inside. We felt isn’t it awful because all the
puzzles up until we started these in the mid ‘70s you picked a piece out and
what was showing you was a bit of bubbly hardboard inside because that’s
what was inside. And what a waste for the sake of a print, you lose so much
design possibility and play possibility. So that has the same picture backwards
and forwards so it’s an instant match to that piece, but each piece is cut to a
different shape and will not go into one of the other holes. So the child is being
taught if I match this picture to this picture it will go in, pat on the head. That
then extends to the same principle in the shape won't got anywhere else but
the picture behind is different. So you’re putting an abstract into it. So you’re
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now saying I’ve got to find the shape that this fits, so it’s a new learning. We
then add to that by putting more pieces in, so instead of island pieces so that
one piece will go into one hole, you take several pieces out and you’re left with
a big hole. So you’ve got to put them back in in any order that makes that work
without as many clues. So you’ve moved on again in manipulation in turning,
trying. And then you go on further to pieces in the middle come out as well, so
you have to sequence. You can’t put the piece in the middle of the puzzle back
in until you’ve done the pieces around the outside. So you learn to sequence.
With those four techniques you can do anything. Again you’ve learnt all the
necessary motor skills and that can be by the time you’re four.
Did you research any elements of child development for developing these, or did you
experiment on your own children, it works with them? <0:26:09>
The three boys certainly were well used. But equally yes, we used to go to the
local school, the local village school, and then when curriculum came in we
were involved in that. Yvonne was chair of governors at the school so is very
involved in that. And we’ve always involved ourselves with schools because we
used to invite schools to come and see what we did and then we would have
the children make their own puzzle. We’d give them a blank piece of wood,
they’d draw their own picture on it, we then show them how to cut that up. So
from a very early age they’ve actually gone back knowing how it works. And we
equally get feedback from seeing how that works. And yes, because it’s
something I’m interesting in we have spoken to child psychologists and the like
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and educationalists, and we want to work with that. There’s no point us going
down one route if they’re doing something different at a school. But equally we
don’t want it to be boring, we don’t want it to be purely educational, there’s got
to be a fun element otherwise there’s not imperative to go back and do it.
There’s got to be a reason, there’s got to be a reward somehow or there’s got to
be something else that you get from these. So for example we do a range of
floor puzzles that have ten hidden objects inside the picture. So we do a
dinosaur one and in some place there’s a little ammonite fossil or there’s a skull
or whatever it happens to be. And that’s the fun bit. But you can’t find those
until you’ve done the puzzle. So again it’s showing you do a bit of work and you
get something for it. And again once a child learns they never forget whether
those pieces are. You could cover them up and they’ll still say, ‘That’s where the
skull is,’ because they have a differently wired brain. And again because as a
doting parent you’re always going to say, ‘Oh clever girl,’ there is an instant
reward, there’s a gratification. But at the same time without it being a chore,
you’re learning something, you’re learning skills.
Do you think there’s been a development in the expectation of what learning toys can
achieve? <0:28:11>
Yes.
A change in direction or has it remained largely the same kind of ---. <0:28:17>
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No, I think it’s changed quite dramatically. And yes, over the 35 years we’ve
been dealing with children, children get older younger I believe is the phrase
that we use these days. We used to say we would lose somebody around the
age of eight or nine to doing puzzles until they’re usually in their 40s and
they’ve recently discovered the joy of puzzling. It’s probably less than that now,
but then again the breadth of possibilities are there. And without soap boxing
too much, it’s very much easier to get an electronic toy that will buzz and flash
and give that instant gratification and give it to the child and go off and do
what you’ve got to do in your busy life, than there and give the gratification to
the child yourself. I think there’s a great loss in that and I think there’s a great
loss to community and family in that. Off of soapbox.
Coming back to you talked about Toy Fair and other toy manufactures, who do you see
your competitors as being and has that changed over the life of the company?
<0:29:23>
Competitors is difficult. We’re all out there for the same pound, so everybody’s
a competitor these days if you like. But BTHA now tell me that we are the
longest standing members of the BTHA still wholly manufacturing in the UK.
And that’s really important to me because we have people that are trying to
buy our business to take it to China. They don’t want my puzzle business, they
want my software. The laser software is worth a lot of money. A puzzle
business is a puzzle business. So it’s a tricky one to do. So we’re all competition
and then there’s no competition. There isn’t another company out there that
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has the breadth of experience and possibilities of what we do. You know,
within puzzling sure, but if you look at puzzles there have been some trends.
You had the 3D puzzles which something quite different, you had the round
puzzles. But if you look at general puzzles they are the same cut, the same
complexity, all that’s new is a picture. So it comes down to marketing or who’s
got the most TV spend this year, what’s the most favourite character, what’s
the pester power from the kids. And I think it’s a shame because the ability for
a puzzle to be fun and educate has been lost in the, ‘I get ten minutes’ quiet out
of this. It’s a cardboard puzzle, it’s only a couple of pounds, it’s a quiet way of
getting some time.’ And I think that’s a great loss. And so we try and still do
things with puzzles that will still introduce and involve children. We have no
problem, we still go out to a lot of events. We don’t have anybody doing our PR,
we’d much rather go off to a craft fair or to a museum event or something and
take our products along and let the people play with them. And that way we
learn what the children like and what they don’t like. We learn that children
will do puzzles with our range of compact puzzles, CPs which was in CD cases,
and are brainteasers. We have disaffected teenagers who’ll come along and
play with them. And we’ve had the most unlikely looking candidates spend
hours fiddling with our puzzles who normally would’ve had, you know, an
attention span of three seconds perhaps on something like this. If you’d asked
them would they do a puzzle, never in a million years. But because those are
innovative and challenging designs and it engages with a different mindset ---.
Again we have to look at a mindset of a child which is wired differently to an
adolescent which is wired differently to a teenager which is wired differently to
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Robert Longstaff
an adult, and if you look at our ranges of puzzles they work differently to those
groups. Where you start having problems is where you start getting changes.
So, you know, around now the six to seven year old and around now the 13 to 14
year old if you like, where they’re going through all sorts of changes but
including having their brains rewired, that’s when you lose them unless you can
move on to something else. So from a marketing point of view you’ve got very,
very specific categories of this is a puzzle for an adult, this is an educational
puzzle, this is a special needs puzzle, whatever it happens to be. But in the
same way we found one company used to buy from us, buying our children’s
floor puzzles, were selling them back to Bupa care homes and the like for elderly
people that were having articulation problems. And we said, ‘Well why do they
want a Noah’s Ark?’ ‘Well they don’t really want but they want the big pieces.’
I said, ‘Why didn’t you just ask for big pieces?’ So now we have a range of large
pieces, thick pieces, simpler interlocking, depending – we work with the Stroke
Association, with Alzheimer's and with the Arthritis Society producing puzzles
that help those sufferers to do something because usually they’re very mentally
aware and able still, but can’t necessarily get their hands to do what their
brains want them to do. So we give them the tools to be able to do that by
making something that overcomes the problem, but they still get that
satisfaction of doing something without being made to feel like a child again.
Can you tell us about when somebody loses a piece of one of their puzzles as well?
<0:34:00>
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Robert Longstaff
Yes. Oh it’s a great one because I think we were told by – this is definitely going
to get me into the Tower – the Puzzle Library said that person that sends most
puzzles back with pieces missing tends to be the Palace and there the corgis
seem to get them. But because of the laser and because we’re cutting with less
than 0.3 of a millimetre discrepancy between the puzzles, each of our cuts are
absolutely identical. So if somebody loses a piece for whatever reason, whether
the dog’s chewed it or there’s been a move or whatever, we offer a replacement
part service. There’s a possibility that the picture is out by a millimetre or two
because of the mount of the picture at the time, but we can do that. Yes, we
charge £1.50 for a piece just to cover that piece, but that person then has a
complete puzzle again, they’re happy with what’s going on. And what’s really
the nice – last year we had a playgroup asked for a piece of a puzzle that they’d
said had been in continuous daily use since they’d bought it. And we hadn’t
sold that design in over 12 years, so it was at least 12 years old, it was still in daily
use and they’d lost a piece and we could replace that piece. So after a minimum
of 12 years they still had a complete puzzle which was still giving joy every day
in that sort of environment. Card puzzles, yeah, of course they’re cheaper
although I’m horrified at how expensive particularly adult cardboard puzzles
still are. And when you think about it, you’re buying a pretty box with some
bits of chopped up cardboard and a lot of dust sitting inside it. I don’t see why
it has to be that way. But you try and do a cardboard puzzle more than a couple
of times, they start falling apart quite quickly and you then just can’t do the
puzzle. With the wooden puzzles we can. So the whole of our range of adult
puzzles we offer a packing option of it coming in a wooden frame with glazing
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Robert Longstaff
if you want that frame. So when you’ve finished the puzzle you can actually
just clip the glazing on the front and hang it on the wall, because we do a lot of
fine art. And bear in mind from a metre you won't see the joins anymore, it
becomes a print. And from that point of view if you ever want to do it again,
you can just take the four clips off, you take the glazing off, you tip it out and
it’s as precise and as pristine as when it started. In the same way we offer what
we call unique puzzles. So if you have a photograph you can send it to us, we
convert that back into a puzzle, either in a wooden presentation box or the
frame. And the quickest we’ve ever done that for a customer was three hours.
That actually turned up from an American family that had come here on their
way from London, had some photographs of being on the London Eye. They
went into Oxford to do a little bit of sightseeing, by the time they came back
three hours later the puzzle was ready for them. So again we do individual one
off puzzles, we’ve done a million before for one company, so we have the ability
to do everything in between.
You seem to be very sort of agile and innovative in your approach, how have other
companies responded to that and how do they perceive you? <0:37:25>
What a wonderful question. What I will say is virtually all of the cardboard
manufacturers if you phoned up and said, ‘Hello, I’m an artist, I’ve got a lovely
picture, I’d like a couple of hundred puzzles made of this picture,’ or, ‘I’m a
charity I want to do something for there,’ I would think 99.9 per cent of those
companies would pass those people on to me, and again I can name all the
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names if necessary, partly because they know I will do a service and they know I
will do it well, partly because nobody is geared up to offer a service. What every
other possibly company is geared up to is saying, ‘Here is my product, please
buy it.’ We work the other way round. We’re more than happy, yes we have a
product range which is on the website and people can buy, but a lot of the work
we do are for either individuals or for groups or for, you know, you may come
and say, ‘I’d like 10,000 for my supermarket please,’ we’ve done that. Equally
we work with people like English Heritage and National Trust who want 50 of
something for each individual property. We’re perfectly happy to do that
because the flexibility of what we’ve got and the technique allows us to do
that. And again from our point of view if everybody wants a 280 piece puzzle it
doesn’t matter what picture’s on the front of it. We produce most of the ---.
Because if it’s all done in-house we produce our own digital prints in-house, we
do our own laminating, we do our own box making so there aren’t any stages
that something’s out of our hands. So we have the flexibility which nobody else
can give. And how other people think of us? I don’t know. We’re still a small
company from that point of view. At our height I suppose we employ 35 full
time and part time people. But the point is we have machinery that works 24
hours a day so we do turn out a lot of product, more so that most people would
realise. And certainly we were the largest wooden puzzle manufacturers for
some considerable time and go into more countries than anybody else is. And
we have worked pretty much every major puzzle company you can think of.
We’ve done subcontract work for them. More than that, I’m not honestly sure
how we’re held by ---. Because we stopped doing Toy Fair quite some years ago
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Robert Longstaff
now, probably a good five years that we’ve been to Toy Fair, I don’t have that
contact anymore. But equally if anyone’s got a problem or have a job they can’t
do we’re always the first call. We’re always the first call for anyone looking for
promotional material. And yes, the name’s out there that if there’s a problem
we’re more likely to solve it than anybody else. So I think that’s, yeah, I’m happy
with being held in that regard anyway.
And how do you view the others in the rest of the toy industry, broadly speaking?
<0:40:54>
We all do different things. We all have our own niches. We all, you know, those
price bands need to be there. I go to some companies and ten years time I’ll go
back and I’ll see the same products in the same way and I think what a shame.
But we’re not driven by dividends for our super drivers and directors and
investors. I’m allowed a huge carte blanche here to do and pursue what I want
to do. And that’s what we’ve done. Yes, we could’ve become the worlds largest
puzzle company but you’ve seen the range of other work we do and that goes
everything from literally medical research that we’re still doing as you know, all
the way through to the other products including full size furniture, the garden
design. We have our gold medal and we do Chelsea and Hampton Court and
the like. So we have – I have to feed me. I have a brain that will not stop. I
don’t sleep much, I never have and what gets me out of bed the next morning is
the next challenge not the next £100,000 that goes in the bank. And I think I
am cursed and lucky in that I’m driven by something unlike most of my
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Robert Longstaff
competitors, have to be driven because we’re not in that market, we’re not in
that same sort of market. On the other hand we have developed so many
things that have been taken off into other industries and used by other people.
Yeah, I am hugely personally satisfied with what we’ve achieved. All I need now
is about another 80 years and I’ll probably tick off most of the things still on my
list.
And the company itself you mentioned right at the beginning the sort of
environmental concerns, you talked about belief in child development and the
importance of learning and engagement with children and the way that they learn,
how have your beliefs shaped the company in terms of maybe the direction but also
the structure of it and how it works for the company? <0:43:09>
Oh, probably totally. I’m sure I’m a total dictator on what we do here. But
equally we’ve been innovative in new materials. We were the first company,
toy company, to use MDF. And in its early years MDF got a lot of bad press
because of formaldehyde problems. But a) we insisted a low formaldehyde
product was made which we’ve always used before it was in general use.
Equally MDF itself is an inherently safe material. You can chew a lump of MDF,
it won't taste very good but it’s not going to do you any harm. What causes the
problem is dust. And everybody else that uses jigsaws or whatever they do,
make a lot of dust. My laser makes no dust whatsoever. It vaporises what it
touches. So whatever it touches turns into water and steam or a small bit of
smoke and carbon. So there is no dust. You can walk around my workshop, it is
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Robert Longstaff
not a dusty place and yet we’re fully operational. You know, people will come in
and say, ‘Oh you’re not working today.’ ‘Yes.’ But we’re just unlike any other
woodworker because we have techniques unlike any other woodworker. And I
think because I’m not trained as a woodworker ---. At school I did design and
yes, I think I’m a good designer, but that relates to anything. So the first time
we were asked to do a garden at Chelsea we won an award. And people then
came and said, ‘Will you come and design my garden?’ ‘No, I’m not a garden
designer.’ I was given a brief, I have made a design because I’m a designer and I
can see in my head what I want and I can achieve it. It doesn’t mean to say I’m
going to go into your garden and give you want you want in your garden.
There’s a very big difference as far as I see it. But that means any time there’s a
new material available to us we’ve got the experience, the techniques and the
vision if you like to do something different with it. So we move things on very
much faster than anybody else. I noticed this year one of the other
manufacturers is selling a puzzle that is blacked out and if you warm it up the
picture appears. We did that 19 years ago when that material was first brought
out and we looked at it. We actually offered it to Waddington’s at that stage
‘cause we were working with Waddington’s, and they did some sales of the
materials. And it’s a nice little fun thing to do, but generally speaking it took
away the fun of a puzzle. The only way you could see what was there you
heated it up with your hand, the picture stayed for a few seconds, you had to
remember then where everything else was, a bit of pelmanism with a puzzle.
Which has a place, but if you are a serious puzzle doer that’s not what you do a
puzzle for. With the children again they were getting frustrated with it. In the
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same way, we made a whole range of puzzles for a company using the
refractive that moves as you move, you know, the combed plastic – I’m sorry I
forgot the right name – and we made those. But it made us feel ill. Because
you do it so many times that movement really gets inside your head. And again
as a puzzle it made something really, really different, so somebody’s always
looking for something different. But to then actually do that puzzle no child
would’ve kept, you know, they would’ve been motion sick within three minutes.
But they wanted the product made. In the end we said, ‘No we won't do it,
thank you very much, find somebody else.’ And nobody did because I think
everybody else that tried it had the same problem with it. So you have options.
People have got to bring out something new to try and get ahead of their
competition. So it’s always new pictures, but the pictures tend to be the same
1950s nostalgia or trains or vehicles or it’s a kitten sitting on something it has
never sat on before looking cute. You know, all the chocolate boxes stuff which
is there. Yes there’s innovation with the Wasgij and the like and that’s quite a
different thing. And I have to say that’s probably my Beatles mistake. The
gentleman that was doing those sent me one when he first did them himself, a
hand produced one. And I looked at it and I said, ‘It’s very interesting but it’s
not us thank you very much’, and passed it on to Waddington’s, who have done
quite well with it since.
Can you explain what it is? <0:47:54>
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Robert Longstaff
It’s the picture that you see on the box is the picture from if you like behind you.
So you’re doing a reverse picture. So the picture on the box has nothing to do
with the actual puzzle you’re trying to do. It’s a take on all of the old gold box
puzzles from Victory which never had a picture on the front, just a plain box. So
you get something with a title. I’ve got one that we’ve just done that I was
given when I was about six I think. And the title is Galloping Horses. But it’s a
carousel. But you’ve got to have done a lot of the puzzle to realise what it is. So
you get a clue from the title but not enough of a clue. So it’s a beautiful mental
exercise and it’s what an adult puzzle should be as far as I’m concern. It’s
challenging, it’s stimulating and it’s got all the things going for it. And if you
like the Wasgij does something similar to that because you’re just not copying
and saying oh the little bit of, oh that bit of flower goes next to that wheel
there or whatever it happens to be. So again we still do a lot of blank puzzles.
We do totally blank puzzles because you can buy the heat transfer paper now so
you can actually print that yourself and iron on a picture to a blank puzzle, so if
you want to actually make the puzzle yourself. We similarly do blank puzzles
that children can draw on or paint on to do that, so they’re just cut precisely to
start with. So I think our innovation is rather different to anybody else’s
because I just have a much broader palate palette than I can play with. They are
usually confined to what pictures do we do this year, what’s popular? Oh
dinosaurs are popular so every brings out a dinosaur puzzle. And then you
either look and compare, ‘I prefer that dinosaur picture to this dinosaur picture,’
or you’d say, ‘That one’s £6 that one’s £10,’ and price is always the selling point
at that stage. Not the quality, not the subject matter, it’s just does it fit the
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Robert Longstaff
price point. I think puzzles have generally gone that way. An adult puzzle, a
large piece puzzle, 3,000, 5,000 piece puzzle, it’s what you now buy to give to
Aunty Jane at Christmas ‘cause you really haven’t got a clue, you’ve only
probably seen her twice in the last five years and it’s, ‘Oh people like doing, it’s
got a train on it, it’s got a steam train on it, that’ll be nice, she’ll remember it.’
And it just has gone so far, I think it’s down in our psyche, that that’s what you
do with puzzles once you’re not a little kid anymore. And it’s just such a shame
because it is such a medium that you can do so many other things with. And in
some of our puzzles we do interchangeable parts. So that’s not just that we can
give you another piece that fits in, but you can do this so it fits ten pieces along
and only one piece high, or it can make a square or it can make a rectangle. And
each time you do something different with those pieces it makes something
totally different. So it gives you the ability to be creative within something that
has some constraints in. So if you’re not a creative person you do what it says
on the packet and you produce the picture. But you can then turn it into
something else. So some of our CPs, our compact puzzles for example, we’ve
got one called Kyoto and you do the puzzle and you make the little Kyoto
shrine. But you can move all those pieces around and you can make a pagoda.
And you can move all those pieces around and make something else. So the
challenge goes on. And in the same range we do a whole range of packing
puzzles, like the fish and the bird, so they’re made of subject matters that
people would enjoy anyway. And it tends to be male stocking fillers I must
admit. And at the exhibitions it’s always great at this time of year particularly
because we get ladies turn up and say, ‘My husband thinks he’s such a clever,
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Robert Longstaff
what can I get him that’ll prove difficult?’ We always point them at these
phases because they’ve been designed because of the laser capability that they
may have ---. If they’ve got ten pieces in them for example you’ll pretty much
always be able to get nine pieces in. So you think you’re almost there. And like
most packing puzzles there’s more than one solution to them. But because
we’re doing this with a laser and doing it by computer we can check this very
much more thoroughly. The fish for example I think there are 14 fish, two pairs
of fish will interchange. But apart from that, if you put that first fish into that
corner and it doesn’t belong there you can spend the rest of your life doing that
puzzle and you will never get it right, a 14 piece puzzle in a CD box which sells
for £10. But that is probably one of the most complex puzzles you can spend
any amount of money on buying. The one that was marketed a couple of years
ago that you won the million pounds for if you did the puzzle or whatever,
we’ve actually got more permutations within that one 14 piece puzzle than they
have on that. So we like our customers to hate us. If we really don’t – you
know, we’re looking at the adult side rather than the children side – if we
haven’t frustrated them we’ve not worked hard enough in what we’re doing on
the brain teasers. And that’s why they’re graded in a level from 1 to 10 so you
can pick your level of frustration.
Do you advertise at all in magazines or? <0:53:34>
Incredibly little now. When you consider you’ve been doing this 35 years most
people know of us one way or the other which is one of the reasons we stopped
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going to Toy Fair. And we do have a website but that’s not promoted hugely
well. We are changing that around because there is one other manufacturer in
particular that I suppose within general terms is a competitor and tells
everybody they are the only people doing this type of product. Which when it’s
said at trade fairs causes everyone to fall about laughing because everyone
knows we’ve been doing it 20 years longer than they have and still doing it. But
we do have plans for 2012 to expand the business. We are working with a new
social enterprise called Plus who would like to help increase our manufacturing.
So we are putting another laser into their unit in Barnstable and they’ll be
producing mainly the personalised. We do several different types of name
jigsaw puzzle, for example, big puzzle. And again because it’s cut on the laser
we can offer any name up to 22 characters. So although you could go in and get
an Andrew on a mug or a pad, we can do surnames, we can do Islamic names,
we’ve been Japanese characters, we can do anything on this. So again we’ve
got a totally unique range on that and that sells incredibly well. So they’re
taking on that manufacture to allow us to do more of the experimental work
because we’ve got very, very busy with that personalised side. And that’s going
to extend into more of the send us a picture of your own, we turn it into a
puzzle. But we’re also now doing a lot of wedding gifts in that way. It’s coming
from America that people like what used to be a traditional visitor’s book
several people are now doing blank puzzles that you sign a piece of puzzle. But
we’re now changing that around, offering you can have a blank puzzle now for
people to sign but you can put your wedding picture on it after, because we can
do the supplementation print after it’s been cut. So we’re offering that which
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Robert Longstaff
again can’t be done anywhere else. So we’re always looking to do newer things.
We have a huge range of products, it’s not just puzzles. The puzzles I have to
say is a huge love of mine because it’s almost as much fun to design them as to
do them at the other end. And to see the amount that we sell and the amount
of pleasure and frustration that people get out of them is hugely rewarding to
me personally. So yeah, great fun, great fun. Out of all the toy ranges we’ve
ever made, and we’ve done things from historical toys for museums all the way
through to robots and parts for robots, we work in plastics as well, we laser cut
particularly acrylics, we’ve done all of those, but a traditional wooden puzzle
has such a unique feel to it and the laser cut ones have such a beautiful smooth
action when the right piece goes in the right place, it is hugely satisfying to put
two pieces of puzzle together. And, you know, it doesn’t get much simpler than
that nor much more rewarding.
And the ideas for the puzzles they just sort of come to you in the shower or bath or?
<0:57:15>
Yes, pretty much. Again we do need another 80 years to get all the ideas that
I’ve still got out there. They come on from discussions, they come on from
seeing people doing things. Occasionally you’ll see someone try to do
something with a puzzle and you think I never thought about doing it like that,
so you can generate an idea back from that. And you’ll always find somebody
doing a puzzle differently. I’ve got a very friend, Bob Fynn, he used to work for
Hasbro and do all their puzzle testing, he never does a wooden puzzle from the
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Robert Longstaff
picture side. He turns it over and likes to match the grain. So there’s always
something different going on in somebody’s head and you’ve just got to think
as differently as every ---. You see why it’s, you know, from my point of view it’s
so exciting. The possibilities are endless because there’s always another way of
thinking about something, another way of seeing something. Which is why I
personally ---. I think I fell out of favour a bit with the toy business and going to
Toy Fair and seeing the same bit of plastic being over priced, over utilised and
more importantly material robbing to the world over something that had so
little play value or would last for such a short period of time in so much
packaging that you needed half a degree to be able to get the thing out of the
box to start with, using so many batteries and replacing human interaction
with something that goes bang, flash or squeak. I really felt we were just going
in such a direction that I was not comfortable in being involved in anymore.
And at which point I said, ‘I just don’t want to do Toy Fair anymore,’ and my loss
I’m sure. But it’s been interesting to see where the toy industry goes. And if
you look at the last few years’ toy awards you’re going back, all the time back,
you know, Harmer beads a couple of years ago, Fuzzy Felt again, and now we’ve
got Magic Robot out again. Great, I’ve got my original one in the loft. You
worry is that because people have run out of ideas and everybody’s doing
something retro so let’s do something retro and just see what happens, or
whether it’s really an engagement saying, ‘Well people engaged with these
toys then will they engage with them again?’ I don’t know, I think the jury’s out
on that one yet and it all depends where things go in the next year or two. I
think my feeling is there’s no money in the industry, everyone’s have to sell
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Robert Longstaff
things as cheaply as they can to be able to get on the shelves to start with,
they’re getting squeezed from the manufacturers who’ve suddenly realised
they can hold everybody to ransom in China, if you really want something to hit
the shelves in November you pay this amount of money, that there’s not
enough development left in it to be able to come up with new ideas so you’ve
got to look back. And looking back’s not a bad thing, it’s just looking back and
then taking it forward rather than just necessarily looking back. And I do thing
toy selling these days is a big, big business. There’s lots of money out there,
there’s lots of people, reputation, jobs on the line and they treat it whether it’s
nails, biscuits, whatever it is, it’s a commodity, you get it in, you sell it for what
you can do, you make the best profit you can, you move on to next year. And
that doesn’t bring out a lot of involvement. In the same way the other thing I
used to hate about Toy Fair, and we started in the same way. There used to be
the little greenhouse units and you’d get the newcomers, the person that’s had
an idea or the person that’s taken his redundancy money and decides he wants
to go into toy making thinking it’s a lovely world to be in, not the backstabbing,
corporate world it may be, I’m not saying it is. And every Toy Fair that we were
there by day two or three we’d get these people down with their beautifully
made toy in their hand saying, ‘Everyone tells me you’re the guy that will help
me about this. I’ve just had,’ whichever department store, ‘come down and
they would like to have 20,000 of them,’ you know, and your first question is,
‘How many have you made so far?’ and it’s usually, ‘Five.’ ‘How have you priced
it?’ ‘Well,’ and I say, ‘I can stop you here because I know you’re in trouble. You
will have priced it out at maybe £10 an hour because you think that’s what your
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Robert Longstaff
time’s worth, you’ve made a few so you bought the bit of materials here and
you’ve found this and you’ve whatever cobbled it together. And by the time
you actually price this properly and I price it for you meeting all the red tape and
the health and safety and toy safety legislation and get all the right certification
on it, I’m going to be charging you what you’re trying to sell it for.’ And it
happens nine times out of then that’s the way it goes. And that guy goes away
deflated or even worse he will then try and make that 10,000 himself and fail.
For sure, some people are going to succeed. And I’m sounding awfully glass half
empty here because without those people the industry would never have
moved on and it’s really important to encourage them, but I think it’s important
to encourage them rather than slapping them down the whole time. And I’ve
asked these companies that do this buying before, ‘Why do you do it? You
know you’re going to put this guy into bankruptcy this year.’ They say, ‘Yeah,
but in the meantime we’ll have made a good profit on what he’s given us and
next year there’s always somebody new coming along.’ Now when the industry
works like that it’s not an industry I want to work in. And I’m not saying it’s all
like that, and it may not be like that now, but certainly five, six years ago I got
that feeling the whole time. And because we are community based in what we
do here, that’s not what I want to hear. And if that’s what the industry has to
offer it’s not an industry I want to play with anymore. So a difficult one, a
difficult one. But it happens so much.
Was that something that has always been a part of the industry or did you notice that
did it happen suddenly or was it ---. <1:03:38>
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Robert Longstaff
It very probably always has been. I think it’s more prevalent now because there
are companies out there short of ideas, short of their own innovation but big on
cash and they will try and buy ideas, they will try and buy work. And you get an
individual that’s come up with an idea that is new, that’s exactly what they are,
they’re an individual. In the same way we do not fit in any of the moulds that
I’m sure other toy makers you’ve seen, we don’t fit in with the rest of the
industry. But on the other hand you look at the amount of awards and product
ranges we’ve got up there and methods of doing things we’ve got and then go
back and look at the others and say, ‘Well what have you changed in the last 10,
15, 20 years?’ I know which one I will be batting for.
And you mentioned that I think Heal’s was one of the first companies that approached
you and actually it’s a name that comes up quite a lot with the people that were
starting out in wooden toys. <1:04:39>
Really? Yes. Yes, I can believe that.
I was wondering what your relationship was particularly with Heal and if you think
that they were a good or a less good company to work with? <1:04:50>
Well it was good. Heals originally asked me to go with the musical instruments.
And I used to do these – what do they call them, Craftsmen of Excellence
Exhibitions – and I would go and sit in one of their stores and I’d always do it in
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the winter when it was cold in my workshop, because it was nice and warm and
they gave me a good lunch, and I’d be sitting there perhaps polishing a harp or
stringing something or whatever it happened to be. And I would have my ego
well and truly massaged by particularly all these lovely ladies that come along
and say, ‘Oh you must gain immense pleasure from what you’re doing.’ ‘Yes,
very much so, buy something please.’ But it was good fun and, you know, I was
developing me and my character. And I thoroughly enjoyed it, absolutely. The
toy making side as I say, total accident, they just happened to see them and
taken them along. And the deal we were on with the instruments was that if
they sold an instrument, which they expected anyone to order a Celtic harp, but
if they did they were on a 10 per cent commission. So of course we’d turn up
with a box of £300 or £400 worth of wooden toys, little butties and cars and
pull along ducks and the like, and they’d put them up at the prices I’d suggested
and they sold out within three hours, not selling any of their wooden toys over
on the shelves. And I thought this could be really pleasing. And he was furious
‘cause he was still only on 10 per cent. Said, ‘I suppose we’d better work on 10
per cent,’ but the next thing that came in was order for £300 miscellaneous
wheeled toys. And that was it. But without that break I would never, ever have
thought of going into toy making. I’d still be making lutes and harps only now I
imagine. I’m not sure which is the right way or the wrong way. But no, they
were encouraging. And yeah, back then you could be as naive as we were back
then. As I say, we pyrographed our phone number on the bottom, we then got
a call from Galt Stores saying, ‘We would like to order some of your stuff.’ And
at that stage because we had them and Boots and a few other people asking,
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we thought oh, there’s something in this toy making business perhaps we’d
better look into it. So on the news it said there is a Toy Fair. So I said, ‘Okay.’ So
we phoned up, long before internet, phoned up and said, ‘I believe there’s a Toy
Fair.’ So we got into the last Brighton Toy Fair and then we got into London.
What was it the first year that you actually set up? <1:07:22>
That would be, the first toys we made in ’77. The first instruments I started in
’73. So again we were really lucky at that stage because I was playing with
design, the instruments – no, that’s not true. The instruments weren’t keeping
the bills paid but Yvonne was still working at that stage and she was keeping
the bills paid and I was thoroughly enjoying myself with the instruments,
mainly through the V&A I must say who back in those days the V&A would
actually let me go and measure instruments and record their soundings. Now
of course you can’t get within ten feet of an x-ray of instrument. But I still have
all my original drawings from the V&A up there and only half of which I’ve ever
made into an instrument. So, you know, I just need another three lifetimes and
I’ll be okay. But we started doing this from a design point of view and what can
I change, what can I do, and we were picked up by Design Centre in London. So
we had the first ever puzzles that Design Centre gave a sticker on, the first ever
wheeled toys and the first ever dolls house.
And what would you say is the importance of the Design Centre sticker? <1:08:34>
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Somebody else looked at something that I thought was good and said, ‘This is
good.’ And they were professionals at it. You’ve got to remember I’m a dyslexic
biologist designing something that I have no “skills” to do. And for someone to
come along and buy it says you’ve done something right. For someone to come
along as prestigious as the Design Centre and say, ‘You do realise this is the first
time we’ve ever given an award in this category,’ then yeah, it’s great. And you
think, okay, maybe I am doing something right, I’ll try a bit harder tomorrow.
And it’s that stimulus that’s always moved us on and it’s just gone from one
thing to another on that. But we could do it in those days. We went to that
first Toy Fair and we had made by that time a whole range of inch thick puzzles,
animal puzzles, which again got Design Centre stickers, nobody had made
anything like them before. And we put them and I probably had made ten of
each by that time. And yes, we got hit by the Mothercare and the Marks &
Spencer's and the like, and I thought what the heck do you say ‘cause we’d
never even visited Toy Fair. It was only a month before had we said, ‘Is there a
Toy Fair?’ and said, ‘Yes, we’ve got a cancellation space would you like it?’ I said,
‘Okay.’ And I think you’ve seen some of the photos. So there we were with our
little chipboard shelving on spur brackets sitting in the gloom, not having ever
been to one we had no idea what we were going to. And to all the of the large
companies that asked we said, ‘Oh we’re really sorry, our allocation is sold out
for this year, would you like us to take your address and we’ll contact you for
next year’s catalogue?’ rather than saying, ‘I’ve never made more than ten what
the hell do I do now?’ But equally we’d get the little craft shops and corner
shops and art shops and toy shops coming and saying, ‘Do you have a minimum
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order?’ And I’d say, ‘Erm, erm, £50?’ ‘Yeah, great,’ and they’d come and give us
an order because they couldn’t get in to the enclosed stands of Brio or Lego
without either a border pass or a prior invitation or without spending £10,000.
And do you think that that change happened with some companies becoming out of
bounds to everybody? <1:11:01>
It was obviously happening around that time, so that’s early ‘80s. And through
the ‘90s I remember on one Toy Fair walking down three aisles and seeing
nothing but blank walls thinking have I walked out of the hall. And it was
awful, absolutely awful. Whereas we always, and again I think you’ve seen
some of the photographs here, out stand was always open, we wanted to get
people in. We want people to play with our products. We don’t package our
products, we have the minimum ---. You know, it’s great now everyone says
what a green company we are, we have minimum packing. We’ve always had
minimum packing. You saw I think the catalogue we have from 1982 which
actually says that the packaging is the minimum to protect it whilst enhancing
the product. It’s what we’ve always done. And yet when you consider we were
running flexible working hours and a crèche here, we’ve been ahead of the
curve all the way along, not because we’re clever but because it seems the right
way to live our lives. And there’s no way we could’ve gone down the corporate
route. You know, when Hasbro offered me I think it was £2 million for our
puzzle business 10, 12 years ago, there’s now way I could’ve worked with Hasbro
once we’d looked and seen how they wanted it to be done because it would
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Robert Longstaff
have fossilized. We would have carried on making what they wanted on that
year forever. We would’ve lost the innovation, we would’ve lost the ability to
create. And yeah, that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s not the
money, it’s the fact that there’s another challenge out there yet again, even
after 35 years there’s still plenty of challenges out there.
So going back to sort of the pre-laser days where obviously you were still very
successful and it wasn’t to do with the technology of making the product ---. <1:12:54>
No, it wasn’t then.
What do you think was the key to success? <1:12:56>
It must just have been the design.
Just the design? <1:12:58>
And my wonderful character of course. No, it was design. We were doing
things that hadn’t been seen. I’ve always fiddles with the technology that I had.
I’ve got some, I shouldn’t think it’s being made anymore, but some very basic
DIY type woodworking machinery up there, it’s been made by a French
company called Kitty. And at that stage I was also writing for several of the
woodworking magazines and I used to go to their woodworking shows and sit
on their judging panel and their advisory panels and the like. And on one
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Robert Longstaff
occasion I’d talked to these people at Kitty and said, ‘Oh I’m planing rosewood
down to 1.5 millimetres through your machine to make fingerboards out of.’
And they said, ‘You can’t possibly be doing that, it only goes down to 5 mls.’ I
said, ‘No, I’ve made the adapter on it that now does 1.5 ml.’ So they actually
came out to see me and said, ‘That’s clever.’ And the next thing that turned up
was their spindle moulder and said, ‘Thought you might like to try playing with
this.’ So we had that, and that’s gone on and on. You know, I think the most
recent innovation that is probably about six or seven years ago we had Epsom
come see us, their European consumer managers, because I happened to
mention at that stage we’re using inkjet printers for some of the unique puzzles
we were doing. And he contacted me and said, ‘Well you can’t possibly be
doing work of this quality out of that antiquated printer.’ And I was quite taken
aback by that. It was only six months old. I said, ‘Well you’d better come and
see.’ And it helps because he was a puzzle freak, there are a lot of puzzle freaks
out there in all sorts of industry in very high places. Just like every doctor seems
to play early instruments. And he said, ‘Well how have you done that?’ And I
said, ‘Well we changed your software a bit.’ He said, ‘You can’t have done that
it’s all encrypted.’ I said, ‘It wasn’t encrypted very well, look.’ And he said,
‘Hmm, okay, we need you on our side.’ A couple of weeks later a £10,000
banner printer, the first one before they even put it on the market, turned up
with a little label on it saying, ‘See what you can do with this then.’ And I’ve
had that sort of relationship with all sorts of people. I still do that now with
digital cameras for Olympus and Canon. Whenever there’s a new model I get a
preview of it to say, ‘What do you think about this?’ and that’s partly about the
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Robert Longstaff
ergonomics. So I’ve worked with so many things outside of my field, but we
have a reputation as good designers. We’ve worked with Jasper Conran which
is, you know, a pretty good thing to do if you’re in the design world, and we
made a range of toys with him for Daisy and Tom stores. And that was great
fun.
And when was that? <1:15:44>
Oh crikey. Daisy and Tom? 12, 15 years ago I suppose?
And did he approach you, they approach you? <1:15:51>
They approached us and we designed some of the things and they said they had
a few things that they were doing with Jasper Conran and basically we
designed them and sent them off and they changed them about a bit.
Can you just describe the products? <1:16:08>
Oh in one particular one there’s a very nice castle which was built on very much
the lines we’ve got now and we’ve still got the prototypes. That’s the other
thing which again perhaps sometime we can discuss, we do have all our
original drawings, all our original artwork, all our original prototypes. We’ve
kept them locked including the carousel we did for Coca Cola for one of their
anniversaries.
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Do you have the first attempts at laser cuts then? <1:16:33>
Yes. I must admit I tried to find that last time you came, I haven’t found it yet
but I know we’ve got it. It was a hot air balloon and yes, I still most certainly
have that. But we have also the last of our hand cut work that we did for Marks
& Spencer's which was a thing that really tipped the balance for us at that point
because it was so ridiculous and so I hate wasting material. And that’s the
beauty of the laser. We just mentioned the castles. I can cut the bits of the
castles absolutely interlocking. You can take them apart, turn them around
because there’s a taper fit on the laser, and put them together. So there’s
absolutely nil waste of material. And as a green person, you know, that’s really
important to me. Materials are not only just expensive but they’re rare
commodities these days and it’s getting rarer all the time. I think even the
quality of the MDF has gone down over the last five years. So we have that to
keep into mind when we’re designing things as well. Their castle was different
to ours, had more working parts on it, but it was based on one of our models.
And it’s a great product. It’s a shame that things didn’t go quite as they
should’ve done for everybody else. But no, that was a nice product to make.
It sounds as if you’ve learnt as you’ve gone along but in the best possible way. Is that
fair to say? <1:18:07>
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Robert Longstaff
Yeah, and we’ve done it by experience. We do have a number of artists that we
have worked with. You know, there came a point when just my painting just
wasn’t enough. Mine is fairly naive in style and it worked for some products, it
doesn’t work for others. And we’ve worked with internationally renowned
artists. We did quite a lot with a gentleman that used to do all the Blue Peter
drawings so got quite a lot of his work.
What was his name? <1:18:40>
Robert Bloomfield. I always want to say Broomfield, I’m sure it’s Bloomfield.
It’s one or the other. That’s why I didn’t say it at the time. It’s signed on one of
the prints and I’ll go and check. But I don’t think he’s been with us for quite
some time. But they are great. And he also used to do a lot of children’s books,
so we’ve used some of the characters, not from them but altered slightly. He
had the most delightful tiger cubs called Dickie and Tadge and we made them
into bookends. They were absolutely gorgeous. But we’ve equally worked with
people that work with Disney that are internationally known wildlife artists for
example. And yes, sometimes we say we don’t want it lifelike but we don’t
want it cartoony. You know, you’ve got to see what age group you’re going to.
Do you want something with big googly eyes smiling at you or do you want
something looking as if it’s just walked out the jungle. And it’s got to be right
for the right age group. And as I say we’ve got all the original paintings that
they’ve done for us and some of them are absolutely fantastic. There’s some
artwork in their own right. And the one that’s always been our most popular is
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Robert Longstaff
one of Robert’s and that was Ark Alphabet and we’ve been producing that
design before we started laser cutting. And it’s still the most popular design we
run now and yeah, that’s 35 years’ worth which is I think a testament to his
artwork. And on that one if you’re really good you can spot the deliberate
mistake in that we have a pair of umbrella birds for U and unfortunately they’re
both sitting there with the umbrella plumage otherwise they don’t look the
right, only the males have. So presumably they’re an extinct species now, as
only two males were saved.
And in terms of the future of the company or maybe thinking about your children, if
they come and say to you, ‘We’re going to go into the toy industry, we’re willing to
take it over,’ what would your advice be? I mean is that going to happen do you think?
<1:20:56>
We’ve had that conversation. No. No, I don’t think that’s likely to happen. It’s a
very, very strange industry. You either treat it as a commodity and make money
or you treat it as something you love and you have a great time but you don’t
make any money. And I think like most things in life, you know, if you go and
sell guitars in a guitar shop ‘cause you love playing music, you don’t get a wage
for it but you’re doing something you love. And I think that works in the toy
industry equally as well. There’s hardly anywhere in between really in those two
bits. No, the three boys are all very successful in their own fields. They are very
creative, they are good designers. All three of them I think have got their
careers well and truly sorted out and they are all helpful to me in still doing
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design work. Matthew’s doing a lot of design of his own now and we’re making
products for him. He makes an Oyster Card which holds an Underground card,
but beautiful artwork on them, very nice designs. Andrew equally is in Finland
and does a lot of work over there. He understands what we’ve done with the
laser so Andrew is my walking backup. If I meet the proverbial bus tomorrow,
yes, everything that we do is documented and with the solicitors and the like to
be handed on, but equally Andrew understands everything that we’ve done.
Andrew also can read a manual. Matthew won't read a manual. Matthew will
just do it and if it didn’t work the first time it’ll carry on. Richard’s exactly the
same. He will plug at it until it works. Andrew will sit and read the manual and
make it work first time. So all totally traits. But they all have different skills
which again is great ‘cause they complement each other. They've got different
strengths and weaknesses and although they’re very individual and don’t like
working together, when they have to work together it really works as a whole,
it’s a brilliant entity seeing them come together and doing that. But I know
Andrew not only could tell somebody else everything and all our little secrets to
what we do, but he’s that much younger and he’s grown up with computers
and computer design. His design ability I would say outstrips mine quite easily.
And he could take it on to the next level with no problems whatsoever. And so I
know if they wanted to get involved, any three of them, Richard is more hands
on, Andrew is more design, Matthew is more marketing. And they've got all the
skills necessary to help somebody with, but I don’t know any of them would
really want to do it. It has been damned hard work. 14 hours days are the norm
and seven days a week are not unheard of, particularly when we started and the
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Robert Longstaff
of course you’re busy and then you keep it going and then you’ve got ---. So
when everybody else goes home, who’s still up there ‘cause I’ve got a bit of
laser time now, let’s try the new project on the laser. So the family have
suffered by the hours that we work, but equally we’re rather lucky that we’ve
got 10,000 square foot of workshop in the back garden here where I do all the
prototyping. So I do it from home, so they’ve seen more of me than most dads,
even though I work more time than most dads.
And does it feel like work to you? <1:24:26>
No, and that’s part of the problem I suppose. That’s probably why I don’t stop
when I should stop. And because it’s at home you don’t get away from it. And
because I love it, it’s not work. No, it’s not work. Which is why it doesn’t matter
when it doesn’t pay as well as it should do either. I feel incredibly privileged to
have had the opportunity to do what we’ve done. And I think because of that
we have, you know, there’s almost a pressure on us to use it, to do more with it.
And yeah, okay, I’m 60 next birthday, I probably won't live the extra 80 years
that I want to do all these other projects, so I’ve got to get as much time as I
can. But that’s why we now teach so much and we work with a huge range of
other social enterprises passing on our skills. And that’s why I think moving the
laser to another social enterprise that will encourage people to come forward
and flourish and be creative, rather than saying, ‘Here’s a machine, press this
green button for the next 40 years.’ That it can still go on. And in fact they use
an analogy which I think is quite nice in that we never wanted this to be a
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Robert Longstaff
second generation company, we never felt it would work in quite that way
because we are all creative people and we know we would have arguments in
how it goes. There’s no two ways about it. So we’ve never really wanted it to
go that way. But they treat it as saying this is like a third generation company.
This is like having grandchildren running it. You can come and be involved
when you want to, we want all the design input you’d like to come and do
when you want to come and play with us, but when you want to go home you
can go home. And I think that could be the best of all worlds. It frees me from
the day-to-day running of the company to someone who I trust to run it in the
way ---. You know, we have, yes our ethics are very strong and very important
to me and I think they will continue with that because of their structure. They
can do nothing but. They can’t be bought by another company, they cannot
own another company because of the structure of the not for profit social
enterprise. So they are almost constrained leading into what they can and can’t
do. And the fact that I’ve then got more time to give to these ideas, you know, I
might just get a fair chunk of that 80 years’ worth done after all. And that’s the
plan. That’s the plan.
That would seem to be [inaudible 1:26:55]. I’ll stop, unless there’s anything else you
would like to say, anything that we’ve missed? <1:27:02>
Oh only about another five days’ worth. I’m sure that’s probably quite enough
for you.
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You’ve packed a lot into an hour a half, I’m impressed. <1:27:11>
Thank you. I do try.
[END OF RECORDING – 1:27:16]
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