Big, bigger, Smoby

Butterfly-shaped sandpit with paddling pool attachment.

Inside

Everything about the new member of the Simba Dickie family is seriously big: workshops, machines, warehouses, and products. These products are developed and manufactured in the Jura and distributed worldwide – a unique state of affairs.

The factories in the French Jura are part of the landscape, as if they´d always been there; from outside, in fact, you hardly notice them. But inside the Smoby factories is a land of perpetual sunshine. It is here that they make the most attractively coloured, most cheerful toys you can think of: swings, sandpits, and playhouses, some with an area of over twenty square feet: plenty of room for Snow White and all seven dwarfs!

These classy outdoor toys, made of highgrade plastic, are a French speciality. That´s why the modern factories in Lavans-lès-Saint-Claude, Arinthod, Moirans, Groissiat, and Bellignat are so very roomy. The biggest machine is over twenty feet high, looming over the workshop as big as a moderately sized bungalow. It makes playhouses using the blow moulding technique. Well over 600 different products go through successive processing areas in the five Jura factories before vanishing into huge cardboard boxes, the kind you see in furniture stores. A regiment of forklift trucks piles the packages onto trucks to be shipped to 90 different countries.

The Smoby team are experts in creating things out of plastic. Beginning with materials, then through to design, top-quality innovative techniques, and finally environmentally friendly recycling of waste. Unusually for this industry, engineers, designers, and operatives work under the same roof, which means a quick response to customers´ wishes. The central location also ensures that products can be delivered promptly to any part of Europe.

Thomas le Paul is hard at work optimizing corporate structures. This 32-year-old was a real godsend for this prestige project. Until recently he has been manager of Simba Toys Italy, but he is French by birth and worked for Smoby Group a few years ago. "Our employees are highly specialized and highly motivated," he says. As the father of a three-month-old daughter he is fascinated by the challenges of his new position. "Every Smoby product is the outcome of intensive research." At each stage in the creation of a new toy, tests are made to ensure it is the right size and works in a way that best suits the psychomotive development and age of the children for whom it is intended.

Smoby also sets the international tone for toy kitchens and workbenches, some of which are produced – amongst others – under license from Tefal and Black & Decker. The miniature utensils and tools are like two peas in a pod, so kids can cook, iron, drill, and hammer just like the grown-ups. These ambitious toys are the new star in the Simba Dickie firmament.