Actually, almost everybody was happy. You knew that this shopping trip was going to be trial by children and were also aware that almost anything that would distract them would be worth its weight in fifty pence pieces. But you were not alone. Shopping centre managers the length and breadth of the land regard children’s rides as an essential element of the marketing mix in a mall, according to Marshall Ashdown, group sales manager at kiddie ride manufacturer Jolly Roger, part of the Photo-Me International group: “My experience is that shopping centre managers are among the most discerning of customers.”

And Ashdown is a man in a position to know. Louth-based Jolly Roger was acquired by Photo-Me International (PMI) in May last year. Jolly Roger supplies PMI with new rides. PMI then negotiates with shopping centres across the UK and installs the rides. Jolly Roger also supplies customers outside the PMI group, but the majority of these are not in the UK.

The important point about being part of PMI is that Jolly Roger makes and supplies rides to the country’s biggest owner-operator of kiddie rides and has a presence in around 260 UK shopping malls.

From a shopping centre manager’s perspective, kiddie rides must look like the proverbial gift horse. They normally occupy a few square feet in the public area of a mall and other than the space they sit on, they don’t cost a penny. Indeed, the revenue model is such that once installed, the mall takes a share of the profits generated. In effect therefore PMI and companies like it, hire space in a mall. For shopping centres, a good ride can mean income and another tool to drive a very particular kind of footfall.

Those making use of a ride in a mall are, in many ways, a shopping centre manager’s dream. By default, a child using a ride in a mall comes with parents attached. Couple this with the notion of pester power and you have an economic unit that looks pretty powerful whether you are a retailer or centre management. On this basis, it would seem fair to assume that the footfall-driving nature of children’s rides is perhaps even more important for shopping centres than the revenues they create directly.

This also raises several points. The first of these must be location. Francois Alves de Freitas, marketing manager at PMI, says: “Usually you put a ride where there is a rotunda or a square in a mall. It depends on the direction used by customers in each shopping centre. If maybe there is a cafeteria, this can be good too. There are plenty of criteria when it comes to deciding where to put a ride.”

When that decision has been made, there is the matter of which ride is appropriate. In the larger malls there may be as many as 10 individual rides and “the novelty factor”, as Ashdown refers to it, is an important factor. Novelty in this instance means not just the incidence of new rides in a particular location, but also increasingly, what are referred to as “experiences”.

Practically, this means that PMI rotates the rides it has in shopping centres every three to six months. It also means that Jolly Roger, and others like it, are kept busy creating new rides with a development pipeline that sees new models taking around four to five months to finally bring to market.

De Feitas notes that there is a trend towards greater amounts of interactivity in kiddie rides: “Kids now demand more and more interactivity and this is a way for us to demand a higher price because you are having an experience rather than a ride,” he says. At first glance it might seem that interactivity would be confined to six to ten year-olds rather than younger age groups, but this is changing.

This month Jolly Roger is launching a new Bob the Builder ride that takes a photo of the child as he or she uses the machine. A finished photo is delivered at the end of the proceedings. This is perhaps an example of interactivity with parents rather than child, but it serves to illustrate how working with the ride is not confined to older children.

Interactivity also means that the upper age limit for kiddie ride users is constantly being raised. The “premium” prices referred to by de Freitas mean that the price of an interactive ride is currently £1.00 for a three to four-minute ride.

The increase in price is a reflection of a machine that costs from £3,000 to £4,000 to manufacture and which will need to be moved from one location to another on a regular basis. Ashdown says however that the rides are built to last and can still be in action some 15 years after they first enter service.

For those using a standard ride the price is normally £0.50, or three rides for £1.00.

So where does this leave the shopping centre manager? The answer would seem to be to keep a zealous watch on the performance of this asset. You’ll be in good company. PMI monitors returns from its machines and takes action when there is a problem – it is every bit as much a hostage to fortune as the shopping centre. This would appear to be one of those rare instances where, providing the appropriate checks are in place, there can be no losers.

Reasons to be cheerful - Kiddie Rides

Photo-Me International, perhaps unsurprisingly, has a list of reasons why shopping centres should have kiddies rides. Surprisingly, these do hold up to close scrutiny:

? Rides encourage parents with young children into shopping centres, boosting footfall.

? Rides form part of a shopping centre’s leisure mix, increasing dwell-time.

? A ride can help increase sales of associated merchandise (videos, toys, books etc.)

? Rides can assist in managing traffic flow, encouraging parents and children to visit every part of a centre.

? Rides “provide substantial additional revenue to the centre at no additional cost” (other than the floor space involved.)

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