Oxybul is committed to helping children develop and learn through play. It asked 2,500 parents to test a selection of its products with their families and comment on their ease and simplicity.
Oxybul relies on recommendations from experts and early childhood professionals to ensure that its product ranges designed for 0-12-year-olds help develop their personalities and skills.
A well-designed educational toy is worthless if it is not actually fun to play with. To make sure that its products have that element of fun, Oxybul set up the parent-tester programme in 1993.
It enrolled 2,500 volunteer parents to serve as product testers. The panel changes every year to make sure the families represent the full range of children’s ages.
The way it works is once the products are selected, at least three families are contacted to test each product for about ten days. The children are encouraged to play with/use the product and make it their own, whether a toy, babycare item or room decoration. The parents observe their children’s reactions playing alone and/or with them.
To guarantee a neutral evaluation and ensure the parent-testers are allowed to be critical, they receive no payment other than a small gift for their child to say thank you.
On average, 400 products are tested this way every year. The selection process is strict. Only products with an average score of more than 7 out of 10 are given the parents’ seal of approval. This appears as “tried and tested by parents” in the product description on the Oxybul website.
Transparency is important as parents rely on these comments to check whether the product is suitable for their own child. Parent-testers are also encouraged to make a short video of their child testing the product. These videos can be viewed on the Oxybul YouTube channel along with the parent-testers’ comments.
This quality control measure, performed before the product is commercially available, is complemented by a quantitative assessment once it is on sale. This consists of customer reviews published on the Oxybul website. All reviews are published, whether favourable or critical. If a product with the parent-tester seal of approval receives an average score of less than 3 out of 5 from our customers, it loses its seal of approval and is redesigned by our teams and suppliers.
Because nothing is better than a shared experience, the parent-testers and their children regularly attend group events organized by the product teams. Parents are invited to Oxylunches and Oxylabs with their children to test new ideas. The theme of these events depends on what our staff are looking for at the time. It might be product testing or reviews, design recommendations, website user-friendliness or something else.
This continuous feedback helps us tailor our products to meet the needs of both children and their parents.
