Schplatttt brings together the skills, experience and, most importantly, the passions of the founder, Stephen. Stephen has had a varied career in which he has worked for and with independent and small businesses/organisations within the Sports, Fitness and Leisure Industries. This means that he has met many people involved in the industries and has also spent lots of time with the end customers to understand the most important priorities that people have when using different products and services as part of their hobbies.
The idea behind Schplatttt started while working within running retail, encountering people who were doing running events yet didn’t feel comfortable about doing it because they didn’t enjoy doing sports/PE as a child. As a regular occurrence with customers explaining this, there is a clear problem in the way people feel about doing sport and physical activity, especially when there are so many different types of sport to try, which all require different skills and strengths. Because of the fact that many people feel this way, Stephen has wanted to make the first steps to doing sport and physical activity easier and help children to enjoy doing sporting activities, whether that is at a club, at school or in the comfort of their own home.
Previous experience that has inspired Schplatttt includes qualifying as a Personal Trainer and Kids Fitness Instructor, working within running retail and other sports retail, working as an English Language Teacher in France (as part of gaining a degree in French Studies and returning following the completion of the degree), working with three small French brands (two sportswear brands and one luggage company) and working on a youth engagement project. There is also experience having tried to do a similar project historically, getting to work with companies and organisations across the sports and fitness industry and learning what is most important to people who want to start doing a fitness activity.
From the varied experience gained to date, Stephen has been able to understand better why people are nervous about/put off of doing activities and focus on empowering people to make the decisions that will make them continue to do activities. He also wants to ensure that kids are engaged at a young age to have positive experiences and want to ensure that parents, guardians and teachers have the resources/information that will enable the kids to enjoy doing different and varied activities, connecting the different people in a child’s life along the way so that they all support what the child wants.