Manila Bulletin

Meredith “Nonoy”  Lazaro, a man of 14 years of experience in contributing to the success of major handset brands in the country, recently started his own business where he claimed it to be, a playground where mobile devices may play around in.

With his long experience in distribution of handsets, Lazaro finally decided to get into the game himself. But his partner believed that Lazaro had enough phones in his career, and suggested accessories instead, to which he claimed was too messy to deal with. But after coming up with a business plan and presented it to his partner while in Cagayan, they knew they had something that will make them stand out.

They came up with the company called Souniq, with the objective is to put up unique and stylish gadgets on the market. The brand Playground, offers a growing segment of gadget accessories, which is aimed for mid to high-end consumers, and eventually, reach out to all target markets.

“But this is the one I’m after, tech junkies, gadget freaks, smartphone users, you’ve seen the reviews recently, smartphones had made it big,” Lazaro said. “Talking to dealers right now, their sales have been huge because of the less than 2,000-peso 3.5-inch.”

“When a consumer sees our brand, they go; it’s high quality but not too expensive. For tech junkies, they should feel, I need to have that.”

In short, what Lazaro wants is to provide “Elite gadgets that really cater to all” and wants consumers to feel, “This is unique and cool, this should be on my body. We want our consumers to always check up on us, because every two months we will be having a new product,” he said. “And of course, I want them to come and play with me.”

But what does Playground really have to offer? Lazaro said, “I have three segments right now. Powerbanks at the same time, Bluetooth speakers; the second are wearables; the third are cameras. These are the gadgets I want.

“When I came up with this idea I told my partner, you go inside a store, there are only two segments. It’s more on mobile phones and phone accessories. Very limited, are the gadget accessories. No one has been focusing on this yet, there are many powerbanks, different brands; there are a lot of Bluetooth speakers with different brands; but there’s no such one local or even internationally known that focuses on gadgets that can be connected to your smartphone.

“So far we have a tower, eventually a wall bay, if you look at it, you will see it’s all there. So if a customer looks at it, they would go, hey it’s all here, hey I want this and I want that, if you’re really a tech junkie or a gadget freak.”

In our recent meeting with Lazaro, he had shown us a variety of gadgets that got us laughing like kids with brand new toys. Most impressive lot, were the hybrid powerbanks. We say hybrid, because they’re half-powerbank and half something else.

So far, Lazaro presented to us a powerbank with a laser pointer, and then a powerbank that looks like a heavy duty flashlight. He later showed us a powerbank that doubles up as a loud speaker, which got us laughing at the simple hilarity of it.

While their wearables compromises smart watches and a smart bangle, which receives notifications from your smartphone. Playground takes a step farther when they added a sports camera into their shelf, with Lazaro promising to diversify the camera segment.