Simplay3
Rotationally moulded children’s play products and home goods, designed and made in Streetsboro, Ohio.
🇺🇸 Made in USA
Our assessment
Company details
Where Simplay3 products are made
Design and manufacture both sit in north-east Ohio, in the same corridor that produced Little Tikes and Step2. The company describes its products as “Made in America by an American workforce” rather than assembled here.
Rotomoulding produces a hollow, seamless, single-piece part with no glued joints to fail. It is why this class of product survives a decade outdoors and several children, and it is a process that rewards keeping the tooling and the moulding line close to the design team.
Simplay3 for children’s play and American Home for mailboxes, planters and garden products. Both come out of the same Ohio operation, which is why an adult product and a toddler product share the same wall thickness and the same durability argument.
The Streetsboro, Ohio address, the “designed and made in the USA” statement, the American Made / Veteran Owned designation and Tom Murdough’s founding of Little Tikes and Step2 are all published by Simplay3 on simplay3.com. The company does not publish a founding year, so none is asserted here.
The story
Tom Murdough founded Little Tikes. Then he founded Step2. Both became fixtures of the American backyard, and both were built on the same idea: rotationally mould a tough, single-piece plastic product and make it close to home.
Simplay3 is the third. The name is the tell — the 3 is the count. After fifty years of toy making and an induction into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 2020, Murdough started again, in the same part of Ohio, with the same process.
The catalogue splits in two. Simplay3 covers children: play structures, ride-ons, roller coasters, activity tables, toy boxes. American Home covers the rest of the property: mailboxes, planters, garden and storage products. Adults and children buy from the same plant.
Both Little Tikes and Step2 already hold profiles on this site. Simplay3 is a separate, independent company — not a subsidiary or a rebrand — that happens to share a founder with them.
Why they matter
Rotomoulded plastic play equipment is bulky, light and cheap per pound, which makes it one of the worst categories to ship across an ocean and one of the best to make near your customers. Plenty of competitors ship it anyway.
The founder had every option available to him. A man who has built two successful companies in this exact category could have started the third anywhere. He started it in Streetsboro, Ohio, and staffed it with an American workforce.
And the durability claim is the domestic claim. A one-piece moulded product that lasts through several children is only worth making if you can control the moulding, and controlling the moulding is much easier when it is down the corridor from the design office.
Shop Simplay3 products
Browse Simplay3 play products and American Home goods stocked on the Buy American Campaign store.
Frequently asked questions
Are Simplay3 products made in the USA?
Yes. Simplay3 states on its own website that its products are designed and made in the USA by an American workforce, and the site carries an “American Made, Veteran Owned” designation.
Where is Simplay3 located?
9450 Rosemont Drive, Streetsboro, Ohio 44241.
Who founded Simplay3?
Tom Murdough, who previously founded Little Tikes and Step2 and was inducted into the Toy Industry Hall of Fame in 2020.
What is the American Home line?
Simplay3’s range of home and garden products — mailboxes, planters, storage and garden goods — made in the same Ohio operation as the children’s play products.