NJ Swingsets
By Jay Samolowicz
Published: Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Hi everyone, this is Jay – I am the owner of NJ Swingsets. We’ve been a dealer for Gorilla Playsets since we opened in 2013.
Sadly, 2025 is the year we will be parting with our supplier of over 10 years.
Before I go into the reasons why, I’d like to give some context and history of our relationship with Gorilla Playsets.
Jump to section quickly:
The Beginning
First Signs
Private Equity Firms
Our Reasons
Conclusion
In 2012, I began working for another swingset dealer who sold Playnation swingsets. Playnation, at the time, was the parent company of Gorilla Playsets. Both companies were owned and operated by the original owners of the brands.
Coming from a background in tech, I saw that the future of swingset sales was going to be a combo of online sales/presence as well as having a local brick and mortar location. The swingset dealer I worked for was not interested in building on online presence. Playnation had already created a new brand, called Gorilla Playsets, built specifically for online sales.
Seeing this opportunity, I quit working at the swingset dealer. The next year I opened an online only store selling Gorilla Playsets. A year after that we opened our physical location in 2014.
Gorilla Playsets was way ahead of the competition in terms of being online ready and having a product that no one else on the online market could compete with. They were poised to explode their online sales while also providing a product that was high quality and looked fantastic.
Their product could not only be drop-shipped with ease to our out of state customers, but we could also order truckloads of them for sale in store to local customers.
Since 2014, NJ Swingsets has sold in the many thousands of Gorilla Sets both online and in person. We attribute much of the success of our business to a wonderful partnership with Gorilla over the first 5+ years.
In 2019, the original owners of Gorilla and Playnation, whom I have met in person and know on a first name basis, sold the company to a private equity firm specializing in backyard products.
The next year, 2020, was a landmark year for all swingset companies across the board. Thanks to covid, many people moved out of cities into suburbs AND were stuck at home with their children with very few things to do. 2020 was a banner year in sales to say the least.
After 2020, many things were changed, and not for the better. One example, is that we were no longer able to drop ship Gorilla Playsets anymore.
The decision made some sense at the time because of the huge supply chain issues and backlog. However, this was the first sign something was going awry.
Prior to opening NJ Swingsets, my background had been in implementing new technology at large banks. I worked at Lehman Brothers when they went down in 2008. My last job was at a huge global investment bank at 60 Wall Street.
I say this because I am familiar with corporate environments, and I am familiar with what happens to companies when they are taken over by private equity firms.
Back on track - Like I said, 2020 was a banner year. 2021 was not as crazy as 2020, but sales were still way above the average year due to the amount of people who couldn’t get anything in 2020. After 2021, residential sales have been on a steady decline to this date (early 2025)
You or a friend may have been to a party in our store, or your school may have purchased commercial playground equipment from us. This is how we can make up for a decline in one sector of our sales – by boosting sales in other areas of the business.
When a small business (such as NJ Swingsets) sees a steady (and predictable) decline in sales, we pivot.
A Private Equity firm, on the other hand, takes out their trusty textbooks and picks tactics that other corporations have used in the past to decrease expenses and increase bottom line.
These include, but are not limited to:
I can go on with this list, but I think you are starting to get the point.
In short, when companies start trimming the fat, they also remove a lot of the good stuff. In this case, by good stuff I mean the “human element.” The human element is what makes a company special.
A company can easily be turned into a worker factory if the human element is not considered. A worker can feel it when they are being treated like cattle. A customer can feel it when they are treated like just another number.
This is why I left corporate America years ago and started NJ Swingsets. Employees were treated like worker drones; customers were treated as numbers on a spreadsheet.
I vowed to NEVER let this happen in my company, and I vowed to NEVER work with a company that allows it in their company.
That is some context into our current situation without getting too in depth.
Outside of the “human element” we just spoke about, the swingset companies we represent must be held to a certain standard of quality. I made a video in 2014 that you can see here about a “quality” swingset.
The video is horrible. For the love of all that’s holy please don’t watch it, but in the description of the video you can find a summary of 7 things that make up a quality wooden swingset.
Other than #7, which refers to the price at the time, everything still holds up.
In 2014, when I made this video, Gorilla Playsets held all 7 qualities mentioned. In 2025, despite costs being over 50% higher, they do not.
I’ll go over them quickly again with visuals to help:
Another major reason we are ceasing sales of Gorilla is the slides. The slides used to be doubled walled with thicker plastic.
The slides are now cheaper, single walled plastic slides. We have had to replace many of them due to customers not following the weight limit restrictions.
The bracketing system, while not poor quality, is still of a lower quality than your traditional bolt through construction.
Rails – rails on the ladders are non-existent, and the grab rails on the tower are made from plastic. Other brands have metal grab rails.
As you can see, as a family owned business and local dealer, my children are playing on these sets. My friend’s children are playing on these sets. And people all over my community are playing on these sets.
We need to sell products we believe in from companies that treat us and our customers with respect.
Thank you for reading, and THANK YOU for supporting your local, small business!