Berkeley Start-upsConstruction Toys for Girls–Building Blocks for Their Futures
by Tamra Teig
Remember building with Legos when you were a kid? Or maybe you preferred Tinker Toys or Lincoln Logs. Now remember what they looked like: mostly primary colors, because 90% of building toys are designed for boys.
Even though construction toys are now the fastest growing segment in the toy industry, existing toy companies make only a token effort to appeal to girls by offering a pink building set. But a few female led toy start-ups are building their companies from the ground up, by first developing an understanding of how girls play and then designing construction toys to suit girls’ needs.
One of these innovators is Build & Imagine, an award-winning toy company with a line of magnetic building sets designed to play into girls’ predilection for storytelling.
Founder and CEO Laurie Peterson believes playing with construction toys is serious business for girls. “Construction toys develop important skills that will help them succeed in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). These are fields in which women make up only 24% of the workforce.”
“An innovative toy to teach STEM” - The SF Chronicle
Peterson subscribes to the newer STEAM approach, which places A (for Art & Design) at the center of STEM. The Build & Imagine play-sets were created to introduce foundations of design, along with typical STEM concepts such as spatial reasoning and problem solving, to help girls overcome the gender innovation gap.
The play-sets include painted wooden panels called StoryWalls, with magnetic edges that snap together in any combination. The illustrations serve as a storybook backdrop for wooden dolls, to facilitate creative play.
Designed for children ages 4-10, Build & Imagine play-sets are available at specialty toy and gift stores, and online at:
https://www.buildandimagine.com/where-to-buy/
https://www.fatbraintoys.com/toy_companies/build_imagine/
http://www.amazon.com/Build-Imagine-Day-Beach-Building/dp/B00W8DGZ3S
Pet Portrait Studio - coming this fall
Note: Founder & CEO Laurie Peterson is an award-winning toy designer with almost a decade of experience designing and marketing toys. In 2011 she earned her MBA from Haas school of Business at UC Berkeley with an emphasis in entrepreneurship. Laurie was a toy designer and marketer for Leapfrog, the leading educational electronic toy company, and most recently she was VP of Marketing for Sifteo, a tech toy start-up.
Laurie’s products have won top industry awards including the “Most Educational Toy of the Year”, “Most Innovative Toy of the Year“, and “Best Toy of the Year” from the Toy Industry Association.
Related topic: http://stemtosteam.org/
