Transcript

How I Built Resilience: Sandra Oh Lin of KiwiCo

Hey everyone and welcome to How I Built This Resilience Edition. On these episodes, we talk with entrepreneurs and other business leaders about how they're coping during this very challenging time. And today we're gonna hear from Sandra O'lin, the founder and CEO of Kiwico. Kiwi Co makes arts and science projects for kids and ships them out in monthly subscription boxes or crates. In March, when students began learning from home, Sandra's company saw a spike in orders, and it now shipped over twenty million boxes around the world. I spoke with Sandra from her home in the Bay Area.

Where she's trying to keep up With demand. Tell us a little bit. more about Kiwi Co. For people who don't know what what you do, tell us about your your company. Yeah. So we design and we deliver hands on experiences. for kids, kids of all ages. So we have different types of experiences and products that we develop for newborns and infants all the way through to kids at heart. So teens and even grown-ups.

And these hands-on experiences, they range. So science, experiments, games that kids make and play, uh projects that encourage imaginative play. And they're all centered around this idea of how can we encourage kids to see themselves as makers. Um and I think the probably the best known product is the Kiwi Crate. And inside like you'd get pipe cleaners and different, you know, like styrofoam balls and I I think that's probably the best known product that you guys make, right? The Kiwi Crate. Yeah, yeah. I mean that's our flagship line. So Kiwi Crate is geared for early elementary age kids, so ages five to eight.

And it's very project based for Kiwi Create. There are at least two different projects. And it's usually one that's a science and engineering focused project, and one that's maybe more of an art and creativity design focused project. So let's say one project Overall it's about arcades, and one project might be you create a mechanical arcade claw that you can actually grab things with, and the other side of the crate might be a project where you're making your own yarn pom pom creatures. And then you're actually taking your claw and you're trying to grab those creatures as well as Whatever else is around your house, too. So it's this a combination of discoveries along with hopefully a little bit of delight and a whole bunch of fun. Which I love. And Tell me, I I know that you launched this

in twenty eleven. And at the time I guess you were like you were in charge of the f the fashion portfolio for eBay How did the idea come to you? So it was born mainly out of personal needs. So my my career has span consumer products and technology, mostly e commerce. So I'd started my career in R and D at Procter and Gamble and then had been at PayPal. And I had eBay.

But when we started the company, so two thousand eleven. My kids, my oldest two kids were almost three and almost five. And I really wanted to give them exposure to hands on activities. It was a way for them to really see themselves as producers and not just kind of passive consumers as kids who could actually kind of problem solve and make something. And so I started to pull together different materials and inspiration And I was like, oh my gosh, this is taking a long time. Like I need to amortize my my effort. And so I would invite my friends and their kids and

One of the moms actually said you should start a business around this. And it was one of those things where I think long story short, Is that we found that there are a lot of Parents who are well intentioned, very busy, they want enriching activities for their kids, and if it can come to them in a convenient format, From a trusted brand, and that's something that actually really resonates. And then if you think about it from a business perspective, If you can get a subscription service to work, it works really well, right? And so if you consider all the elements of a subscription service, or you're considering lifetime value, if you're able to drive down your cost of acquisition.

then you're able to provide something that is not only valuable to the customer, but ends up being something that works really well on the business side too. I I imagine when the I mean let's talk business for a moment. I mean I imagine that when it became clear that the pandemic was gonna shut down huge parts of the economy. Um, like most business owners, you probably anticipated a downturn for your business. Um, first of all, how did you prepare for that possibility? Well, to be completely frank, it was a little bit of madness, I would say, kind of in the beginning. So we were a little bit ahead of the curve and having folks work remotely.

But then as People started to shelter in place. Was definitely a scramble. You know, we had to see what the impact would be to the business. And so we definitely became more conservative. So very quickly we decided to basically pull back or remain conservative on marketing spend. We were looking at things like hiring and figuring out what we wanted to do that. So we held on hiring.

Um, but then we're also tracking the business. And what we actually start to see pretty quickly is a Pretty decent uptick in the business. I think the combination of parents being home and needing something to engage kids We happen to be

A good solution. And so we started to see an uptick in the business and then accordingly had to manage the business based on that demand. And a pretty dramatic uptick, I I think, right? Yeah. So I think you had mentioned, Guy, kind of in the beginning, that we shipped out over twenty million crates. now. And so if you look at kind of the first ten million crates We hit that mark actually in January twenty nineteen. And then in the next like eighteen months or so, we actually shipped out another ten million.

crates and you can imagine kind of the acceleration of the business. And some of that is because of the acceleration that we saw in the business given the pandemic and then the demand that was there. I I'm not surprised. We spoke with um the CEO of Dreambox who told us that they have seen a doubling of you know onboarding on onto their platform. It's a math platform for elementary school kids. I spoke to Sal Khan a few days ago of the founder of the Khan Academy. I mean they're seeing record numbers of students on their platform. I mean As you have seen this kind of surge in demand, how have you been able to meet that demand? I mean, for example, have you had any challenges sourcing supplies? Yeah, so we've definitely had different challenges associated with with meeting the demand. I think the great thing is that our team has been incredibly responsive.

And making sure that we were shoring up our supply chain, putting in the appropriate orders to make sure that we had the inventory available. And I think when it's kind of regular times, um, to a certain extent, it's almost like your utilities or you know, you expect the water to be there and the electricity work, and similarly you expect that you're gonna have product to ship. And so we had to be very proactive. about making sure that some of these things that we maybe have taken for granted in the past were there and available to us so that we could actually serve the community. Fulfillment was definitely another area that we had to um really shore up and make sure that we had the capacity. And then customer care. I mean, obviously we wanna do an excellent job of serving the customer and making sure that

Their questions are answered, et cetera. And so there was a certain amount of capacity that we were planning for. in March, April, except for May June. And so we had actually scale that up pretty significantly. Um let's go to some questions we're getting in from folks watching. This is from Kyle Zimmer. Um he asks by Twitter Um, how do you develop your kids and how do you test them with kids? Yeah, so we have interestingly kind of two product design and development teams. So we have a physical

product design and development team and then we have a digital. So the digital is creating the e commerce platform, our content platform, so the software. And then our physical product design team is really comprised of folks with mechanical engineering backgrounds, industrial design. We have someone who actually worked on space satellite systems and so these are the folks who are concepting the different projects that get sent out to the kids. prototyping, testing, et cetera. And a big part of what we've done at Kiwi Co even since you started it in my garage actually is that we are always testing with children. So in every office that we've had, we have a sizable room and four to eight times a week kids are coming in to test the products at various stages. And that is something that is absolutely critical for us. We may assume that a project may be engaging, it may not. We may assume that a material is something that is malleable enough for preschoolers' hands, but it may not be. And so it's just a critical step. And so as we've actually been working remotely,

That was a big challenge. To figure out And so it's been pretty amazing. We quickly decided to actually purchase 3D printers, laser cutters et cetera, that we then distributed to different product designers. And then on the testing side, we ended up actually either shipping or having handoff locations for kids to pick up and test the materials and then do them via video conference. Um and so we actually ask for different camera angles to see what the kids are doing. Because depending on the age of the kid, it's not so much that they're gonna tell you what's going on. You actually have to observe um what's going on. And so that's definitely been an area where we've had to figure out how to get things done in this environment.

When we come back in just a moment, Sandra talks about how Kiwi Co is trying to make sure that it reach all types of kids with all types of abilities. Stay with us. I'm Guy Roz and you're listening to How I Built This Resilience Edition. From NPR. Hey, welcome back to how I built this resilience edition.

And I'm speaking with Sandra O'Lyn, she's the founder of KiwiCo. The company sends out subscription boxes to kids with all kinds of arts and science projects. Um, we're getting some questions about diversity and encouraging diversity in STEM. Rachel Krakt asks, um What role did the growth of women in STEM impact the creation of Kiwi Co? Uh another question about how do you make sure that that the crates are culturally relevant to encourage diversity in STEM? Yeah, absolutely. So when we create

Our crates. We believe that it's really important that they're universal and that they are not gender specific or racially specific. We're very, very intentional about that. And even when we talk about testing with children, we make sure that we're testing with a lot of different children. different ages, different genders, et cetera, to different capabilities. In addition to that, I think for sure I think these days one thing that is on many people's minds are just the socioeconomic divides. And the fact that As we were coming out of the last school year and when you look at children who are disadvantaged

They were maybe something like seven to ten months behind. And so as we're going into this school year and we continue to see this divide. really widen. I think there is this good question of what is it that we can do as Kiwi Co? What role can we help play? And we're trying to figure that out. And so we have started to try to partner with certain organizations to be able to provide these experiences for disadvantaged youth, children of color.

But there's definitely a lot more to do there. But knowing that some of these kids don't have access to the internet, don't have access to some of the platforms that they need to continue to learn, having something that is hands on can be helpful to them. So we are still figuring that out. Um, one of the cool things that I read about some of you guys said this summer, you launched a camp, right? I mean a lot of kids stuck at home or maybe they were going outside to a park, but you know, not a whole lot of interaction with other kids.

You launch this virtual camp, which basically, from what I understand, was designed to like basically occupy kids for a good chunk of the day. How did it work? Mm-hmm. And this actually also links to to your previous question about how can we serve kind of kids across the board. And so What we discovered, um, I'll get into the camp in just a second. What we discovered right as the pandemic hit is that Folks really needed resources around how to actually encourage their kids to learn from home. So that first weekend in March, our team came together and

and basically built a resource hub. The resource hub included things like kid friendly explanations as to what was going on, right? So the science behind hand washing or how the viruses actually spread. And so when we actually launched that resource hub, we actually crashed our site and we sent out the email announcing it and demonstrating that there was quite a bit of a need there. And then for the summer then, Guy, kind of to your point, we said, what else can we do for the summer then? I mean the summer is gonna look unlike any other summer. But yet we knew that there's still fun and discoveries to be had, and so we pulled together Camp Kiwi Co. So there are four different week long sessions for kids of all ages, and it's important to us to make that actually available for free.

And that was again something that was important because we were positioned in a way and we had the assets to be able to pull that together for the community. Sounds like it it was the product of necessity, right? We're here in this pandemic and it sounds like a creative idea that came up. had you wanted to launch something like this in a normal year, it would have probably taken, you know, a year of planning and meetings and and right and marketing pr strategies and all these things and and and I imagine you just kind of put it out there, but is this something that you can imagine doing for good? Like is this something that is part of your core strategy now? I mean we did learn a lot from it. And so I do think that going forward we will continue to create content for kids and for families. I mean these are the times when the team comes together and they scramble and they build something. And I think to a certain extent being able to come together and create something like Camp Kibi Co

was actually something that was really exciting. It gave us kind of a a sense of purpose and a mission that really kind of bonded us together and and helped us actually even like get through these times. Yeah. Given the fact that most kids are doing school from home What are some of the things that parents should k kind of keep in mind um when it comes to supporting their kids? Not only this sort of the interface with the computer, but You know, non computer activity. What what are some suggestions that you have?

Yeah, I think that when it comes to STEM and steam, if you think about it It is the foundation. for things. It's how the world actually works. And what's kind of awesome is that you Now have an opportunity to engage with your child and

In the world. In your home. Around your home. And I think there's so many topics that are relevant today that can help a child think through

learn things but also kind of help them in terms of critical thinking or problem solving. So whether it is, as I mentioned, just talking about the pandemic and how viruses spread or what people are doing, you know, these days in terms of medicines and and things like that. Or even talking about things like civics or how do elections work. I think there are so many opportunities with things that are going on in the real world today to be able to engage your child, engage in conversation and again hopefully help pique their curiosity so as they grow they're able to build the creative confidence to be able to engage in those topics. Sandra, do you think that school will ever I don't know will ever return to normal the way it was in January and February of twenty twenty?

It's a good question, guy. I think that the world has changed. I think the context in which we operate, um and including school will evolve and change based on an experiences that we've had, I imagine to a certain extent that some people will actually choose to continue to homeschool their children. And so there actually maybe a shift there.

Or I think that there's an opportunity to really look at the partnership between the school and really the educators at home, which might be the parents or the guardians as well. And so I think there could be some interesting things that happened there. I mean the rise of the different software mentioned Dream Box, et cetera, and how they're actually helping consumers is really fascinating to think about too. So I think that it will change. It's a matter of how it'll actually change. I might ask you to put on your entrepreneurs hat for just a moment. I mean, you started this business in twenty eleven when when a friend of yours was like, Sandra, this is amazing. You should go and do that, right? And and that happens a lot. I mean, I'm sure people watching this or listening to this. um have experienced that where a friend like tries their pasta dish and says you need to sell this or whatever it might be and most of us don't don't do it, right? We don't like quit our jobs and go and start something.

For people who are thinking about turning their interests and hobbies into a business venture. I mean, I think one of the things that was really important for me as I was thinking about launching Kiwi Co. Is ensuring that this was not an N equals one. demand, right? You you need to if you're thinking about launching a business, and certainly if you're thinking about launching hopefully will be a decent size business, you want to make sure that there's an addressable market that's actually big enough to capture um what it is that you're putting out into the world.

And so early on I was very, very interested in talking to consumers. So I did qualitative focus groups in my living room, in my friends' living rooms. Also did surveys. Actually got thousands of responses across the US because they also recognize that I live in a certain area with maybe certain perspectives. And so that was really important to do too. And so I'd say, you know, being very customer focused, really considering the market and seeing how your product or service that you wanna put out there actually resonates is something that is pretty critical. And I think you learn a ton of stuff along the way around how to shape your business if that's what you end up

deciding to do. Awesome. Sandra Olin, CEO founder of Kiwi Co, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. That's an excerpt from my conversation with Sandra O'Lyn, the founder and CEO of Kiwico. To see our full interview, you can go to facebook.com slash how I built this and click on videos. And if you want to see all of our past live interviews, you can find them there. This episode was produced by Candace Lim with help from Will Mitchell, Matt Adams, Gianna Cappadona, John Isabella, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers.

Thanks for listening, stay safe, and I'll see you back here in a few days. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to how I built this.