Susan Crouse
Contributing Writer, Susan Crouse
-Editor’s Note: Today’s guest author is Susan Crouse, Founder of Kinazium. In this post, she discusses her inspiration for Kinazium, the premiere construction set for hands-on invention. Her story is an inspiration to how an idea can come to fruition with vision, dedication, and perseverance. To listen to our full podcast conversation, click here.
I am a Colorado native and I was intrigued when I saw the Sphero prototype at a conference. Ever since, I wanted to create something to enhance the Sphero experience. During my one-day sojourn in 2016 to CES, the huge Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, I saw Sphero rolling around on a big table. It immediately struck me that classroom robots were missing an opportunity for enriching the robotics curriculum. Kids could be in inventing robotics challenges while developing innovative design skills.
Up to this point teachers were taping courses for robots on the floor, Others had kids create cardboard constructed environments, which was cool, but this put a lot of burden on the teachers, including lots of cleanup pulling up all tape from carpet and floors. Teachers weren’t using robots nearly as much as they might because too much curriculum development was on their shoulders. They also were spending a lot of time controlling the chaos that can happen with robots in the classroom, particularly rolling balls that quickly divert attention to the tasks at hand.
We thought, what if we created a kit so kids could create robot courses and challenges and we could include the “A” in STEAM education. It was just weeks later I met with my son and a few of his friends and we formed Traxart Toys. I already had a basic vision for the product. A construction set where students could design all kinds of mazes and games themselves, that got robots off the floor and put them in a 3D environment. Using this kit would encourage hands-on design, 3D thinking, trial and error, teamwork and more. The team agreed and the energy and ideas these young recent college graduates brought allowed us to quickly rapid prototype Kinazium using 3D printing, hand cut mats and waterjet cut walls. By March we were showing it behind a curtain at the Boulder County STEM fair with rave reviews. We started working on accelerometer sensors to make game invention possible and in a twist of serendipity we were introduced to, Jim Axwell, an ex-Sphero executive that essentially had exactly what we needed. We created our own control software and a free app for Apple and Android. This extra option lets students gamify Kinazium by inventing timed and point-based games.
The first public showing of Kinaizum with Vicki Treadway at ISTE 2019
As all these things were coming together, we had a few pauses during the journey, including another startup and two of our founders marrying each other. But we persisted forward and at the Maker Faire in SF in May of 2019, launched our successful Kickstarter Campaign. Just following that event, a Pennsylvania teacher, Vicki Treadway, found Kinazium on Kickstarter and asked if she could show the product (a prototype) at ISTE 2019 in Philadelphia. Her efforts yielded our first international distributor, Modern Star, in Australia who saw Kinazium at the show! By Christmas we had manufactured and delivered over 125 Kinazium kits to homes and classrooms!
COVID came quickly on the heels of our first shipment and schools shut down. Using guerilla marketing, making videos and posting on social media, and finding posts by teachers using robots and telling them about Kinazium, we helped things continue to grow organically. We also worked on free curriculum and getting started videos.
We met our goal of launching Kinazium on Amazon in 2021, which required adhering to many rules and achieving multiple approvals. I don’t recollect the exact first sale on Amazon, but in the last two years we have seen a big trend where schools often order through Amazon business. Amazon doesn’t share all the details of customers, but we can see info for the city and state so we have some idea of our reach. Between Kinaizum.com, Purchase Orders and Amazon, Kinazium has been shipping to most every state in the US including Hawaii. We also ship to Canada and have partners who sell in South America. Next stop is developing sales in European and Asian countries.
When ISTE landed in Denver this year, we were thrilled to have our first booth showing off Kinazium. We are an enthusiastic bunch and we literally pulled teachers into our booth, and 9 times out of 10 they thanked us when they left the booth Teachers were so intrigued and excited to see Kinazium, particularly with the Sphero Indi and Bolt robots! They loved how Kinazium puts design ingenuity into the hands of students.
It was also so wonderful to meet teachers for the first time that are using Kinazium in their classroom and each of them were thrilled to have us do a 20 second interview to share their experience. We have a warm satisfaction to realizing that our ideas for Kinazium became the reality we imagined. Helping teachers in the classroom by completing the robotics curriculum and engaging students in self-directed learning, which in turn makes them inventors! Nothing could make us happier. And the added plus for teachers of no more tape on the floor or collecting cardboard. We love seeing the wonderful creations students make on social media, and we enjoy talking with teachers and hearing how they have integrated Kinazium in ways we never imagined! We are thankful to them for acting as champions by spreading the word so more kids can enjoy and learn from Kinazium at home, in school and at camps. You can check some of their great work out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok.
PS-Our original teacher champion Vicki Treadway left the classroom, and now runs her own consulting business, Vicki Treadway Consulting, helping teachers integrated tech into their classrooms! She still loves Kinazium.
