(Amazon)
Roominate entered the Shark Tank in Season 6 with their wired building toy designed especially for girls. The show will revisit the company on October 16 to see how they’ve grown after striking a deal with Mark. Since the show, they’ve entered over 5,000 retail locations internationally, in the US, Canada and Australia. They can also be found in places like Amazon, Walmart, Toys R Us and Barnes & Noble. Heavy interviewed founders Alice Brooks and Bettina Chen before the episode aired. Here is what they told us about…
Buy Roominate here.
To read all of Heavy’s Shark Tank coverage, click here.
How Sales Have Increased
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Brooks: We’re thrilled with the increase in sales after Shark Tank; they’ve allowed us to expand our product offerings and increase production to be available in more markets.
Mark’s Mentorship
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Chen: Mark has been fantastic to partner with. We recently attended the Women in Toys Empowerment Day event at the Toy Industry Association’s annual Dallas Fall Toy Preview, where Mark gave the keynote speech and sat with us for a panel Q&A. It was so great to have him there to support us and our mission of encouraging girls to become interested in STEM.
Buy Roominate here.
Interesting Designs From Young Inventors
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Brooks: In addition to the Dallas Mavericks stadium that Mark’s daughters created, we’ve seen some really creative stuff. Anything from a rock stage concert, a pretend vacuum with a working motor, to a car wash – the Roominators certainly know how to get imaginative!
Prepping for the Holidays
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Chen: We’ve been extremely busy preparing, especially as our new products launched last month just in time for the holiday season. From turning our prototypes into real products, to coordinating production and manufacturing, it’s been a demanding process to get everything ready in time. We are so excited to see how girls will react to the new items.
New Products
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Brooks: We just launched several new building kits including a device called rPower, which allows girls to program and control their Roominate creations from a phone or tablet through our new Roominate app. The new products are rolling onto store shelves now.
Advice for ‘Tank’ Contestants
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Brooks: The best piece of advice we can share is to do your research. Before we went on the show, Bettina and I had watched tons of episodes, taking note of what type of questions the Sharks typically ask. We knew they wouldn’t hold back from asking us any tough questions, so we practiced and practiced to make sure we were comfortable giving our answers.
Buy Roominate here.
