As part of our annual By Women series—which spotlights the best women-owned products and companies—we’re committed to giving female founders who own 51% or more of their business a platform. This not only allows them to introduce their brilliant products to a wide and potentially new audience, but it also helps you—the reader—discover really cool stuff. Like KiwiCo, subscription-based toy crates that teach kids STEAM through play founded by mom-of-three Sandra Oh Lin.
Sandra Oh Lin spent years building a career as an engineer, focusing on consumer products, tech, and e-commerce. So when her kids were little, it only felt natural to her to create play experiences for them that were both fun and educational.
“As I started to pull these projects together, I started to share them with my friends
and their kids during playdates,” she tells Glamour. “During one gathering, a friend said, ‘You should start a business around this.’”
In 2011, Lin took that idea and founded KiwiCo, a toy subscription crate that encourages children to develop STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) skills through play. She realized that parents want to encourage their kids to learn, but most were too busy to do it or didn’t know exactly how to.
The best part about KiwiCo? Babies and kids love their products, from a “fishing” game to toddlers to books that teach them about shapes, without ever realizing they are developing skills, too. Lin chatted with us about making engineering fun and relying on her kids to develop new products.
KiwiCo
Glamour: What parenthood pain point were you trying to solve?
Sandra Oh Lin: As parents, we want to do everything that we can to prepare our kids for their futures. But we often don’t know where to start, and we’re incredibly busy. We worry. We ask ourselves—are we leaving the world a better place for our kids? Also, the fact of the matter is two-thirds of the jobs that kids in elementary school see when they enter the workforce aren’t in existence now. So how do we equip them accordingly?
