The STEMosaur is a smart, interactive STEM toy that teaches kids basic engineering and coding skills. By joining the Arrow Certification Program, STEMosaur received access to engineering and design support from Arrow, as well as connection to Arrow’s vast network of resources.
STEMosaur was designed to get kids excited about STEM, specifically technology, engineering and coding.
"Kids actually get it in about 10 different pieces and they have to put it together. We feel that really creates ownership of the product and of course, gets kids excited about engineering. And then we've introduced a coding panel where kids can actually learn how to code and create their own code on their STEMosaur. We joke that the coding panel is so easy to use, adults can use it.
We're using artificial intelligence, making it kid friendly to teach cognitive development skills in kids. Things from math and grammar to spelling and then at the same time allowing them to have fun too.
Throughout our process, we encrypted the communication both ways we anonymized data and we actually work with groups that do product hardening, knowing that kids are using the product so we have to be extra sensitive to privacy and security. For us, figuring out how to build the product to where all the pieces came together easily enough for a seven-year-old was a challenge. It took a lot of testing. The manufacturing process is difficult.
We chose Indiegogo to crowdfund our product because we wanted to create a community of backers. Your biggest supports that would give you feedback on the product and then be able to lean on them for their insight and advice on how to make the product better. As we were planning our Indiegogo campaign, we knew that we wanted to reassure our customers that it would be up to the quality that they expected.
Going through the Arrow Certification Program, and getting our technology Arrow Certified was one way that right in the beginning we could say 'Hey, we're a real company, the product is what we're showing it is.' Our engineers work closely with our Arrow engineering support. They're constantly looking at ways to help optimize our bill of materials, make the product perform better from looking into rechargeable components to making our speakers and microphones better.
Arrow has helped us identify those long lead time items and cut down the lead times. And Arrow made a personal introduction to our current partners like Analog Devices and TE Connectivity which has been very helpful for us.
We received $125,000 from the Arrow Certification Program. It's going to go back into the product development, help us ideate the product and hopefully allow us to ship better products and more products to our customers. If you're an entrepreneur building hardware devices, I would definitely suggest going to the Arrow Certification Program. Arrow has been amazing in not only being responsive but being creative in how we get things done. I'm a big Arrow supporter and I can't thank them enough."