Some design-forward children's products are beautiful but don't sell, and some are sellable but not beautiful. I've spent the better part of 25 years figuring out how to create beautiful children's products that sell.
I'm a product development consultant specializing in premium, design-forward children's products — the kind that end up at Bergdorf Goodman, MoMA's Design Store, and in the pages of Architectural Digest and Elle Décor. I work with brands already in this world and with design-forward brands ready to enter it.
I founded Brinca Dada, a premium toy company that earned multiple awards including Top Toy of the Year and whose products were carried at Bergdorf Goodman and MoMA's Design Store, and featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, GQ, and The New York Times. Running it taught me things no MBA teaches — that a children's product has to work for four distinct audiences simultaneously: the child using it, the parent buying it, the retailer stocking it, and the content creator promoting it. Most products fail because they optimize for one and ignore the others.
To make that insight systematic, I built the Child-ish Design Rubric — a proprietary framework I use to evaluate product lines, pressure-test concepts, and find where the real opportunities are hiding.
Columbia Business School MBA | RISD Certificate in Industrial Design
Services
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CDR Audit
A structured evaluation of your product line — or a single hero product — against the Child-ish Design Rubric: a proprietary framework built around what actually matters to children, parents, retailers and content creators. You'll get a clear-eyed assessment of what's working, what's undermining your brand, and where your biggest product opportunities are hiding.
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Product Line Development
For brands ready to build something new from the ground up. I work with you across the full arc of new product line development — from identifying the opportunity and defining the design brief, through concept development, refinement and handoff to manufacturing. The result is a coherent product line with a clear consumer rationale, a strong design identity, and a credible path to market.
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Category Entry
For brands outside the children's space who are thinking about moving in. A four-to-six week engagement that answers the questions you need answered before you commit: Is there a real opportunity here for a brand like yours? What does it look like? How do you enter without losing what makes you special?
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Concept Sprint
A focused three-to-four week engagement where we go from product opportunity to fully realized concept. You'll walk away with two or three distinct product concepts — each with a design rationale, consumer narrative, competitive context, retail positioning, and a gut-check on supplier feasibility. Concrete enough to take to a manufacturer. Compelling enough to take to a buyer.
My Background
My education and work experience put me in a unique position to help manufacturer-designers bring great products to market.
Education
BA - Art History (BYU)
MBA - Marketing (Columbia)
CID - Industrial Design (RISD)
Experience
25+ years of experience in product development, strategy, branding, startups, buying and marketing, including 15 years in the toy industry.
Validation
Product distribution to 2,000 retail locations (e.g. Bergdorf Goodman). Media placement in 40+ outlets (e.g. NYT, Architectural Digest). 18 awards (e.g. Top Toy of the Year).
Child-ish Design Rubric
The rubric is a proprietary, nine-part evaluation tool that helps manufacturer-designers determine the strengths of a new product early in the production process, before significant investment is made. It is also useful for evaluating competitive offerings.
The rubric is based on the idea that design is a critical element in any product and drives desirability among all stakeholders. But design is only one of the nine evaluation criteria. Using the nine elements, a score is created for a product’s appeal to children, parents, retailers and content creators.
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The rubric was created as a tool for product manufacturers and designers.
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I developed it based on my education in business and industrial design. I add to those decades of experience working as both a buyer and in product development, branding and marketing. And finally I layer on my experience as a parent.
This experience has taught me that for any given product there are multiple stake holders from children to parents to retailers to media/press.
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Just contact me. If you are a manufacturer, I’ll be happy to send you examples.
