CraftCraft kit company encourages kids to innovate, use their imagination

BOULDER – Creative leadership, innovative problem solving, thinking outside the box – the number of books, seminars and workshops to help develop those skills increases at a steady pace.

Competition is stiff for the next best idea in corporate America. So why not start early nurturing children’s creativity skills that will give them an edge?

Scott and Susan Dalgleish have done just that, establishing a crafts-for-kids business based on giving kids an extra boost to develop creative talent.

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They combined six years of research to create kits to foster innovative thinking. The Dalgleishs developed their kits with input from Marvin Bartel, an artist and art educator who specializes in creativity development. The result is nearly 20 arts and crafts projects available through the Dalgleishs’ Boulder-based company, Dragonfly Innovation. The company was a finalist in the Boulder County Business Report’s IQ Innovation Awards.

“One concept of the innovation process is that we refine something when we do it over and over,” Scott explained. “We encourage that in our projects by including lots of materials. And we ask question like, ‘What would you do differently the next time?'”

Dragonfly Innovation kits include projects like Paper Flower Garden and Clay Bead Pens. Each one contains the materials necessary to make not one but many – 30 flowers, for example, in the Paper Flower Garden kit. The kits have been available since July.

“The job market is going to be different for our kids than it was when we entered the work force,´ said Scott, the company’s chief executive officer. “Today the U.S. competes on its ability to be creative and innovative.”

Dragonfly Innovation’s mission is to prepare kids to meet that demand. One way of doing that is by never showing a picture of what each project should look like when it’s finished. The technique encourages kids to do their own thing rather than to copy someone else’s.

Another method of feeding creativity is the steps included with the kits. They blend minimal direction with just enough guidance to enable a child to be successful.

Rather than traditional directions, Dragonfly kits include what the Dalgleishs call flight guides. They look like directions, but read more like suggestions.

The first part of the flight guide presents techniques for completing the project.
“We provide good graphics with basic flight making techniques but never show the end product,” Scott said. “It helps them get the technique down, but there are no step-by-step directions.”

Part two of the flight guide focuses on open-ended questions to foster creative thinking. “We ask questions like, ‘What would a paper flower that grows on Mars look like?'”

The idea is to encourage kids to not stop at the first idea. “We’re trying to get them to generate many good potential solutions to a problem instead of learning that there’s one correct answer – as it is in life,” he said.

Part three of the flight guide includes graphics of a dragonfly banner flying across the page with sayings to dispel myths about creativity. They carry phrases such as Thomas Edison’s words about genius being 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.

The kits appeal to children from 18 months old to adults. The prices range from $15 to $35 per kit.

The Dalgleishs decided rather than selling the kits through traditional retail outlets to use the party plan multilevel marketing selling method.

“We’re catering to moms. They can schedule work around their family by doing this rather than the opposite,” Scott said. “And it’s the same market we sell our products to.

“We’re based largely on other party plans,” he added. “We’ve plotted our sales growth on them.”

The Dalgleishs expect to have 15 consultants at the end of the first year; 30 by the end of the second; 75 at the end of year three and 200 at the end of year four.

“We expect to make about $1 million in sales by the first year and a half; $10 million by year six and $100 million by year 11,” Scott projected.

The couple self-funded the business with an investment of “a couple hundred thousand dollars and a lot of Thursday nights,” Scott said. They worked to cover each other in creating the business, wanting to make sure their three children didn’t suffer, according to Susan.

Currently they’re putting the kits together in their basement. “One of the challenges has been that by bootstrapping, we’ve had to constantly weigh the time factor in with paying someone else to do things,´ said Susan, vice president. “We’ve really done the bulk of the work.”

Scott’s background includes 15 years at Spectra Logic, and Susan’s includes being former president of Mothers and More.