Highlights
- Alice Brooks and Bettina Chen pitch Roominate, a STEM-focused building toy for girls, on Shark Tank
- Roominate achieved $5 million in sales and secured distribution in major retailers like Toys R Us and Radio Shack
- Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner invest $500,000 for 5% equity, contingent on mentoring Mark’s daughters
Overview
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Name | Roominate |
| Founders | Alice Brooks and Bettina Chen |
| Industry | Educational Toys |
| Product | STEM-focused building toys for girls |
| Funding | N/A |
| Investment Ask | $500,000 |
| Equity Offered | 5% |
| Valuation | $10,000,000 |
Alice Brooks and Bettina Chen pitch Roominate, their line of building toys for girls, in Shark Tank episode 602, part two of the season 6 premier. They designed Roominate to get young girls to have fun and become interested with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. The two young women, both with Master’s Degrees in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford, envision a world where young girls’ minds are stimulated by toys that aren’t Barbie Dolls and dress-up kits.
Alice built her own doll as a child when her dad gave her a mini saw; she’d asked for a Barbie! Bettina was a Lego maniac as a child. Whether their childhood toy preferences influenced their career choices is unknown, but these two women pursued engineering degrees and they want to lead the way for other young girls with Roominate.
At the heart of it, Roominate is a do-it-yourself, wired dollhouse building kit. Girls can build a dollhouse of their own design, complete with working elevators, fans, and lights. While doing market research, Alice and Bettina found educational toys are more often marketed to boys, they simply took the classic girl’s dollhouse and wired it up for a tech-savvy generation. Roominate won numerous awards, including the Parents’ Choice Gold, Academics’ Choice Brain Toy, Dr Toy 100 Best Toys, the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award 2013, and many more.
The Roominate women are likely looking for a Shark to help them with big box distribution and manufacturing. Can they build a relationship with one of the Sharks?
Roominate Shark Tank Recap
Alice and Bettina enter seeking $500K for 5% of Roominate. They appear to connect with Barbara and Lori immediately. They explain their business and hand out Roominate toys designed for each Shark. Barbara asks them to explain how it differs from other construction toys and Alice says it inspires open-ended play.
Roominate will do $5 million in sales this year. They’re going into all Toys R Us and Radio Shack stores plus other major retailers. Even though they designed it for girls, they reveal boys are playing with it too. Mr. Wonderful is impressed by their success. Mark worries they’ll have to sell through at these retailers. Mr. Wonderful echoes those concerns.
Mr. Wonderful ultimately doesn’t like the valuation, so he goes out. Barbara thinks they need to hyper target the product toward girls and she goes out. Mark makes a $500K offer at 5%, contingent on Alice and Bettina mentoring his daughters. Robert thinks Mark’s offer is good, he’s out. Lori offers to partner with Mark and Roominate does the deal!
Roominate Shark Tank Update
Roominate had an update segment in season seven, episode 706. Since doing their deal with Mark, they got their product in over 800 Wal Mart stores. The segment shows Alice and Bettina doing a product demo in a Wal Mart with a small throng of adoring children. They further reveal they’re working on a Roominate app, their sales are around $4.5 million, and they have 8 employees in a new location.
In January, 2016 the company was acquired by Patch Products for an undisclosed amount. Patch Products later changed their name to Playmonster.
Posts About Roominate on Shark Tank Blog
Company Information
Video
I just want to thank Mark and Lori for seeing the importance of supporting this particular project. They recognized the higher calling of growing successful human beings. The money this company will make them is a secondary perk. Don’t get me wrong. As an investor you must be concerned about the bottom line. I get that, but they had the heart and mind to know instinctively that the bottom line in this case will be protected because the purpose of this product is so important. As a science teacher of 20+ years, I have witnessed the evolution of STEM and the effort to bring more females into the sciences. We are a long way from where we need to be, but efforts like this are moving us into the right direction. BRAVO to Mark and Lori!!