2/17/2024 0 Comments Does walmart have rainbow loom kitI thought this is a great hands-on activity and social tool if I could develop it.” I wanted to find all possible patterns, and I was making prototype parts. “I saw the excitement, and it inspired me,” he said. He was fueled by compliments and the challenge of benchmarking himself. Ng worked nights on 28 iterations in six months and came up with new designs. Still, she said she couldn’t ignore the public’s reaction and her husband’s determination. “I wanted to protect that money,” she said. She didn’t want to risk money they scrimped for education - their highest priority - on a long shot like the toy and craft market. “I thought, ‘Wow, this could be something big if I’m able to sell it as a product.’ ”įirst, he had to sell his wife on the idea of using their savings - $10,000 in a college fund for the girls - to get started. They showed their neighbors and friends everyone had the same reaction: Make me one, teach me to do it. The Rainbow Loom put a new twist on the basic chain the girls had learned from their mother, Tyng Fen Chan, who grew up in the same small town as Ng. It was a diamond-shaped pattern and they said, ‘Oh my gosh, we have never seen one like it.’ They wanted to have one, they wanted to know how to make them, and they wanted to show their friends.” I tried again with more push pins in multiple rows. “When I showed it to my daughters, they weren’t so excited about it,” Ng said. He got a piece of wood from the basement, arranged some push pins on it, and used a dental plaque remover like a crochet hook to make a single-chain bracelet. Ng sat down with his girls to impress them with his skills but his fingers were too big to weave the bands barely a half-inch in diameter.Įngineer instincts kicked in. Ng recalled doing the same thing as a Chinese boy growing up in Malaysia with larger rubber bands to make jump ropes. Teresa and Michelle Ng, then 12 and 9, respectively, were twisting and linking the little rubber bands used to tie pony tails into bracelets. Not bad for a dad, who at first, simply wanted to join his daughters in an evening activity at their home in the Detroit suburb of Novi back in 2010. The two companies are making about 150,000 units a week for the biggest U.S. sells the Wonder Loom for $12.88 in its craft department. Ng also designed the Wonder Loom and licensed it to two East Coast plastics companies, The Beadery and Toner Plastics, for a made-in-the-USA version of his hit product. For 2014, he plans to release a travel-size Rainbow Loom, a deluxe kit and accessory organizers to stay ahead of the copycats flooding the big box stores. He expects sales to reach 5 million units by the end of 2013 and he is looking ahead. “I am still waking up every morning and asking myself and telling myself at the same time: ‘Is this for real? This is real.’ This is a dream come true.”Ī futon with a blanket is next to his desk, which is covered with food wrappers, paperwork and a computer warbling the next incoming Skype call from a business associate. Rainbow Loom is a household name,” Ng said in an interview at his lived-in office in a small warehouse. The frenzy led a couple of New York principals to ban students from bringing Rainbow Looms to school because they became a distraction. “Kidpreneurs” take and fill orders for color combinations that match friends’ outfits and team uniforms. They use their creations as gifts, fundraisers for charities and to make a little side money. They use their imaginations to design new patterns. Their children put down their electronic devices. School by school and state by state, the Rainbow Loom finds enthusiastic new fans in 6- to 13-year olds. “The Rainbow Loom is selling 10 times better than Michaels’ previous best-selling kids products,” Pappas said in an email. The company’s “trend team” saw “winner” all over it, too, according to Philo Pappas, executive vice president of category management. Ng’s product got on Michaels’ radar after it received a Craft and Hobby Association Innovation Award. Ng, 45, now moves about a million units a month as the craze to make jewelry, headbands, key chains, and even sculpt super heroes out of tiny rubber bands sweeps the tween market. Rainbow Loom sales skyrocketed for Ng, the owner of Choon Designs LLC, which is based in Wixom. The retail craft giant started carrying the injection molded ABS looms and hooks in its 1,125 stores the first week of August. The $16.99 kits were flying off the shelves of Learning Express toy stores and the former crash safety engineer for Nissan had an exclusive deal with Michaels, a national arts and crafts store. Two years after going into business, Rainbow Loom inventor Cheong Choon Ng was nearing the millionth sale of his plastic-pronged device for weaving colorful rubber band bracelets.
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