Company case 5 goldieblox swimming upstream against consumer perceptions

184 | parT 2 Understanding the Marketplace and Customer Value Company Case GoldieBlox: Swimming Upstream against Consumer Perceptions When Debbie Sterling was in high school, her math teacher recognized her quantitative talent and suggested she pursue engineering as a college major. At the time, Sterling couldn’t figure out why her teacher thought she should drive trains for a living. But the suggestion was enough to get her started down the right path. After four years at Stanford, Sterling graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. But throughout the course of her studies, Sterling noticed the lack of women in her engineering program—a characteristic phenomenon in a field where men outnumber women 86 percent to 14 percent. This observation ignited an obsession in Sterling. She set out on a mission to inspire a future generation of female engineers by disrupting the pink aisle in toy stores. During the past few years, among other accolades, Sterling has been named Time’s “Person of the Moment” and one of Business Insider’s “30 Women Who Are Changing the World.” Why? Because Sterling is the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, a toy company that is making Sterling’s mission a reality. A Different Kind of Toy Company After graduating, Sterling started researching everything from childhood development to gender roles. She discovered that in order to gain interest in and pursue a given field, a person must be exposed to the right inputs at an early age. This fact became particularly bothersome as Sterling became more and more familiar with the contents of the average toy aisle in stores. Toys for girls were in the pink aisle, dominated by dolls, stuffed animals, and princesses, whereas toys for boys were found in the blue aisle, filled with macho action figures, various toy weapons, and a huge variety of building block sets. Most experts agree that the toys served up to young girls do little to encourage an interest in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and math). This knowledge led Sterling to develop a plan to create a different kind of toy for girls. As she began developing ideas for toys, another research finding struck her—girls possess stellar verbal skills and tend to learn better by interacting with stories. That insight was instrumental in the creation of the GoldieBlox line of construction sets. Part erector set and part storybook, the combination was designed to engage girls through their verbal skills and encourage them to build through narratives that feature the adventures of Goldie, a freckled-faced blonde girl donning overalls and a tool belt. Although Goldie comes off as a bit of a tomboy, she’s still girlish. Skinny, blonde, and cute, she favors pinks and purples. The toys and stories feature animals and ribbons, and characters are more likely to help others than to succeed on their own. After her innovative toy sets received little interest at the American International Toy Fair in New York City, Sterling started her own company. That decision sparked more interest than she could have ever imagined.