Growing up with better word power

By GEORGINA BOND

A desire to boost the brainpower of preschoolers has seen Auckland lawyer Mary Whaley launch her own children's wear business - with an educational twist.

Whaley's three-year-old company Crackerjack Kids makes stylish, thrashable clothing labelled with words, with the intent to stimulate the minds of its young wearers.

Sales for the web-based business are on a steep growth curve since it was rebranded from Words-on a few months ago.

Whaley said the words on the clothes provided tools to build on the natural parent-child interactions vital for healthy brain development.

The biggest phase of a child's brain development happened in the first three years of life, she said.

She wanted to help parents make the most of the huge opportunity they had during those years to nurture and stimulate bright, imaginative, loving children.

The word labels, such as the names of body parts or action words, can encourage interaction as children point to the body part, say the word aloud or demonstrate its meaning.

For Whaley, the stimulus for the business came when, as a board member of the Auckland City Mission, she was invited to hear American child trauma expert Dr Bruce Perry speak about brain development in children and the importance of receiving a variety of stimuli from a young age.

"I was so impressed and I wanted to do something that would make a contribution in that sort of area," she said.

She enlisted the help of family members with complementary skills - designer daughter Elizabeth Whaley and administrator sister Glenda Dykes.

The business got off to a stuttery start, largely because Whaley had been ill-advised about marketing and how to clearly translate the ideas behind the brand to the customer.


With the help of a good business coach, she now has a business plan in place to make sure she sticks with core philosophies and goals.

She said the importance of planning was something she would share with all small businesses.


Since the relaunch, interest has increased 100-fold.

Through its website, Crackerjack Kids also offers a free "brainy babies" course, that parents can do in weekly instalments.

The business has been inundated with emails for the course and Whaley said sales were flowing as a result.

Her daughter and sister were "running really fast" to keep up.

For Whaley, who still practises law full time, design work and thinking about the business are slotted in "after hours and in the shower".

The company has chosen to continue as a web-based business, partly to keep the prices down and partly to control the way the message is delivered.

An apartment in Ponsonby serves as an office, stock room and showroom for the range.

Whaley said she was working towards exporting, but her present focus was getting positioned for expansion and, for this reason, several offers from overseas distributors had been turned down.


Whaley described Crackerjack Kids clothing as classic, hard-wearing, and fun.

To date, the range had focused on body words, doing words and directions, with the "tummy" T-shirt the most popular. There were plans to introduce picture-and-word combinations in the future.


Cracker Jack Kids