OUR STORY
The Little Story
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Nina, 3 years old is just starting to talk, her "QUOI ? " echo through the house. WHY is pronounced "Quoi" in french (you will recognize the KOA)...
Coincidentally: her mom, Kim Goldstein, is just looking for a name for her newest project: a company that sells educational and creative kids' craft kits. The name was a no-brainer: what better nod to children's curiosity than that KOA that sounds so good?
From the start, we wanted to put design at the heart of the company.This allows us to offer to have a truly creative proposal, to pay full attention from the design stage to the educational purpose we want to serve and to the form, the materials, the visual.
We collaborate with Oscar Diaz, an industrial designer based in London, and have launched our first DIY kits for 6 - 10 year olds.
With some special features:
☑ Original and innovative concepts
☑ Clever assemblies
☑ A real attention to materials, to the design
☑ Objects that kids can really use once assembled.
Our VISION
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Koa Koa is mission-based company : our kits encourage children to develop their creative potential and spark their imagination.
Stimulate creative thinking.
Creativity is a key skill, yet it is not necessarily encouraged in school. Our mission is precisely to help you by offering small kits that stimulate "creative thinking".
All our products serve this mission. To do this, we rely on innovative pedagogies and movements that make our societies evolve like the Maker movement, to give birth to products.
Made in the European Union and assembled by workers with disabilities, our kits are exported to about fifteen countries.
Our inspirations
THE MAKER MOVEMENT
The Maker movement embodies this desire to reclaim the culture of making: repair instead of throwing away, make what you need yourself instead of systematically consuming, diverting, inventing...
It is above all, a state of mind.
Born in the 2000s, it has gradually spread to the whole society to try to draw the outline of a new economy and new ways of life more respectful of human and the environment. Large companies now have FabLabs and kits to make your own beer, soap or own flashlight are spreading and mark the interest in this trend.
Our kits invite children to understand the stories, the materials, the mechanisms that are hidden inside the objects around us. They reveal the secrets hidden in those black boxes so well sealed.
In our world focused on the virtual, the visual, the intellect, the body and the brain are disconnected. Our kits are also a time to pause, to allow the hand and brain to reconnect.
As the good Makers that we are, we have written our Manifesto.
ART + SCIENCE = STEAM
65% of the children who go to school today, will be working in 2030 in jobs that do not yet exist. The ability to innovate is a key skill.
We rely on STEAM* pedagogy, which decompartmentalizes science education and art. Why? To learn to think differently.
This pedagogy seeks to develop a dialogue between the cognitive and the emotional, between a reflection and spontaneity, between the two parts of the brain: the right(logic, problem solving, resilience) and the left(visual and emotional sensibility, aesthetics, communication).
We collaborate with designers who build on this approach.
They take into account not only the educational purpose, develop clever assemblies to stimulate the logical mind of children ...but also focus on the visual aspect, textures, shapes to awaken children to the image. Our kits offer an accomplished design that is minimalist, uncluttered, contemporary but always fun!
* STEAM = Sciences technology Engineering Art Math
We do it : we manufacture in the EU !
We ensure that our manufacturing creates a positive social impact and the smallest possible environmental footprint.
🇪🇺 European manufacturing:All our suppliers are located in Europe. Only the parts for which there is no factory in the EU come from Asia.
🇫🇷 Assembly in ESAT in Normandy : The kits are assembled in an Etablissement et Service d'Aide par le Travail located in Normandy.
♻ Responsible materials: We favor certified materials and we eliminate plastics wherever possible.
