In 2013, Ng worked with The Beadery and Toner Plastics to produce the Wonder Loom, a redesigned version of the Rainbow Loom that is made in the United States.
The kits are manufactured in China, and Ng supervises distribution out of a 7,500 square feet (700 m 2) warehouse near his home. As of August 2013, 600 retailers were selling Rainbow Loom at a retail price of $15 to $17. Rainbow Loom is also sold at Mastermind Toys in Canada and specialty stores. In June 2013 arts and crafts retail chain Michaels test-marketed the product in 32 stores by August the chain was carrying Rainbow Loom in its 1,100 U.S. In summer 2012, Ng received his first store orders from franchises of Learning Express Toys, a specialty crafts chain, and sales picked up. Ng started a website and filmed instructional videos featuring his daughters and niece.
SELLING LOOM BAND BRACELETS HOW TO
Įfforts to sell the loom online and in toy stores, however, were unsuccessful because customers did not understand how to use the product. Ng decided to rename his product after discovering that an elastic hair band on the market was named Twist Band, and his brother and niece came up with the name Rainbow Loom. He invested $10,000 and found a factory in China to manufacture the parts, which he and his wife assembled in their home in June 2011. His prototype, which he called Twistz Bandz, used a wooden board, pegs, and dental hooks. He spent six months developing the loom kit and designed 28 versions. The bracelets became popular with the neighborhood children, and his daughter suggested that he sell them.
He tried to show them how they could link the rubber bands together but was unsuccessful, so he stuck a scrap board with multiple rows of pegs on which the bands could be linked more easily. He conceived the idea of a toy loom for rubber-band crafting after seeing his young daughters make rubber-band bracelets. He was employed as a crash-test engineer for Nissan Motor Company in 2010. It’s not only the children in the schoolyard wearing the handmade friendship bracelets it’s not uncommon to see loom bands adorning the arms of parents, teachers, supermarket cashiers, the lollipop lady at the school crossing…the whole world seems to have gone cray-cray for loom bands!īut, aside from keeping kids occupied, loom bands have been attributed with many positive developmental qualities including fine motor skills and spatial awareness, not to mention the social component that involves children sharing and gifting their creations to friends and family.Rainbow Loom was created by Cheong Choon Ng, a Malaysian immigrant of Chinese descent who came to the United States in 1991 to attend Wichita State University, where he earned a graduate degree in mechanical engineering. In fact, I’d probably go as far as to say that hardly a day goes by when I do not see someone sporting a little rubber creation around their wrist. Loom bands have proved that they are unlikely to be a passing fad, in fact they are already a worldwide phenomenon, having an almost universal appeal to both boys and girls alike. Currently ranking 8th on Amazon’s best selling toys of all time, (coming behind classics such as the Rubik’s Cube, Monopoly and Scrabble is…you guessed it – the loom band!
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