Company Case GoldieBlox: Swimming Upstream against Consumer Perceptions

When Debbie Sterling was in high school, her math teacher enough, GoldieBlox beat out 15,000 contenders in Intuit’s “Small
recognized her quantitative talent and suggested she pursue Business Big Game” Super Bowl ad contest, winning a $4 million
engineering as a college major. At the time, Sterling couldn’t figure spot during the big game.
out why her teacher thought she should drive trains for a living. But Today, only a few years after the launch of its first product,
the suggestion was enough to get her started down the right path. GoldieBlox’s toys are sold at Target, Toys”R”Us, Amazon, and
After four years at Stanford, Sterling graduated with a degree in 6,000 other retailers worldwide. The brand features dozens of play
mechanical engineering. But throughout the course of her studies, sets designed for girls ages 3 through 11, the Bloxtown interactive
Sterling noticed the lack of women in her engineering program—a website and app, a collection of original music videos, a Goldie
characteristic phenomenon in a field where men outnumber women action figure, and a “More Than Just a Princess” line of T-shirts
86 percent to 14 percent. This observation ignited an obsession in and hoodies. GoldieBlox has won numerous industry awards, and
Sterling. She set out on a mission to inspire a future generation of its toys have succeeded in raising awareness about the lack of
female engineers by disrupting the pink aisle in toy stores. women in technical and scientific fields as well as the issues
During the past few years, among other accolades, Sterling has associated with the traditional pink aisle.
been named Time’s “Person of the Moment” and one of Business
Insider’s “30 Women Who Are Changing the World.” Why? All That Glitters Is Not Goldie
Because Sterling is the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, a toy With all this success, you would think that GoldieBlox would be
company that is making Sterling’s mission a reality. heralded by anyone and everyone wanting to change gender-based
stereotypes in toys. But GoldieBlox has sparked substantial debate
A Different Kind of Toy Company over whether it is really helping the cause it claims to be serving.
After graduating, Sterling started researching everything from The opposition, led by many feminist voices, claims that
childhood development to gender roles. She discovered that in GoldieBox’s approach is little more than window dressing. The
order to gain interest in and pursue a given field, a person must be debate got really ugly after the launch of GoldieBlox and the Parade
exposed to the right inputs at an early age. This fact became Float, a construction set based on a new challenge faced by Goldie
particularly bothersome as Sterling became more and more familiar and her friends—to create a float to transport the winner of a beauty
with the contents of the average toy aisle in stores. Toys for girls pageant. “You cannot create a toy meant to break down stereotypes
were in the pink aisle, dominated by dolls, stuffed animals, and when you start off with the ideal that ‘we know all girls love
princesses, whereas toys for boys were found in the blue aisle, filled princesses,’” argues author Melissa Atkins Wardy. Those in the
with macho action figures, various toy weapons, and a huge variety opposition camp call for toys that are gender-neutral. “When we
of building block sets. Most experts agree that the toys served up use princess culture, pinkification, and beauty norms to sell STEM
to young girls do little to encourage an interest in STEM subjects toys to girls and fool ourselves that we are amazing and progressive
(science, technology, engineering, and math). This knowledge led and raising an incredible generation of female engineers, we
Sterling to develop a plan to create a different kind of toy for girls. continue to sell our girls short,” says Wardy. Additionally, although
As she began developing ideas for toys, another research finding the toys are designed to stir interest in girls by having them build
struck her—girls possess stellar verbal skills and tend to learn and create, critics have raised concerns that GoldieBlox toys are too
better by interacting with stories. That insight was instrumental in simplistic.
the creation of the GoldieBlox line of construction sets. Part erector But Sterling is quick to respond to all such arguments and show
set and part storybook, the combination was designed to engage that GoldieBlox isn’t just trying to hook parents with a gimmick
girls through their verbal skills and encourage them to build that doesn’t deliver. “There’s nothing wrong with being a
through narratives that feature the adventures of Goldie, a freckled- princess,” says the 32-year-old entrepreneur. “We just think girls
faced blonde girl donning overalls and a tool belt. Although Goldie can build their own castles too.” This idea is backed by many
comes off as a bit of a tomboy, she’s still girlish. Skinny, blonde, advocates who recognize that to disrupt the pink aisle, you can’t
and cute, she favors pinks and purples. The toys and stories feature start out by trying to obliterate it.
animals and ribbons, and characters are more likely to help others To influence through play the types of hobbies and academic fields
than to succeed on their own. that women pursue, a company first must penetrate a very
After her innovative toy sets received little interest at the American competitive market. Creating toys that are void of things that girls
International Toy Fair in New York City, Sterling started her own find appealing will only send girls scrambling for the nearest Bratz
company. That decision sparked more interest than she could have or Disney princess doll. GoldieBlox toys may incorporate
ever imagined. To raise the $150,000 needed for the first round of traditional gender stereotypes, but they tweak and reframe them.
production, Sterling launched a Kickstarter crowdsourced funding GoldieBlox spent years researching gender differences, seeking
campaign. Her funding goal was reached in just four days, and the significant input from Harvard neuroscientists, and observing
funding topped out at $285,000. children’s play patterns. “Our stories leverage girls’ advanced
With little to spend on traditional advertising, Sterling first verbal skills to help develop and build self-confidence in their
promoted her inventive toys with some YouTube ads, including spatial skills,” Sterling asserts.
“Princess Machine,” featuring young girls who take their Besides, Sterling was just getting started. Today, the GoldieBlox
stereotypically girly toys and create a sophisticated Rube Goldberg portfolio is not only growing in number of play sets, it’s becoming
device. That video went viral to the tune of 8 million views in little more diverse with three new characters who have joined Goldie to
more than a week. Shortly thereafter, GoldieBlox’s first two create a team to which just about any girl can relate. There’s Ruby
products became Amazon’s top two selling toys during the Rails, a popular African American girl who is a whiz at coding;
industry’s busiest month of December. And if all that wasn’t Valentina Voltz, a Hispanic engineer; and Li Gravity, Goldie’s
long-time neighbor and best friend who is an expert at physics who indication, a little GoldieBlox seems to have rubbed off on just
knows how to apply the laws of his favorite science, performing about every other toy company. The first year that GoldieBlox set
stunts with superhero-like precision. Together, these characters up its booth at the trade show, the tech toy section was a wasteland.
take girls on a variety of adventures that go way beyond princess Today, nearly every booth features STEM toys, robots, and a lot of
escapades— such as skydiving, ziplining, and auto racing. Then not-so-pink products targeted at girls.
there’s the “Invention Mansion,” the play set Sterling refers to as Although clearly motivated to put an end to the stereotypes that
the “anti dollhouse”—a 300-piece play set featuring a “Hacker have long been generated by the toy and entertainment industries,
Hideway” that can be figured and reconfigured into hundreds of Sterling makes it clear that the goal is to become a multiplatform
different formats. character brand à la Disney. “We want to be the brand that kids are
Whether or not the two sides to the debate will resolve their whining for.” If the next few years are anything like GoldieBlox’s
differences in trying to achieve the same goal, there is no question first few, it’s easy to envision a new kind of toy aisle at the local
that GoldieBlox has taken the toy industry by storm. If the most supercenter—one that heavily features GoldieBlox’s multiplatform
recent annual North American International Toy Fair is any brand.

Questions for Discussion

1. Of the factors that influence consumer behavior, which category or categories (cultural, social, personal, or psychological) best
explain the existence of a blue toy aisle and a pink toy aisle? Why?
2. Choose the specific factor (for example, culture, family, occupation, attitudes) that most accounts for the blue/pink toy aisle
phenomenon. Explain the challenges faced by GoldieBlox in attempting to market toys that “swim against the stream” or push
back against the forces of that factor.
3. To what degree is GoldieBlox bucking the blue/pink toy aisle system?
4. If GoldieBlox succeeds at selling lots of its toys, will that accomplish the mission of increasing the presence of females in the
field of engineering?