The journey so far…
When I look back at the last four years with MURO, it is hard to believe that we’ve managed to overcome all the obstacles between the initial idea and exhibiting our product at London Toy Fair, but with only two weeks to go before the event that’s exactly the position I find myself in.
2017 was a defining year for MURO; we raised £35,000 from a successful Kickstarter campaign, we’ve found a manufacturing partner to take our prototypes into production and received a Creator Award from Wework at the London finals. These key achievements have given us some much-needed momentum to launch our retail product.
However, 2017 was not the beginning. You have to go all the way back to 2013 to get to the inception of MURO.
My nephew was eight months old and had just started standing still need help to balance, so my brother (being an engineer) decided to build a ‘busy-board’ for him on the wall at their home in Texas. After proudly showing me his creation, consisting of a sheet of MDF and household items, over Skype, we started talking about taking the idea further and making a production model.
As we did our research, it quickly became apparent that, while busy-boards themselves are nothing new (a search on Pinterest will return over 20k results), there was not a product on the market to cater for parents less comfortable in a workshop. Realising that a big part of a busy-board’s appeal was that parents were building them for their children, we decided to create a modular product; and MURO was born!
Back in 2018 and after working away quietly for a long time, we are at last ready to show MURO to industry.
MURO is currently designed at children 12 to 36 months (although set to increase through continued development) and retail prices start at £80. We‘re very proud of what we’ve been able to create.
Please come join us on stand GH28 in the Greenhouse at the London Toy Fair if you would like to find out more!