Welcome to the Crowdsourcing Mornings segment! Every weekday morning, Geek Alabama talks about and features one crowdsourcing project from crowdsourcing sites such as, Indiegogo, and others. The hope with Crowdsourcing Mornings is to feature and help a project be successful and reach its fundraising goal. Please enjoy today’s featured project!
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Like many first-time parents entering the teething phase, we found ourselves handing our daughter just about anything to see if it would calm her – a wooden spoon, a silicone spatula, a zucchini fresh out of the refrigerator. One day while visiting family, we were raiding their kitchen for something she could chew on, when we came across a silicone bottle stopper.
We handed it over not thinking much.. until it got quiet. We looked over at our daughter, Reese, to find her intently gnawing at the bottle stopper. She pinched the nubs, she folded and grabbed the sides, she chewed on the ribbed cork and passed it between her hands as she inspected it. It kept her busy for longer than any other item had.
Austin, being the dad that he is, of course had a dad joke on deck and started calling it her “whine stopper”. The longer she continued to enjoy it, the more it became obvious that there could be a good idea on our hands: why don’t we create a silicone stopper that’s actually designed for teething babies?
As we explored the children’s product world, we quickly learned how much waste comes from cheaply made toys that break easily or lose their appeal. A staggering 80% of children’s toys end up in landfills, oceans, or incinerators each year, adding up to about 1.5 billion pounds of waste annually.
Unlike a traditional teether, our design combines dual functionality with durable, one-piece construction to transform a short-term necessity into a long-lasting, sentimental keepsake rather than another item destined for the landfill.
With your help, Kickstarter, we will be able to continue to grow Whine Stopper and bring more designs and innovations to the children’s product world to help reduce waste. While Whine Stopper has been made to the highest quality standard, testing to confirm its composition is expensive, and we will also use the funds we raise here to invest in more rigorous quality testing for our products.
As of May 22nd, this project has raised $5,000 of their $8,000 goal. This project has 28 days left to raise the $8,000 or it will not be funded. For a pledge of $13, you will get one Whine stopper. For a pledge of $33, you will get three Whine stoppers. To learn more and to pledge money, go to: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/whine-stopper/whine-stopper-stop-the-whine-stop-the-waste?
