by Catherine Dodd and Rosie Phelps
Doddl is a unique and revolutionary range of children’s cutlery designed to make meal times easier and promotes independent eating.
Welcome to Doddl and the launch of our first product – Doddl Children’s Cutlery / Flatware. Doddl is a revolutionary approach to designing a knife, fork and spoon. Principally aimed to help make meal times easier, it also enables children to learn to eat independently from a young age.
Doddl is a unique and revolutionary range of children’s cutlery helping to make meal times easier.
Doddl cutlery has been designed as the natural progression from baby-led weaning and aims to prepare children to eat independently by the time they reach school age.
Doddl cutlery encourages children to intuitively use a pincer grip, which is an essential skill for drawing and writing.
Existing children’s cutlery is a miniature version of adult cutlery. However, children have not yet developed the strength, dexterity and control to use such implements effectively.
For many parents’ meal times can be a struggle:
Food is placed in front of the child. The child grabs a fork and tries shovelling food into their mouth. They are struggling to control the cutlery – food is being pushed onto the table and the floor.
Food is dropping off the fork just before it reaches the mouth. The child has given up with the cutlery and has resorted to fingers. The child and parent are losing interest.
Mum or dad is frustrated and worried because the child has not eaten enough, the food is going cold, the child is going to be hungry later and more wasted food to throw away.
Can you relate to this?!
In short meal times can be messy, ineffective and a draining experience for young children and parents.
To combat this mealtime melee we have created Doddl cutlery, a 3-piece knife, fork and spoon set specifically designed for young children.
The idea began in 2013 when Catherine’s (Founder) daughter was eating her dinner and the handle of her plastic fork accidentally broke. She then picked up the fork end and proceeded to eat her pasta much more easily.
Catherine then set about creating a new type of utensil – something that was much more compact, easier for the child to control and encouraged them to progress from the basic palmar grip and begin better utilising their fingers (pincer grip).
With the support of a Child Development Specialist, Catherine undertook extensive research and sample testing. The final designs promote the development of correct motor-skill function.
Doddl cutlery encourages children to use a utensil in both hands, which is important for cognitive development. The cutlery is symmetrical and can be used in either hand.
As the child’s strength, dexterity and control develops, they can then make the successful transition onto normal adult cutlery, using the correct pincer grip.
The unique design of the handles allows Doddl cutlery to sit comfortably within the child’s palm. The spoon and fork handles encourage children to use the pincer grip, which helps to develop finger strength and control.
Pincer grip development is also essential for other skills such as drawing and writing.
Imagine having a dinner where you can focus on enjoying your own dinner (or maybe feeding the baby!)
Doddl is proud to be joining forces with a British manufacturer to make our cutlery – producing a high-quality product. We don’t want to name drop, but we are delighted with securing such an A+ partner.
Once funded, tooling will commence and our manufacturer will be ready to begin producing the first sets of Doddl Cutlery in approximately September 2015.
Now that we have our final designs, we are seeking funding to cover the costs associated with manufacturing and packaging. We are looking to raise £10,000 to complete this phase of manufacturing of our revolutionary range of Doddl cutlery.
As a thank you to our funders, we have put together a series of great rewards for you to get your hands on…well, maybe not your hands…maybe you can buy a set for your child…after all, they have been designed for children!
Thank you so much for taking the time to read our pitch. We are very grateful for your support in helping us to achieve our funding goal. Please spread the word about Doddl by sharing the link for our Kickstarter page on Facebook and Twitter and invite your friends to join the Doddl revolution!
Thank you for helping us make meal times a Doddl.
We have some great clothing available if your little ones want to join Team Doddl.
Available in sizes 1-2 years, 3-4 years and 5-6 years. Please ad-on the relevant amount to you cutlery order.
I am the creative mind behind Doddl and I am constantly coming up with weird and wonderful ideas. My inspiration is my three amazing children and I am sure fellow parents of twins will agree they are both exhausting and exhilarating in equal measures!
I thrive on the challenge of seeing how I can make every day items better and make life that little bit easier.
As a business leader, implementing plans for steady and sustainable growth is my speciality. I successfully grew my first business from humble beginnings to a multi-award winning company.
Cat and I compliment each other really well; Cat is the inventor and I supply the business know-how. Together we make a great team…and I really enjoy working with my sister!
We have been very thorough in managing this process and the development of our product. The main challenge we faced was knowing whether this product could actually be made, because we are hitting new boundaries with regards to injection moulding. To address this concern and to ensure we could deliver as promised to all our backers, we developed prototype tooling. Using prototype tooling, we could create the conditions of a manufacturing process and begin producing samples of the product. Fortunately this worked very well and we are happy with the quality, therefore we can guarantee that we can produce a high-quality item once we move into full-scale production.
One of the reasons we were keen to work with a British manufacturer is so that we could better control quality and manage supply.
We will be working with a logistics company to ensure a smooth transition of processing everyone’s order, once the product is ready.