MINNEAPOLIS - It's no surprise that as Father's Day gets closer, Cooper & Kid gets busier.
The northeast Minneapolis-based company specializes in serving dads. The Cooper Kit is a quarterly subscription box full of hands-on activities meant for kids to do with their dads.
"Not only in subscription boxes but in the parenting world in general, there's like this ... cavern of nothingness serving men and their really important roles as fathers," said Nichole Smaglick, founder of Cooper & Kid.
Before Smaglick started Cooper & Kid, she had an African safari company that worked with remote cultures.
"The differences in male development there versus here were dramatically different," Smaglick said. "Then seeing this community of elder men really take on this responsibility with pride and gusto of shaping the next generation was really transformative for me. I wanted to find a way to bottle that—or shall I say, 'box it'—and help men here who are also doing that, shaping the next generation in their own children."
Smaglick said when she first told people her idea, the reactions were pretty similar.
"I would say the word 'dad' and they'd say, 'So what's it going to be? Like a hammer, coupon to a bar?' There just wasn't that mind space, or there wasn't that image in the mind of what this could be. It was sort of that old school thought of like, there's nothing there. That's not the case anymore. So we don't have that challenge anymore," she said.
The first Cooper Kits were sent out in the end of 2013. Every three months, there's a new box with a new theme.
"There will be five projects and in those five projects there will always be an element of building and creativity. And the shipping box itself is designed to convert into something within those projects," Smaglick said.
Each kit also comes with an activity guide, a bedtime story book, a themed dinner menu and a collectible medallion.
"Our biggest challenge is we're serving busy families. We want to make sure that ... we send them projects and activities that they can easily do and quickly do within that three-month period of time," Smaglick said.
Above and beyond play, each kit's theme involves character development and character building.
"This really gets down to the heart of the mission of Cooper & Kid," Smaglick said.
According to Smaglick, the Cooper Kit covers kids ages 5-12.
She said, "Children who have that engaged father, on every metric, do so much better than those who don't. So while we're focusing on the father ... ultimately the benefit is for the child."
A quarterly subscription costs $65 per kit while a yearly subscription costs $56 per kit. Enter promo code KARE11 at checkout to get 11 percent off.