At age five, Lisa Glover had a dinosaur-themed birthday party. Years later, inspired by a dinosaur-at-a-mall video, she went full Jurassic Park for an assignment at Lehigh University’s Technical Entrepreneurship Master’s Degree Program.
“The dino kits were part of a homework assignment back in October of 2013 called 'Making It’ — we had to explore a manufacturing process and demonstrate it in a unique and interesting way,” she recalls. “I chose a process called Industrial Origami, which involves taking sheet metal, making special types of cuts in it, and folding it up into various, useful objects. I thought that making something fanciful — a costume — would be a great use for this manufacturing process. I demonstrated it using cardboard, since sheet metal is really heavy! People really were fascinated by this 15-foot-long creation of mine, and I had a ton of fun building it, so I decided to bring a smaller version of the creature to life.”
Last March, Glover hatched Architrep at Ben Franklin Tech Ventures. Soon after, she launched a flat-pack Velociraptor kit on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. She expected to raise enough funds to make and sell a few hundred kits. Instead, she sold nearly 5,500. In December, Architrep was accepted into the Bridgeworks Enterprise Center business incubation program.
The startup's latest product, a Pterodactyl kit with a three-foot wingspan and Glover’s signature googly eyes, has already exceeded its Kickstarter goal. Glover also has plans for a Triceratops kit, as well as a variety of other dinosaurs, animals and mythical creatures.
“I'm also developing some mini kits of the same creatures,” she says. “The current kits take a few hours to build and are intended for ages 9-plus. I'd like to create some simpler ones that can be built by ages 6-plus and only take half-an-hour to build. Also, I'm developing partial-costumes: just the head and arms of creatures, that people can build and wear. Some day, I hope to bring full-body costumes to the world, but right now that just isn't feasible.”
Source: Lisa Glover, Architrep
Writer: Elise Vider