Before interviewing the owners of Kidville—married couple Andy Stenzler and Shari Misher Stenzler, and Rammy Harwood—we all chatted as parents. I shared my worry of the moment: my daughter’s obsession with Instagram. “Don’t get me started on selfies,” I lamented. “Oh, yeah, Selfie Sundays,” Andy nodded. “You know about that?” I asked, surprised. “Sure, I’ve got a 10-year-old,” he replied with a knowing smile.
Then I realized why I was surprised. I knew that the original idea for Kidville was inspired by Shari’s experiences as a new mom schlepping her baby to kids’ classes in the neighborhood. But I hadn’t realized how much time had passed since then. If their oldest is now 10, that meant that Kidville too is closing in on a decade—and that New York Family and Kidville had a lot of catching up to do. For the record, the first Kidville opened on the Upper East Side in January of 2005 and the second one followed on the Upper West Side in May of 2006.
How close is the Kidville of today to the original vision you had for it? How has it evolved?
Andy: Kidville has always been about putting all kinds of great kids’ classes under one roof, adding in additional services like a playground, a salon, retail stores, and birthday parties—and making it clean, safe, and secure. That core is still what we do today. Our offerings have evolved, of course, but what’s great is that it means thousands of lesson plans have evolved over the years from parent feedback and teacher feedback from all the Kidvilles, not only in New York, but from around the world.
Kid-wise, who is your core audience?
Andy: We’ve always had a core market of ages 0-5, with the biggest market being kids before they’ve started nursery school or kindergarten. So basically it’s little people who start with us when they’re 6 months old and often go on with us till they’re 5 years old—and who may soon use Kidville products.
Kidville products? Are we breaking news here? Are you going to be in stores?
Andy: I think the best way to describe what we’re going to do is that Kidville has a relationship with parents all around the globe, and those parents have a lot of recommendations that they’d like share with other parents who don’t live around a Kidville. So we’re going to give those moms a forum in which to curate everything from clothing to toys to events, and more. For instance, a mom in California might make recommendations to a mom in Minnesota about what a 4-year-old might wear to a nursery school graduation.
Last year, you put a lot of energy into debuting your Rockin’ Railroad classes. What is that class all about, and how’s it going?
Rammy: Rockin’ Railroad is our signature music program and certainly one of our biggest initiatives from a content standpoint.
Shari: We believe that the Rockin’ Railroad CDs will be a product people will be interested in too. It will be something that we kind of launch separately on its own merit.
Did we just break more news? For parents who aren’t familiar, how would you describe the class—and the CD—in a nutshell?
Shari: The class introduces new genres of music to kids every single week, and now it’s evolved into an all-original music CD.
Is it your most popular class?
Andy: There are the big three. We’ve got the Big Muscle series, the Run Wiggle Paint and Giggle series, and the Rockin’ Railroad series. The only reason art is not as big a category as music and gym is because kids put crayons in their mouth when they’re 12 months old. So we start art at 18 months when they realize that crayons don’t taste so good.
Shari: The key to all this is that there’s a developmental progression within a semester of classes that then carries through as a child is old enough to take the next level class in the series. So kids in We Wiggle graduate to Run Wiggle and often eventually end up in KVU—Kidville University—our 2s and 3s program that introduces children to a real nursery school environment.
Andy: We’ve also recently expanded our sports and dance titles—and all that takes off from ages 3 to 5 when kids really have the dexterity to enjoy those activities.
Earlier you alluded to getting parent feedback from all over the world. When did you get in the business of franchising?
Andy: From the start we built Kidville to be a franchise company because we thought it would work best as a network of owners that were local to their marketplaces. We built the initial locations—the Upper East Side and Upper West Side—and then in 2009 we started franchising. We are the teachers, the instructors, the friends. We are the support for every franchise location worldwide, from Park Slope to Los Angeles to China to India.
Rammy: The really fun part is that we have a lot of franchisees who were originally members of one of our Kidvilles in the city. They drank the Kool Aid, loved it, and wanted to move it home with them.
How many franchises are there to date?
Rammy: Fifty locations, 14 of which are opening this year. In New York City, there are 11, with three of those opening this year in the Financial District, Tribeca, SoHo, and Williamsburg.
To sum up, here’s a 10th anniversary type of question even though we’re only coming up on your ninth: After doing this for almost a decade, what’s the joy? What do you love best about owning and running Kidville?
Rammy: The biggest joys for me are seeing the families, literally.
Do they know you?
Rammy: No, I don’t think so. And that’s okay. I was out in the Kidville in Summit, New Jersey, last week, and this mom saw me in a class and asked me who I was and then talked my ear off for ten minutes about how much she loves this teacher in this class. And I just kept saying “thank you.” And she said, “Did you hire her?” And I said, “No, I didn’t. I’m just here to enjoy the class.” But hearing about the joyful impact that one teacher had made on this family’s life is my absolute biggest joy. Knowing that every day we are making an impact on these families’ lives—that’s the privilege.
Andy: The only thing I would add is that I don’t think we expected to be in eight or nine countries by now, and that’s been super fun.
Does that mean you’re on the road a lot?
Andy: Not really. Technology allows us to communicate with our franchisees daily. You turn a $100 camera around in the Kidville in Qatar and you can see what’s going on there.
Eric Messinger is the Editor of New York Family. He can be reached at [email protected].
