Pretzl launched May 4 and serves as a resource for parents to search for unique children’s activities in the area, register their kids and keep a schedule of important dates all in one spot. Created by Amanda Cole and Olivia Leon, the site helps fill a need for busy parents by offering one-stop shopping for activity information.
“Olivia and I were commiserating together about how hard it is to know that there are so many wonderful activities for children but not having the time or resources to review all of them and to see what their offerings are,” says Cole, CEO of the site. “We thought there could be an easier way for parents to browse through activities they know they want, or discover new activities they never knew of, and then book on the spot and have one easy scheduling solution.”
The site has more than 5,000 listings for classes, activities, camps and parties for children ages 0 months to 18 years. There are no fees to use the site. All listings are from organizations based in Westchester County and Greenwich, Conn., though the founders plan to expand to other parts of the metro area in the future.
Parents can use the site by typing in specific keywords, such as a child’s age and favorite hobby or interest, and all available listings pertaining to that topic will appear.
“For example, I have a 5-year-old son who loves dinosaurs. I can enroll him in a soccer class or other after-school activities, but he loves, loves, loves dinosaurs,” says Leon, the site’s vice president of marketing and strategy. “So I can go on Pretzl and type in 5-year-old and dinosaurs into the search bar ,and everything in his age range, anything that has to do with dinosaurs will come up.”
Parents can also search for activities occurring at the same time, in the same neighborhood, which is particularly useful if they have multiple children on the same schedule with different interests.
Cole and Leon are both working mothers with backgrounds in business. They came up with the idea of Pretzl last year. Having worked together before, they put together their available resources to bring their concept to life.
“It’s been a passion of ours, a need that we saw personally and friends have often mentioned,” says Leon. “So I think there was an added desire on a personal level to bring this thing to life and create a solution for busy stressed-out parents.”
Image: The founders of PRETZL, Amanda Cole, left, and Olivia Leon.
Credit: Mary Ausman
