oomoo Institute co-founders Karen Robinovitz and Sara Schiller started the brand after discovering how incredibly joyful, therapeutic and healing slime could be.  Scientifically speaking, slime is a polymer substance, but most people know it as a gooey and delightfully squishable material that is something like Play-Doh on steroids. “Through our own personal traumas and tragedies that we have experienced and found our way through, we wanted to bring the beauty and joy of slime in the form of a hands-on experience, along with other sensory ways of playing, to the world,” Robinovitz told Inside Retail. In 2018, a year after losing her husband and having fallen into a crippling depression, Robinovitz was introduced to the joys of slime by the young daughter of her close friends, Sara and Marc Schiller, who had stopped by for a visit. It was the first time in a long while that her mind wasn’t centered on grief and she was able to experience a child-like happiness for several hours.  Sara Schiller had her own fair share of worries, caring for both a husband who had been left with severe disabilities after a stroke, and her daughter, who was born with a rare neuro-genetic disorder. After trying her hand at making slime for the first time, Robinovitz knew that she and Schiller could use their combined talents and strong friendship to bring the benefits of slime to the world.  From friends to co-founders  Robinovitz and Schiller’s connection with each other began long before they decided to launch a slime empire together.   As Schiller recalled, the two originally connected when Robinovitz came to work at her company, then-titled Meet Hospitality, a New York-based business that specialises in designing and providing custom venues for meetings and events.  Upon noticing the contemporary art in Schiller’s office, Robinovitz asked if Schiller was familiar with Wooster Collective, a website and blog dedicated to showcasing street art from around the world.  After Schiller revealed that she and her husband had started the site, the two quickly bonded over their love of color and design, and began attending art galleries and fairs together.  “I believe that our joint love of not just contemporary art, but immersive, experiential art and performance art, really is at the core of a lot of what we do with the brand,” Schiller said. Between her background in event-planning and hospitality, and Robinovitz’s background in the world of journalism, public relations, and influencer management as the co-founder and former CEO of digital influencer management company Digital Brand Architects, their professional backgrounds create a highly effective Venn diagram of skill sets. Where they overlap is a focus on building a joyous and inclusive brand.  “It actually makes it really easy to work and make decisions together, because we know exactly what we’re building, but we come to it with our own different experiences, backgrounds and areas of specialty,” Schiller explained.  Sixteen years after they first met, the art lovers, best friends and now co-founders have created a multi-tiered slime empire that garnered an impressive US$30 million in revenue last year. Sloomoo Institute sells slime kits and subscription boxes online, but about 80 per cent of its revenue comes from ticket sales to its interactive playgrounds where consumers can customise and play with slime in real life.  The tickets are priced between US$29 and US$48, based on the time and location of the visit, and give consumers access to one-of-a-kind experiences like Sloomoo Falls, a Nickelodeon-esque experience where consumers can don a biodegradable poncho and other protective gear and get slimed down. Building a slime empire from the ground up While Sloomoo Institute was built on a steady foundation of friendship and a shared love of slime, few brand founders can say they have experienced zero obstacles along the way to building a business. Schiller and Robinovitz are certainly no exception to this rule.   After launching a highly successful pop-up in 2019, the co-founders were forced to halt the physical operations of the business due to Covid-19 restrictions. However, that didn’t deter them from moving forward with their mission to bring the healing power of slime to people.  The two “turned on a dime”, to use Schiller’s phrase, and shifted to hosting virtual events, ranging from after-school slime-making classes for younger consumers to corporate events for adults. At one point, they taught 600 Google executives how to make slime, as well as professionals at Nike, Bank of America, Snapchat and many other corporations.  Being forced to close the pop-up shop during the pandemic turned out to be a blessing in disguise, Robinovitz said. It gave her and Schiller a chance to take a step back and say, “now we can focus on business strategy”.  “We were moving, moving, moving, and we didn’t have time to focus on anything else. That was the moment when we said, ‘Let’s use this time really wisely and plot out our future,’” Robinovitz said. Not only did the co-founders decide which cities they wanted to enter with new physical locations, but also they doubled down and invested in their infrastructure, hiring industrial engineers to build out the back-end system for Sloomoo Falls.  It was also during this quiet period that they were able to raise US$5.8 million in a Series A funding round to expand the business.  Prior to receiving this funding, Sloomoo Institute was primarily built upon Schiller and Robinovitz’s savings and assistance from Toni Ko, a Korean-American businesswoman, best known for founding and running NYX Cosmetics, which L’Oréal acquired for an estimated US$500 million in 2014.  In addition to building one of the best-known beauty brands in the US, Ko also runs the beauty incubator Bespoke Beauty Brands, which has launched makeup brands Jason Wu Beauty and Kimchi Chic Beauty. When Ko isn’t launching her own successful ventures, she is investing in and mentoring founders like Schiller and Robinovitz. Today, Ko remains on Sloomoo Institute’s board and is still “an amazing, supportive partner” to the entrepreneurial duo, Robinovitz said.  “She’s there if we ever want to talk through challenges or get her point of view. She’s very much in the background, but also there with us when we need her.” Creating an interactive and inclusive slime universe From a temporary pop-up shop, Sloomoo Institute has expanded to four permanent bricks-and-mortar locations, in Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, and New York City. The company expects to open its fifth physical shop, in Los Angeles, in September.  In addition to growing Sloomoo Institute’s bricks-and-mortar presence in the US, the co-founders plan to open international locations as well.  “We are definitely looking at investing in our e-commerce world and expanding our merch program. We’re also working on international expansion through licensing, so that will open the door to global and other revenue streams,” Robinovitz said. “As the brand grows, we know we can dovetail into product licensing and other areas where Sloomoo Institute can live, such as our media intellectual property,” she added, noting that the company has already developed several characters, like Sloomoo, Looloo, Googoo, and Boo that will become a world of their own, much like Pokémon. Another strategic area of focus in the years ahead will be building on Sloomoo Institute’s track record of creative partnerships, such as with companies like the Japanese candy brand Hi-Chew and American fast food chain Trill Burgers.  At the same time, Schiller and Robinovitz want to continue prioritising the positive, sensorial aspects of the business, especially for consumers with varying physical and mental capabilities.  On top of employing individuals across the disability spectrum, Sloomoo Institute also sells a variety of sensory-friendly toys and has quiet hours when the volume of in-store music is lowered, headcount is limited, and headphones are available to accommodate a wide range of customer support needs. Sloomoo Institute has also partnered with organisations like The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, The Chicago Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, Centers for Civil and Human Rights, the Pratt Institute in New York, and Goldie Hawn’s MindUP Foundation to create inclusive programs for children to experience joy in a non-limiting environment.  The inspiration for this largely comes from Schiller’s daughter.  “I have a 16-year-old daughter with a rare genetic syndrome called Angelman syndrome, and while she can’t do a lot, like speaking or many activities of daily living, a symptom of her syndrome is happiness, so she brings joy to everyone that she meets. That, coupled with my husband having bilateral strokes 10 years ago, made me, on a personal level, value people who think and process information differently,” Schiller explained. Having people on staff who understand and, therefore, are more patient with the diverse customer base that Sloomoo Institute attracts, including many neurodiverse guests, has been key to the brand’s authentic leadership in this space.  “It’s this entire flywheel of a journey that we didn’t even know we were embarking on. We just started with one person and it’s grown from there,” Schiller emphasised.  One of Rabinovitz’s favourite examples of this is when they had a wheelchair-only school visit a Sloomoo Institute location and the headmaster shared that it was the first time a venue was able to accommodate the whole class.  The experience was “incredibly powerful and meaningful,” Robinovitz said.  “When you saw the joy and just exuberance on these students’ faces, it was unbelievably heartwarming.” This story first appeared in the October issue of Inside Retail US magazine.