Sara Kenton from Yardbird

For our readers, could you tell us about Yardbird as a company and talk a little bit about your products?

At Yardbird we create beautifully designed and engineered products that encourage families to put their phones down, get outside, and have fun. Our products include the Zephyr FLyer Tree Swing, Captain Safety, and Field Day Jump Ropes. All of our products are design-forward and extremely durable.

What’s the story behind Yardbird?

My fondest memories growing up include street-wide games of hide-and-go-seek, kickball, and capture the flag. My family basically lived outside. We knew all our neighbors, and they were our fellow explorers, teammates, opponents and companions.

Now the world is a different place. As parents, we are in constant competition with devices. I created Yardbird because I want to inspire among all families that “free range living” that I grew up with.

My career experience working in ecommerce and marketing at YETI, Outdoor Voices and HomeAway helped bring that vision to life.

Each of these brands were mission-driven and focused on experiences, quality and design. I applied that best-in-class thinking to create Yardbird and beautiful outdoor products that encourage families to get out and experience life.

A lot of people we talk to often ask about how to take a product from an idea to production, obviously there are different routes one could take to do that, how was that experience for you?

First of all, I would say the journey of product development is sometimes tough and intimidating, but incredibly gratifying as well.

The reality is that there is no magic formula. While there is a broad framework, (Design, Engineering, Prototyping, Development, Testing, Production), it is not always linear and can look very different from one product to the next. Materials, manufacturing techniques, and the type of product can look very different at each step within that framework.

Finding and vetting the right supplier is an integral part of all parts of that process. However as a startup, you are also “selling” them on yourself as an entrepreneur and your business much like you would to an investor.

So, my experience was that product development as a start up became more relational than I expected.

Captain Safety first and now Zephyr Flyer, should we expect more products from Yardbird in the near future?

We just launched Field Day Jump Ropes and Double Dutch Set, and later this month we are launching the Ready-To-Roll Kickball Set. We are also working on a corn hole game.

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