“The only kids’ club in the universe that’s beloved by grown-ups, dinosaurs, and unicorns is reopening and ready to play.”
Sarah Robinson and Noria Morales had been friends for over a decade before leaving careers in fashion and beauty to conceive and launch The Wonder, a family-friendly clubhouse that caters to families of all shapes and sizes. Picture yourself drinking a glass of rosé while your daughter dons a superhero cape and lightsaber battles with other kids and parents, all while your stroller gets a full detailing.
But when the pandemic hit and in-person experiences were no more, The Wonder’s 8,000 foot flagship in Tribeca shuttered, leaving Sarah and Noria to conjure up ways to take their business virtual and entertain their children in lockdown.
Luckily, the company survived, and The Wonder is now back in person. We sat down with Sarah and Noria to talk about the inspiration behind The Wonder, how they handled the challenges of the pandemic, and what they’re planning next.
KCM: The Wonder was born out of your own experiences as parents. What made you realize families were craving this sort of experience?
Sarah: My oldest was born in 2016 and I thought, “Maternity leave is going to be so awesome — I’m going to walk down the sidewalk in the West Village and meet all these new people.” Instead, it ended up being the most lonely time of my life. It was isolating; I could not find my people. I also felt I was constantly making the choice between doing something for kids or adults; there was nothing that served both audiences. And I found the whole parenting culture to be totally uninspiring. We were still using the primary colored parachute and singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” It was the same stuff that I did in 1984, when I was four years old.
I also noticed that when I became a mother, people changed the way they spoke to me. They started saying things like, “Hey Mommy, do you want to have a glass of Mommy Juice?” It was gross — just because I have a child it doesn’t mean I am one. So I called Noria and said “There must be a cool place we can go.” The Wing had just launched, and everyone was going to these new communities and physical spaces. We realized there was really nothing out there for families.
You two came from the world of beauty and fashion. How did that translate into creating The Wonder?
Sarah: One of the things we loved about working in brand marketing was the storytelling. MAC will take a commodity like a red lipstick, and tell a story around it. Like, “This lipstick is all about smoky jazz clubs.” And you see it and think, “Oh, I want to go to a jazz club — get me that red lipstick!” But no one editorializes kids programming. So at The Wonder we decided to take a regular old, boring tumbling class and turn it into The Explorers Club. Or we’ll do a kid’s yoga class, and we’ll turn on a black light so everything glows, and we’ll tell the kids to glow from the inside out.
Why did you call it The Wonder?
Noria: Sarah and I had been to these crazy Fashion Week parties where it was just fantasy and imagination and possibility. And we thought, That’s exactly what kids and families need — why can’t we create a space that marries this imagination, storytelling, and a sense of wonder with everyday experiences? Sarah and I were observing that there were lots of kids’ spaces, but all the joy had been sucked out of them, because they were focused on serving this functional need.
We opened in May of 2019 in Tribeca, and it was just clear that we had hit a nerve — in a good way — from day one. Parents were just amazed by having a space that felt as much for them as it was for their child.
What kind of feedback have you gotten?
Sarah: One of our favorite pieces of feedback was right when we launched the Tribeca space. One mother wrote to Noria and was like, “This is the first time my husband left work early to hang out with our son.” We were doing a Star Wars lightsaber battle, and they came dressed as Star Wars characters. It was the most lo-fi event we’ve ever thrown: We turned off the lights and looped that battle with Darth Vader on the screen and played the “Imperial March.” We gave everybody foam lightsabers, and you wouldn’t believe how many people came dressed in Star Wars costumes. We were opening the door like, Here comes another Princess Leia and Chewbacca.
Noria: Sarah, that is exactly the testimonial I was thinking about. What that represents is the perfect embodiment of our mission, which is to be a place where kids can play to learn, but where parents learn to play because I think that’s the thing that gets forgotten. The fact that we got this banker dude to leave work early, and dress up as Chewbacca with his son to go play with lightsabers for 30 minutes — that’s winning for us.
So when you couldn’t be in these gorgeous spaces, how the heck did you pivot during the pandemic?
Noria: We had this programming that everyone came to the club for, and thought, Can we transform that to online experience? So within a day, we had launched a newsletter that was going out to families, trying to find all the online and virtual experiences that they could tap into. Within three weeks, we had adapted the programming and written scripts. One of our our staff members, a performer, was in her parents’ attic in Oklahoma and her dad was a local news producer and had equipment. So we produced this class out of her attic for like months and provided it for free. It’s surreal to think about, but we got great traction.
Sarah: In the first three weeks we learned that what you do in person is very different from what you do online. So we had to completely rescript and reconfigure the way that we ran these classes. But in doing that, we made them even better and more engaging. At the club, we only had maybe 12 or 15 kids in a class. But then we opened it up to everybody and we’re seeing a hundred kids joining, 400 kids joining. And we’re like, “Oh my God, people are really loving this, and look at the reach we have.” We created custom programming for Spotify, Peloton, Related, and Walmart and we ended up turning our digital programming into Camp Wonder. We had an itinerary for parents so that you could put your kid in front of the screen for 15 minutes in the morning. We had analog things that they could do if they wanted to get their kid off-screen, like going out and looking for grasshoppers or look at the stars.
Did you consider going fully digital?
Noria: Yes, we were really pitching and thinking about driving this company forward in a digital model. But we realized we’re not digital people, and people were starting to tire of being on screens at all anymore.
Sarah: It taught us there’s a time and a place for both. Online helps beef up the accessibility for us. Seeing 400 little faces on the Mad Scientists and Explorers Club Zooms made us realize we want to be able to serve a broader audience.
Noria: We got great feedback from families when we launched our digital programming, saying ‘Thank you for these classes, they’re both entertaining and educational so I don’t feel like my kids are watching crap on YouTube.’
Sarah: Our classes are already this kind of snackable format — 20 minutes long, the perfect amount of time for a kid’s attention span.
What’s next for The Wonder?
Noria: The pandemic completely changed the possibilities for us. It forced us to think bigger and broader. We’ve joined forces with Nook out of Washington D.C. and we’re transforming Nook clubhouses into Wonder clubhouses. We started thinking about a vision for a new way to play, and how to bring more wonder to more families.
As a team of working moms with 8 kids from 0-9 between them, we’re experts in what families need. When the grown-ups are happy, the kids are happy.
