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Some Future Day evaluates technology at the intersection of culture & law.
Join Marc Beckman and his esteemed guests for insider knowledge surrounding how you can use new technologies to positively impact your life, career, and family. Marc Beckman is Senior Fellow of Emerging Technologies and an Adjunct Professor at NYU, CEO of DMA United, and a member of the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Cryptocurrency and Digital Assets.
Marc Beckman: [00:01:00] [00:02:00] Karen, it's so nice to see you. Thank you for joining me today on Some Future Day. Uh, Sloomoo is so cool and compelling. I've been watching you build this brand and build this business. for those of you who are not aware, Sloomoo, is a fully immersive sensorial experience, it includes a visual explosion, a slimy touch, bold sense, some weird ASMR sounds, and what's really interesting is that Karen, you as a founder, as a creator, as an entrepreneur, I think it could be argued that although this SLIME concept was around when we were young, the social media vertical really brought this back to the forefront and I think it inspired you [00:03:00] to create this business.
Is that fair to say that this ASMR SLIME thing that we saw before Sloomoo was one of the inspirational points for you to create this company?
Karen Robinovitz: It is and you know, it's, it's interesting because like you, I grew up with slime in the 70s and it was by Mattel. It came in a plastic garbage can and there were things like eyeballs and worms and it was my favorite toy as a child and the source of many arguments at home because it was everywhere. And in 2014, Slime became a viral trend on social media.
It had emerged out of Thailand where people started making it from scratch, and it created a slime explosion, which I really think is about Ultimately, playing with slime, while it seems like a kid's toy, there's a lot of incredible benefits of soothing, calm, and escape, and getting a little bit [00:04:00] off your screens, which is ironic because at the same time it's so visually appealing to watch when it's on your screen on social media,
Marc Beckman: Sure,
Karen Robinovitz: it represents both things.
Marc Beckman: So it came, it was born out of social media. But your mission statement, I love your mission statement, by the way, it's two words. Deliver joy. Like, how can you get better than that? Like, who wouldn't love that mission statement? So, what really, um, you know, when we lock into the concept of delivering joy, of a joyous experience, of a celebration of sorts, um, how did you come up with that mission statement?
Like, what does it mean to you? Why was it important for Sloomoo Or why is it important for Sloomoo to deliver joy?
Karen Robinovitz: So, this really comes from an intensely personal place, and it's a long story, um, and a really hard story. Uh, [00:05:00] seven years ago, my life completely imploded. I had been married and with my husband for 14 years. And we were going through a really difficult time in our marriage and he struggled with a lot of mental health issues and was somebody who was a strong Italian man who really didn't want to get the support he needed and we wound up separating and during that separation he passed away.
I had an enormous nervous breakdown. My whole life was ripped out from under me. I really couldn't function, and this went on for about a year and a half of literally being like what I call a shell and a non human. I just, [00:06:00] I was, I was an unfathomable mess. I re evaluated so many areas of my life. I had a business at the time that I wound up stepping away from, which was in the social media space, and I found social media at that time really toxic for me.
Um, and nine months after losing him, my 14 year old cousin was murdered in the Parkland school shooting. And I Literally was like, how am I getting through the next 45 years of life?
Marc Beckman: with your, um, husband's passing, I'm just curious, like, so you were separated and then was it that you felt, um, responsible to a certain extent for his death? Is that what made you feel so horrible?
Karen Robinovitz: I think part of it was I felt responsible. Part of it was we never got closure. Another part of it was, of course, I never, like [00:07:00] never wanted him to, not be alive. And separating doesn't mean you don't love someone. It means you don't work necessarily as a couple. But my love for him never changed. And I, I was just distraught.
You think about how you could have prevented things. What could you have done differently How did you not see somebody was in this bad of a place? Where did I go wrong? How can I never talk to this person again? Separation doesn't mean you never want to see somebody again. It just means your coupledom at that time doesn't work and that's I was heartbroken.
I mean, I, I thought, I actually thought I would die [00:08:00] of a broken heart syndrome. I'm, I'm with no levity. I literally, I didn't want to live, but I didn't want to hurt other people around me because I knew what it was like to lose somebody that close to you. And also Never understand someone's pain and this is why, you know, the veil of social media can be so difficult because from the outside my life looked great.
Marc Beckman: Well, it's, you know, it's, um, you know, amazing that you're sharing this, um, very personal story. Um, I just read an article, just, I wasn't expecting to get this heavy with you this morning, honestly, but I just read this article that was talking about how during this time period, um, um, have A lot of people feel very much alone, even if they're in relationships, even if they're with their families.
They feel alone, and what happens is, rather than having, you, you had, um, mentioned with, with your [00:09:00] husband how, um, you felt like he didn't get the help. He wasn't able to express himself. He wasn't able to work on himself. And what's happening in the article that I just read yesterday, actually, is that, um, a lot of people who are suffering from mental illness and, um, it related issues.
Currently, our, um, turning inward, and they're not speaking, and they're not having conversations, and as a result, we're seeing, um, the suicide rate for girls in particular, um, skyrocketing. I think that the, uh, percentage growth for suicides amongst young girls is higher now than it's been, um, for, you know, a very long time, maybe, uh, forever.
So I think that, you know, what you're talking about, as far as, Finding help is an important topic today, and then, and then, I can't even imagine, like, I'm not going to discount, you follow that up with, like, a, a, an even more horrific story, which was the Parkland shooting, I, I, you know, heard you loud and clear, I can't even imagine [00:10:00] how you felt at that moment in time, and losing your cousin to such a, uh, a terrible crime, to such an atrocity, so, What did you do, um, at that point in time?
Like, who did you go to speak to? What would, how would you encourage people today who are watching the show, who have loved ones who are struggling with mental health and illness, um, to go and, and find help? Who can they talk to? What did you do personally?
Karen Robinovitz: So, I mean, one of the reasons I do talk about this is to be a voice piece for actually speaking about it because if you don't speak about it, it does get worse and I I did everything. I am, I am Not afraid to ask for help. So I am in I was in therapy, of course. I Think I upped my therapy for the first three months.
I was in therapy like three times a week. I just I couldn't function I was literally like Crawling out of my skin and in [00:11:00] my I mean it's real like I was like when I say I was crawling out of my skin like I would like scratch my skin and like I had Scratch marks all over me because I just, I was so nervous all the time and so anxious, I didn't know what to do with my body.
I was seeing a bereavement counselor specifically outside of my therapist. That was another day a week. I went to a psychiatrist and went on antidepressants. That wasn't once a week, but that was, you know, every month in the beginning. I was in a support group. That was an additional once a week. I, at various times, I went to every kind of possible healer you can imagine, from shamans to energy workers.
I was in acupuncture. I was in acupuncture because I know this sounds really crazy, but I did not feel my legs. I was like [00:12:00] walking and my legs and my upper body never felt attached. I, I can't explain it. I used to do yoga six days a week during this time when I was doing yoga. Like I like couldn't move in my body.
It was, I was so disconnected and it's because I wasn't grounded. So when I remember the first day I went to acupuncture and I didn't even tell her what was going on. And she literally said, were you in a car accident? And it is because emotional pain shows up in your body. I was mangled. I was actually mangled.
And I, I, the, really the only time I left my house in that year and a half was for these sessions. I
Marc Beckman: wasn't
Karen Robinovitz: functioning. So
Marc Beckman: it.
Karen Robinovitz: I, I got through. I am not the same person. It's not that I, I am still. I still have the pain in my soul, but I am also really living again. [00:13:00] One, two of the things that really supported me was, and this was how Sloomoo was born, is that randomly, one day, my friend came by with her daughter, at the time her daughter was nine or ten, her daughter happened to have slime with her because she had come from a slime convention, and she also thought she'd be sitting in the corner by herself while her mom and her dad catch up with their friend.
I was like, Maddie, you have today's slime. Like I've been seeing these viral videos for years. I want to see it. And I sat on the floor with her and suddenly Melissa and her husband Mike were like, we have to go. And I said, you just got here. And they said, you've been sitting on the floor with Maddie for four hours.
And that's when it hit me in those four hours, I was in so much joy. I was out of. All of my turmoil, I had forgotten about it. At one point, actually, I [00:14:00] wasn't on the floor for four hours because we were drizzling slime from the roof of my building to see if it could go down in one
piece. Like, that's in Manhattan.
That's, I was like, I'll go downstairs and catch it. You drizzle it down to me. Like that's what you do when you're seven. And I felt like I met a part of myself that I would never see again. She came out and, I was like, where do I get more? And can I keep some of this?
Marc Beckman: so tHe slime was able to like rekindle or spark the feelings that you had of innocence as like young Karen. Like it
Karen Robinovitz: yes.
Marc Beckman: in a way nostalgia, right? It made you feel great on the inside and is that why the mission is Deliver Joy? Is that
Karen Robinovitz: Yeah.
Marc Beckman: back to Deliver Joy?
That's so nice.
Karen Robinovitz: So what started to happen was I became what is known as hashtag adult slimer. You can literally go down a hashtag hole with that. I started to
buy slime.
Marc Beckman: Institute though.
Karen Robinovitz: Sloomoo Institute was not. like in my [00:15:00] mind yet. I just, slime became a part of my healing modality and I found that I found myself getting excited for my packages.
I found myself so excited to play with my slime. I then started a secret Instagram account without my face called Slime Institute and I would unbox my slime and play with my slime and not with my face but talk about my slime and I started to Leave my house and have dinner dates and bring slime to my friends.
I have a very close friend. We've been friends for 17 years. She has, and this is going to dovetail into our mission, She has two daughters. Her oldest is now 17. Her oldest was born with a rare genetic syndrome called Angelman syndrome. Angelman syndrome, children, The are actually really joyful, happy people.
It is a side effect or symptom of the syndrome But there's a lot of [00:16:00] limitations in an Angelman syndrome person You know, her daughter is nonverbal Her daughter can't do anything on her own. She can't feed herself. She can't go to the bathroom on her own She can't get dressed. She can't leave the house.
She can't do any activities on her own But she is very happy and she laughs a lot and, you know, she's incredibly joyful. And Three years before I lost my husband, my friend Sarah's husband had bilateral strokes and it led to a brain injury and he now can't do any activities of daily living on his own and he is also non verbal and these are the things that life hands you that nobody can predict, that nobody teaches you how to handle and we went through this trauma together as friends and so I called her and said, Sarah, I have to bring you slime.
And she was like, I'll take whatever I can get because the reality of
Marc Beckman: I mean, I it was crazy. We were in our [00:17:00] mid forties and
Like, she's got a daughter who she's now, all of a sudden, very hands on with, and her husband, I'm sure, also was a another, um, level of stress in her, in her
Karen Robinovitz: he was a TED talker,
Marc Beckman: physically and mentally.
Right. He
Karen Robinovitz: like go from TED talking to nonverbal.
Marc Beckman: nonverbal. Right. So, and then your solution is, I'm coming over with some slime.
Karen Robinovitz: And she was, I mean, I, I had my
other solutions Or her are too. okay? Are you on drugs? Or was
No, she was literally like, I'll take it jokingly while you're at it in your Lexapro.
Um, Lexapro but
inside,
Marc Beckman: Slumo at this point. So you guys get together.
Karen Robinovitz: we get together, I had this massive bag of slime. The first slime I brought was scented like Froot Loops cereal. So when I gave it to her, the first thing she did when she dug in was like, first of all, like, I'm just gonna bring [00:18:00] out like a slime, like this squeeze feels so relaxing and soothing and fun and like incredibly, look at that.
Incredibly joyful. And so she squeezed it and was like, Oh my God. And then she smelled it and was like, The first thing she said was, I'm at the table with my brothers and we're all fighting over who gets the last bowl of slime. And I was like, that's so crazy because I'm at the table with my mother and negotiating for one more bowl because I was only allowed one bowl of cereal a month.
And it was like we were both taken back to this innocence of seven. And then it was like, listen to the sounds it makes. Hold on.
Marc Beckman: So that's the ASMR,
Karen Robinovitz: an ASMR. It's so satisfying. And [00:19:00] we were both like, we're tapping into four of our five senses. Then we looked over at her daughters. They were, they had gotten into all the fun. And I was like, This is something where they are on equal playing field with how they experience it. And that was so powerful and so beautiful.
And without even thinking, we just said, we need to bring this to people. It is magic. It is not just a kid's toy. We didn't even think about it. She said, I'll get the real estate. I said, I'll do the marketing plan. That was it. We went to work. And we took, in New York City, for those of you who are listening in New York City, the old Scoop space on Broadway.
For you, I know that rings a bell. For me, it was like a weird 360 because I was a journalist in my former life and wrote about Scoop back in the day and, you know,
the founder of Scoop.
Marc Beckman: I mean, how many locations do you
Karen Robinovitz: Now we have five locations. And they're large. [00:20:00] I mean, they're, so New York is 12, 000 square feet. Atlanta is 28, 000 square feet and it's where we have our pickpacking ship for e commerce.
Chicago is 17, 000 square feet. Houston's 23, 000 square feet and we just opened LA with 13, 000 square feet and a separate space that is a 10, 000 square foot factory where we make all of our slime. In all of our spaces we are making our slime with, you know, large 60 quart Hobart mixers, like a bakery.
Marc Beckman: So, so Karen, break it down a little bit. Like, let's talk about, let's move into the business side of it a little bit. Like, how many, um, like, how many ticket sales do you, are you, are you, um, experiencing now across the five, the five locations?
Karen Robinovitz: This year
Marc Beckman: is Slime? Like, break, give me, go, go by the the numbers.
Karen Robinovitz: So Slumo
have a million visitors this year between our
five, locations. only five locations.
Yeah. That's a [00:21:00] powerful number. They stay between 90 minutes and two hours. So imagine grabbing people for that amount of time and um,
Everybody, also everybody, when your ticket comes with a DIY, like, customization slime bar ticket, so everybody leaves with a slime.
So that's putting slime in a million hands.
Marc Beckman: so let's talk about that for a minute. So, um, when you talk about a million hands, this is your community, right? And it sounds because they're staying there and engaged for 90 plus minutes. It sounds like they're return customers. They're coming back regularly.
Karen Robinovitz: I mean, how many
Marc Beckman: demographic.
Karen Robinovitz: kids been?
Marc Beckman: My kids, both of my children, my eight year old daughter, as well as my sixteen year old, have been down in SoHo, I couldn't tell you, multiple times, over and over again.
I don't tell you when they go because it's embarrassing, um, but they're, and you've always been so generous with them, like the VIP [00:22:00] treatment, but, the VIP slime treatment, could you imagine? But, they love it, they go all the time, they take their friends all the time. But, this is what's interesting. The, the Demographic profile is expansive for brands, for companies, right?
You get that core customer who I believe is about six to 13 years old, but then you're getting, and I think it's predominantly female, but then you're getting her or his parents. And then even the next generation, grandparents are also having a lot of fun, um, attending and participating in, within the Slumo Institute.
So that community that you've built is really special and really multi generational, right?
Karen Robinovitz: It's so multi generational, and it's also so diverse with every So, color, creed, neurodiversity is a big part of our cause, and that comes from my business partner's background, so 10 of our workforce is neurodiverse, and they come to work with job coaches and [00:23:00] scaffolding to get through their day, and what's so incredible about that is if you're a parent and you have a neurodiverse child, when you see the sort of Reflection of your child in somebody who works for us.
You realize that your child can have a meaningful job because a lot of people tell those with who are deeper on the spectrum of autism or have other. diagnoses that they can't do anything and the opposite is true So, this goes back to delivering joy, and what's really amazing is that the adults leave in the beginning, they don't want to buy tickets because they think they're just spectators, and you know, the reality of our spaces, even though they're big, is that we have, um, Certificates of Occupancy.
We can only have X amount of people. It is like a movie or theater. Every single person counts as being a body in our space. They all need a ticket, but they all leave and say, I actually had more fun than my kids did, or I needed this more than my kids [00:24:00] did, or I felt younger than I have in decades. And then they come back as corporate and do corporate events and buyouts.
And it's everyone from Google to Bank of America to when it was Twitter to Snapchat.
Marc Beckman: I want to get into all of that in a second, but I want to stay, I think that what you were talking about as far as like a cause related platform, you touched on the, um, ADA and neurodiverse, um, component, but there's more that Sloomoo, um, stands up as it relates to cause related, um, Um, marketing, so, it's my understanding that your, um, platform as it relates to this is mental health, sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and education.
And you've done some really amazing things, like on the educational piece, let's talk about that for a second. I think that integrative learning is really critical. I think, in fact, You know, from my perspective, difficult concepts become easier to both comprehend and remember through [00:25:00] immersive or integrative learning.
So how does education, like what role, like how have you activated education? I think something that you did here in Manhattan at one point, I could be mistaken, but I believe it was Manhattan, was really interesting as it relates to um, featuring. Black innovation in science in, in New York City, specifically, um, and I thought that was really nice.
It plays, you know, straddles diversity, inclusion, and education. You want to talk about that for a minute?
Karen Robinovitz: Yeah, so slime is actually all science. This is a polymer. It is in a constant state of chemical reaction. It is, it will melt in heat and over time and you can keep it alive with something called activator which, um, Finds the molecules of glue to themselves versus to something else and and that's what makes it sticky That's why parents hate it because they don't realize that there is actually a way to keep it alive with what I love to lovingly Refer to as anti [00:26:00] aging serum, but through the space we have
something we call slew science It's it's like combining all my things
Marc Beckman: Totally.
It's good. we have something we call Sleuth Science.
Karen Robinovitz: So through the space you'll see these little bubbles on our wall. I call them bubbles or circles. And they'll have scientific facts about the polymer, about, um, This, the, the S.T.E.M. impact of slime, how it's made, what are the, what is the chemical formula. Also, we dip into the science of slime mold, which is not what we're about, but slime mold is, for us, a really interesting avenue because it is um, a one cell organism with no brain that is actually really intelligent and can literally map, like, the entire Tokyo subway system through And they create networks of communicating with each other and build enclaves, which is actually what we do.
We create community and people connect through slime. So it's all really related. And like you said, [00:27:00] for Black History Month, we put through the space black innovators in science, many of whom never got the credibility they deserved. We do the same for Women's History Month. We'll do the same for, um, you know, Arab History Month for Jewish History Month.
Like we want to bring together cultural understandings of all different things. When it's Diwali, we'll bring together on our, in our experience, a slime that's dedicated to Diwali and signage that explains what the holiday is and how the slime honors it. So we're
bringing in these cultural touch points.
Marc Beckman: how have those communities reacted to you? Like, you know, it's amazing that you guys have such vision and you're really, you know, propping up and highlighting these communities. But how have they reacted? Like, what kind of feedback have you received?
Karen Robinovitz: It's been really powerful and incredible, and this has been a big part of my healing, is seeing this joy in others. So, we've had, at one point, because of [00:28:00] our, our commitment to neurodiverse and, you know, Physical differences, we have had a wheelchair only school come in and the headmaster of the school came up to us in tears saying, you're the only space that's taken our whole class at once.
We've, I remember seeing an organic post on LinkedIn. that the woman had Sloomoo Institute in. She was a woman of color and she said she had come from our space in Atlanta and she said she was so moved by seeing all of the black scientists being honored in our space that she had never heard of that she and her daughter wrote them all down and went home and did deeper research on them and now her daughter was really inspired and at the end of the day, there's science around learning while playing.
You do learn while you're playing and you can learn better while you're playing because it's not really didactic and in your face. So even when we have field trips, like we can give the field trips pop quizzes around science to give to their kids [00:29:00] after and the idea is look for the slew science facts, read about it, and then let's take the quiz and like we can give them Elmer's glue or slime, so it's like you give the winners Elmer's glue.
something to achieve and something to look forward to. And at the end of the day, what's really interesting is that there tends to be an age and it doesn't always happen where some kids who look at slime as a toy suddenly are like, we're too cool for it. And then when they're 16, 17, 18, 19, or older, they, they remember that it's, they might come back to our space and they're like, it wasn't a toy.
It was actually really, really cool. It's therapeutic for me and they come back to it for what I use it for, not
just a toy.
Marc Beckman: know, Karen, I gotta, I gotta tell you, like, it seems like Sloomoo is cool, too. So, like, we could geek out all day long and talk about science and education. We could stand up a beautiful diversity and, um, diverse and inclusive, uh, vertical around [00:30:00] Sloomoo. But you got cool celebrity slimers.
Karen Robinovitz: Yeah.
Marc Beckman: I was looking at the um, celebrity list, I mean you got Kevin Hart, Chance the Rapper, Selena Gomez, Alicia Keys, I mean, what are these people doing? Like, what did Selena Gomez do when she popped into Sloomoo Institute?
Karen Robinovitz: She actually came multiple times. She has a younger sibling. She's very into, as you know, mental health and mental fitness. So it, it, it actually makes sense. And there is actual science, there's science around hands on play and what it does to your brain. Yeah. So she, like, she was there and when she left, I guess some people saw her and then it was like, you know, it was suddenly it was in the Daily Mail and then it was like picked up by other people.
Khloe Kardashian came to our opening day in Los Angeles and has, like, asked to come back multiple times. It's Jessica [00:31:00] Chastain has had multiple birthday parties at Sloomoo. It's amazing and I think, I look at Slime as It is the great equalizer. When you are playing, when you're playing with slime specifically, you're not cute anymore, you're like making weird faces because you can't believe it, you're in your state of being a seven year old, so it doesn't matter what you have, what you don't have, what your beliefs are, what political side you're in, where you come from, we're just playing.
And that's, there's something so cool about it. And then our references from a design perspective are actually really highbrow and rooted in contemporary art, art history, um, architecture. In LA, we have a lot of nods to Googie architecture, which is a mid century movement in Los Angeles. That's a nod to LA.
We built our spaces to look good so that adults could relate, so it feels like you're in a museum.
Marc Beckman: I know your background includes [00:32:00] a very strong moment in time surrounding modern art and contemporary art and you know I want to congratulate you. I know that you were a Fast Company finalist with regards to innovation by design award and I have always felt that superior design is paramount to everything. If you have superior design, it really does create the strongest emotional connection between a product and the brand and in turn has an impact commercially as well as has a significant impact with regards to brand building.
So, I want to tell you, I snuck into my daughter Damaris room. Before the interview today, and I stole from her room. Don't tell her, um, of your amazing, right. Totally designed. Like, is that Sloomoo on the front?
Karen Robinovitz: That is Slimoo. So this is Slimoo on our lid. And when we, so [00:33:00] we came up with the name from,
Marc Beckman: all of this from
Karen Robinovitz: I love that. Oh my God. I love it. Um, we came out, we came up with a name from a social media trend that went viral in 2017. And people were saying replace the vowels of your name with O O and that's our slang name.
So your Moorc. I'm Kooroon, Sime is Sloomoo. The minute we said Sloomoo, we were like, that's the brand because our brand is ultimately about more than Sime.
Marc Beckman: There's kinetic, is superior design to the brand? Like if you focus on Sloomoo, like, okay. So. So I don't know what's going on here. I took it out and I have, uh, it looks like there are things in the,
Karen Robinovitz: charms in it that are, that are representational of our world
Marc Beckman: Okay.
Karen Robinovitz: that is at Sloomoo is a world. On the back of that charm, you'll see a QR code that goes to augmented reality Sloomoo. So you can play with[00:34:00]
Sloomoo.
Marc Beckman: right here.
Karen Robinovitz: Yeah, all of the charms have a
QR code.
Marc Beckman: all over my desk now. There's a,
Karen Robinovitz: out with white vinegar.
Um, so design, and so like the design is RIP, like we've invested in things that make the experience memorable, which is
Marc Beckman: This
Karen Robinovitz: our slime, it smells good, right? Is that watermelon or is that cherry?
Marc Beckman: Um, this is the, Maybe she, I don't know, maybe it's just Damaris's, um, it
Karen Robinovitz: that DIY slime.
Marc Beckman: yeah, it could be. But I also have this one, which is Marshmallow Twist Um, yes.
Right, but I'm too afraid to open it. I don't want to ruin her, her mojo, and it's kind of interesting.
I saw that you're building up some cool collaborations, too. So when you talk about and trends, I saw that, for example, you partnered with HI-CHEW and you made [00:35:00] Slimes in four other flavors, but you've also partnered, you started getting into this with Nike and Google, YouTube, TikTok, Snap, you mentioned, these are incredible companies that are coming to Sloomoo Institute and partnering, how do you, like, what's your criteria to create a partnership with Sloomoo?
Karen Robinovitz: So, I think it's about mission and brand being aligned and being joyful. So this is a really great and unexpected example. The rapper Bun B who is in Houston and he has the number one burger restaurant in the country. It's called Trill. He's also a grandfather. He loves coming to Sloomoo with his grandchildren and his family.
So, We approached them because we were like, you're so joyful as a person. You're all about your community. You're all about play. You're really playful with even your own restaurant. Let's do a collab. So we made, he's known [00:36:00] for the triple OG burger, we made this, the triple OG burger as a slime with a clay burger that looks just like his burger And you mush in the burger to the slime, and then he made a Sloomoo Slime Triple OG burger that had literally the color blue cheese sauce and then a pink dipping sauce.
We came out with these things at the same time. Our character, Sloomoo, was like, It was in a nine foot costume, showed up at Trill on opening day for that, he showed up at Sloomoo, he was there lifting up children and putting, having them put the slime on the wall, and it was, and like, we made incredible content together,
Marc Beckman: So Karen, beyond the content, like what's the benefit for the business? Like think in terms of specifically, like, is there a commercial lift? Is there a positive halo effect? What kind of
Karen Robinovitz: all of those things, from that?
it's affected everything, and for both of us, for him. We're bringing joy and something new and [00:37:00] introducing his audience to play, and he's also playing with food, and then you get the whole kind of thing with, you can, you can play with your food when it's slime food, right?
And,
Marc Beckman: I
Karen Robinovitz: um, for us, you don't eat the slime, but you can eat the burger. We're cross pollinating audiences. So suddenly you're bringing in his audience, the grandparents, the dads, the community that might come to Trill, and they're going to go to Sloomoo, and the community that comes to Sloomoo can go to Trill after they go to Sloomoo.
Marc Beckman: so it's an interesting business because, um, the physicality of it, like in, in holding the slime, in visiting the Institute, it's. Hardcore analog, but yet you're also embracing, you were born from emerging technology, social media, right? That inspired you and you're embracing emerging technology. So I know that, like you mentioned this Los [00:38:00] Angeles launch, the recent launch, launch in Los Angeles and the campaign that you put together surrounding that launch was so beautifully done.
You brought, I think, Sloomoo, the character to life with CGI. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Karen Robinovitz: Yeah, so I was sharing our, you know, our cute little character earlier and one thing I just want to say about the character is we wanted, when we said Sloomoo, we knew that was the right, with the slime trend that I shared, we knew that was the name and that Sloomoo would be a character in a world that could eventually become our IP and media and
Marc Beckman: Are you an animated character. when you created this and not on heavy drugs?
Karen Robinovitz: I know, this is what it brought back out in me. It brought back my creativity. And we actually did a study with GoodQuest, who did research surveying over 100 people and 68, I think the number was 68, I'll have to double check it, percent said they felt more creative when they played with slime. [00:39:00] Um, so, so much.
You know, we know that we're going to now delve into a whole storytelling world with Sloomoo. But when we launched, we worked with a CGI artist and said, we want a literal, like, Sloomoo that is truly 40 feet tall, like, larger than a building to Um, like, A, like, let's see a drone. We have a beautiful building in LA.
It was gray. We painted it our color of magenta. So we had a CGI drone, exactly, a CGI drone come in, spray the building magenta, and the drone, of course, had Sloomoo eyes on it. And then giant Sloomoo comes bouncing down the street, throws up the logo, and does a little, like, victory spin. and bounces off in the middle of like the L.
A. street.
Marc Beckman: so Karen, I mean, the company's doing amazing and, you know, a million tickets a year is, you know, really impressive, but is it expensive for a company [00:40:00] that's emerging still a young business spend money on CGI?
Karen Robinovitz: It's really expensive. I cannot give away my secret sauce, but we found an incredible person in India who is doing it for 90 percent less than every other incredible creator that I talked to. And I went to the creator who did the famous Uh, Jacquemus, you know, giant handbag driving down the street, and the Maybelline, I went to those creators and I was like, there is no way in this universe I can even remotely afford them.
We're very scrappy. We have an imprint that seems large, but we're tiny, we're small, we're still a
startup.
Marc Beckman: that pro you're protecting that profit margin and that's fantastic. I would imagine there's got to be a tremendous profit margin in something like this. I think, doesn't this sell for about over 20?[00:41:00]
Karen Robinovitz: The slimes will sell between 8 and 22, but I have 380 employees. So I actually have a lot of overhead. You know, I have heavy prime real estate rents. I
have,
Marc Beckman: It's high risk.
Karen Robinovitz: there's a lot that goes into it. I mean, a lot.
Marc Beckman: Karen, the other thing that you do, uh, that's really super impressive is the, what you call the slimy mirrors, uh, where you bring avatars to life. But that's also another level of emerging technology that you're taking advantage of. It's funny, like I've seen this in the luxury fashion market. I don't know if you're still being inspired by
Karen Robinovitz: I am.
Marc Beckman: that we see in the luxury fashion
Karen Robinovitz: Loewe.
Marc Beckman: Uh, exactly. Um, but tell, tell me a little bit about the slimy mirrors and, and how that avatar experience comes to life.
Karen Robinovitz: So, I definitely look at fashion, art, as a source of [00:42:00] inspiration, and I've always watched projection mapping, and not only projection mapping, but interactive, where it takes the cue of where you're standing, and you know, Coach did it recently where it puts the puffer on you. So we're doing that in our space, but instead of it obviously being fashion, you're walking into gorgeously designed, Digital Slime Cave.
And there's, in the room, there's physical stalagmites and stalactites in addition to the projection mapped ones. But then it picks up your frame and your body and on the screen in front of you, it mirrors all of your movements as they happen. You being a slime being and as and there's custom music that we've created in the background We actually found a composer who is an adult slimer.
And so it's It makes sense that she's making the music, and she's making a lot of the music out of slime sounds. Um, but it turns you into a slimy avatar, [00:43:00] and then when you form a little sphere in your hand, it's virtual slime, so you can, you know, make throwing movements and toss that slime at other people.
So you become a part of Sloomooo's world, and we call that space where Slimey Mirrors is, we call it Sloomooo's Cove, and we imagine that's where our character Sloomooo lives.
Marc Beckman: I went into Slough Moose Cove and I had an avatar built around me, can I take that content with me? Can I use that after the physical experience somehow?
Karen Robinovitz: So, we're not doing it where it is automatically sent to your phone, I mean, the way you would capture that content is you'd use your phone. We do have a photo booth where that is texted to you, but one of the kind of ironically key tenets is while you're there, getting off your device. Because we want people to just literally have a brain break.
And of course It's very Instagramable and beautiful. Like you said, the design is really important. Even just every wall is curved and we can save [00:44:00] a lot of money if we had straight walls, but our brand is curvy and sinuous and a lot of that is inspired by, um, we take cues from Zaha Hadid and other architectural movements through history, but
Marc Beckman: Impressive.
Karen Robinovitz: there's something amazing when you're there.
Maybe you take photos in the beginning and then somewhere along the way you just are both hands in.
Marc Beckman: I love it. So, um, staying on the theme of emerging technology and realizing that scent is really a major role, a major character for a Sloomoo Institute. Talk a little bit about the scent delivery system, this Vibes Extractors. I think that there's a 3D printing component too from what I'm reading, but I'm being overwhelmed with scent right now.
explain a little bit to The business minded, uh, people in the audience, what the Vibes Extractors is exactly.
Karen Robinovitz: So, at our DIY bar, where you are customizing your slime. It starts by picking a [00:45:00] texture, and then you pick, um, your vibes, which stands for Very Intensely Beneficial Energizing Scents. We have a wall of these beautiful amorphic flowers, and each flower has a label on it in like a slimmer design, and it could be anything from lychee and dragon fruit to double fudge brownie and new baby dirt, jasmine.
Spearmint, eucalyptus. So there's sense for all ages and mindsets and that actual message is literally stop and smell the flowers. And in LA and Houston, and now we're going to retrofit and do this in Atlanta and Chicago, New York doesn't have the space for it, but you get a custom coin that we've made and it's custom to that city.
So it has the city name. It has a Sloomoo character doing something that represents that city. So in LA. Salimu is surfing, and there's palm trees, in Houston it's wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. And then you [00:46:00] put your coin into, it looks from the outside like it's a gumball machine, but technology wise, there are elements that are both milled and milled aluminum and 3D printed, and then the system is actually pumping scent up through the tubes and then out through the extractor.
Marc Beckman: You're like Willy Wonka.
Karen Robinovitz: It's very Willy Wonka and it has to dispense the exact amount of fragrance to match our recipe because too much fragrance will impact the chemical, uh, makeup of the slime and melt it.
Marc Beckman: Of course, of course. So it's very exacting. I'm going to call you Willy, the modern day Willy Wonka now. I I mean, like, so happy that I'm not in your mind because I think it would freak me out if I saw what was going on in your mind at all
Karen Robinovitz: it looks like this.
Marc Beckman: It's, it's incredible. [00:47:00] So, um, you're an entrepreneur, and I know that entrepreneurship is, you know, the rewards could be high, but the lows are tough.
Bill Gates once said, it's fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure. It's fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure. And I'm wondering, like, which failures have you had and experienced so far as you bring this fantastical, um, creative idea to life in the physical realm, uh, that you've learned from and that you've built on top of?
Karen Robinovitz: So I think One of the big moments was we built something and note that what we're building and doing has never been done before. So there's no prototype. It's not like opening a restaurant where there's a million guide books, it's been done a million times. [00:48:00] The industrial slime kitchen has never been done before where it's all handmade.
It's not coming off the boat from Asia. A lot of our, and all of our experiences have never been done before, so as an example, we, we had this beautiful, beautiful, um, elements that we had on day one in Chicago and Houston, and we had custom made, dip dyed fabric that were, you know, going from magenta to, to blue to purple and we hung them from ceiling and attached them to the floor and in them were giant yoga balls so it made these gorgeous sinuous shapes and they were kind of like 20 of them and and it was meant to be this really cute way of walking through everything and having a little bit of an obstacle course be really beautiful they were art pieces and on day you [00:49:00] One and a half, half of them were ripped to shreds.
Kids were holding onto the top of the balls, jumping on them. And then you see these Google reviews, like this place is schlocky. Everything was ripped. And like, I'm in the corner crying because these were actually really expensive and meant sure. to be this beautiful moment. And then we realized, As much as we want the beautiful moment we have to find.
So we had to find a new way to do it. So we had to obviously take it all down, which was just flushing money, and now we've reinvented it. And in Houston and LA they hang from the ceiling like giant drips and have to be out of reach. So they're just beautiful elements, but they can't be interactive the way I wanted them to be.
And. it. That's like a really good moment of we designed that whole area for that and have to come up with something new. And by the way, this was, you know, kind of six [00:50:00] figure development to make them. So it's really hard and people don't realize how hard it is.
Marc Beckman: Karen, your entrepreneurial story as it relates to Sloomoo is interesting because I read that you thought this concept, this immersive experience would be a pop up effectively, but now it's become a very serious business, five markets and growing, five top tier markets and growing. Do you see any other type of immersive experience?
Like I know there's the ice cream museum, but is there something else in the marketplace or in the Um, you know, the world's ether right now where you can see something similar come to life. let's say you didn't have Sloomoo, like what would you get into today if you're going to inspire an entrepreneur, a young entrepreneur to create an immersive experience type of, uh, setting like, like your business?
Karen Robinovitz: So I look at us not necessarily as just an immersive experience. When I look at Sloomoo, I look at Pokemon. [00:51:00] I look at Hello Kitty. We look at Disney. We look at a much larger world than spaces. Because Sloomoo's a character. Sloomoo has friends and family. We're bringing that to life in other ways. We see live performance of all of our characters in blow up costumes and our custom sounds and dancing and getting families to come out dancing together.
And dancing is tied to mental health. We see Again, a world of neurodiverse people completely commingling and, and collaborating with neurotypical people. Um, I think when it comes to experience itself, it's not just an Instagramable moment. It's how do you get them really immersed? And I also think I could never have come up with Sloomoo.
said let me list all the boxes I want to check off and some of them range from impact [00:52:00] to your own secret language that everybody in the world knows to a world to characters to actually hands on play to Beautiful design to like if the list went on I could never make that up and check off the boxes The reason this works is because we have a real why We have a real story, and this story was healing for both of us, and for Sarah, this business is not just, you know, how we are building something meaningful.
She needs to show her daughters, and she actually needs to prove to her daughters, mom has the family because she has two people in her house who need 24 hour care. If she doesn't literally have a certain amount of money and plan for her succession, they won't live. Who will take care of them? [00:53:00] This is real. Like this is, I have chills all over my body and could cry because if, if her daughter lives to 90, there, it, she can't just, you can't just put her someplace.
Like, if somebody doesn't feed her every day, she won't live. If somebody doesn't change her diaper, like, if somebody doesn't shower her, if somebody doesn't put her clothes on her, if somebody doesn't ensure she is being fed intellectually, and we believe she knows, she understands, but she can't, she has a lot of can'ts in her world.
So there is a real pressure on Sarah to make this happen from a financial standpoint as well as An impact standpoint as well as like an emotional legacy.
Marc Beckman: Karen, is there a 501c3 or, um, some sort of an entity that you and Sarah [00:54:00] are supporting, um, in, you know, as it relates to a portion of the proceeds being donated to Sloomoo or something that you'd want to raise awareness towards, um,
Karen Robinovitz: we, we partner
Marc Beckman: with. of the story?
Karen Robinovitz: Yeah, we partner with the Goldie Hawn Foundation's MindUp and they are a global. Uh, non profit for supporting mental fitness for children and teaching them social emotional learning through neuroscience. It's really, really powerful and like I said, we partner in each of our cities with a non profit that specializes in neurodiversity and finding jobs for people who are neurodiverse.
And part of that is also then giving the scaffolding. To our company, how they can work with and support neurodiverse guests, and now it's what is the training for our staff to collaborate with neurodiverse people on a professional level, because you can't [00:55:00] expect them to process the way you and I process.
They process differently, and we believe it makes everybody better. We Eventually see ourselves creating our own foundation that can then give back to multiple 501c3s around the world around these two missions.
Marc Beckman: Karen, my, you've given me a ton of time today, and I really appreciate it. I'm honestly, I'm so proud of you. The story is so touching and just incredible all around. The creativity is just like through the roof and you know, the commercial success. The fact that you took this concept and the two of you have built this on on a national scale and I'm sure it will expand internationally.
It's so fantastic. It has no boundaries. Every guest that I have ends the show with me, um, the same way. I start a sentence which incorporates the show name into the beginning and I allow for my guests to finish the sentence. Um, can we do the [00:56:00] same for Sloomoo?
Karen Robinovitz: Yes. Yes.
Marc Beckman: Okay, so in some future day, Sloomoo will help combat mental health issues.
Bye.
Karen Robinovitz: Delivering joy.
Marc Beckman: That's it, just ongoing joy, baby, right?
Karen Robinovitz: Yep.
Marc Beckman: Alright,
Karen Robinovitz: it's out there for us to have. You, you just need to choose it. And if it, if you can't choose it, because especially if your brain isn't in the right place, when I was given slime. My brain was in no place to choose joy. Joy fell in my hands and I literally physically grabbed it.
Marc Beckman: I love that, Karen. Thank you so much for your time today and sharing such personal stories and, and the success you've had with your business and your career. It's really been a pleasure speaking with you today.
Karen Robinovitz: You too, as always. [00:57:00] [00:58:00]