Amazon announced the launch of a new subscription program, aimed at parents as an easy way to introduce science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to their kids.
The STEM Club is a monthly subscription box filled with and delivering educational toys to your home for $19.99 per month. The retailer says it will hand-pick which toys are shipped, and will ensure the items are age-appropriate (with four age categories)
The offering comes with the creation of a curated page giving shoppers easy access to STEM-friendly products for children, offering everything from small plastic microscopes to basic soldering kits. The collection allows users to filter between age brackets, popular brands, and mini-categories such as ‘physics’ and ‘chemistry.’
To sign up, parents visit the STEM Club homepage, then select the age range of their child (3-4, 5-7 or 8-13). The first toy will arrive in under a week’s time with free shipping. From that point forward, a new item will arrive on a monthly basis. The service is only available in the U.S., the website notes.
Example toys included in the subscription are an automobile engineer, which lets children build toy vehicles, and a math play box complete with puzzles and problems to solve. There will also be programmable robots and chemistry sets.
This isn’t Amazon’s first attempt at highlighting STEM toys on its site. In 2015, the retailer launched the STEM Toys & Games Store as a destination for browsing through this type of product in a dedicated area.
For Amazon, the launch of the new storefront wasn’t so much about trying to spark young minds and encourage learning, but to better capitalize on parents’ interest in the STEM toy trend in order to impact Amazon’s own bottom line. At the time, STEM toys were the second-most visited section and had seen the highest sales volume during the prior holidays.
Similarly, Amazon’s interest in launching a subscription service for these toys is also motivated by being able to capture a recurring revenue stream. Like its “Subscribe & Save” program, the hope is that the new subscription service will encourage a sort of “set it and forget it” mentality among shoppers.
