LeapFrog Enterprises: Making Learning and Childhood More Fun

Since its establishment, the LeapFrog brand has become a household name among parents and guardians who wish to provide their children with tools and materials that will make learning in their young years more fun and easier. LeapFrog Enterprises is an educational entertainment company founded in 1995. Based in Emeryville, California, the company designs, develops, markets, and distributes technology-based learning products and content. Their products are specially made for use of young children, from infancy to grade school age.

LeapFrog was established by Robert Lally and Michael Wood. The company has developed a wide range of learning platforms that come with respective software titles that cover subjects like reading, phonics, writing, and math. The concept began when Wood was looking for an educational toy for his son. At that time, he was working at a law firm as an attorney. He did not find anything and thus, he thought of developing a prototype, performed cost analysis, and worked to ensure that the final product can be sold at a reasonable price.

In 1994, Wood took his prototype to Dr. Robert Calfee, an education professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. With Dr. Calfee’s feedback, Wood refined the product and in 1995, LeapFrog introduced its first educational toy, the LeapFrog Phonics Desk. After the company has raised $800,000 for funding to launch the company, the costs were prohibitive. However, the company still pursued to develop their second toy.

In early 1997, LeapFrog had distribution operations in more than 10 countries, with a number of major clients across the United States. The company acquired the services of Brad Crawford who previously worked for Little Tikes. He was hired to oversee manufacturing and engineering. Later that year, the business won backing of Knowledge Universe. Since then, LeapFrog operated as a division of Knowledge Kids Enterprise, Knowledge Universe’s subsidiary.

In 1998, LeapFrog acquired Explore Technologies Ltd. This acquisition led to the development of the prominent educational toy, LeapPad, which was launched in 1999. It quickly became the company’s flagship product. Until today, the company continues to improve and upgrade their creations, creating more technologically-advanced and child-friendly devices and producing better related content.