Growth Spurt: Reading Village showcases stories and e-mail for pre-readers

Internet Strategies for Education Markets: The Heller Report, May, 2001

RVI Solutions has recently launched Reading Village, a web site for pre-readers. Stories that are read aloud to children stand as the central feature of a site that includes a wide range of activities. Clicking a "read to me" button initiates the streaming audio that is synchronized with highlighting the word being read. Children can also read on their own and hear a single word pronounced by mousing over it. Mary Falcon, ceo, says she is delighted to have parents and children enjoy the site together, but the design goal is to provide an independent experience for the pre-reader. Complete audio navigation remains a broadband-only feature.

RVI Licensing Pre-Reading Book and Email Technology

The free site is designed to produce revenue through e-commerce and sponsorships. Falcon also expects to spin out a subscription service with personalized and diagnostic features. However, Reading Village also serves as a showcase for the patent-pending technologies that RVI Solutions intends to license, Power Reading and Power Email. Power Reading supplies the web- based book reading capabilities described above. Power Email is an email system that allows young children to "write" emails using audio-enabled symbols. They can also include words in their email if they are able to do so. The receiver can also hear the audio on the symbols.

Falcon's background is in the publishing industry, and this will be her initial market for licensing the technologies. She anticipates children's book publishers to be more interested in a model of creating CD-ROM versions of best-selling books than web offerings --an approach that looks much to ISEM like a simplified version of Living Books. Falcon intends to position the Power Reading technology to compete with the LeapPad (see p. 5), but she does not yet have plans to work with mobile device platforms such as Palm OS or Windows CE.

Web sites can also license the technology, and RVI Solutions can supply the services of porting existing stories to the Power Reading platform or designing original content. Falcon hopes to license Power Email to large ISPs. The licensing model has not yet been defined, but agreements are likely to be highly individualized and based on a set-up fee and revenue sharing.

Reading Village's e-commerce is closely linked to activities on the site, such as selling specialized items for the activities that involve a printer. There are even printable pages that can be baked and turned into game pieces. They also sell book and toy packages as an Amazon affiliate, and they will sell plush puppets based on their story characters.

Sponsorships, though not advertising, are also expected. The company, for example, would be willing to sell only one company's specialty printer products if they want to sponsor the village shop. The icon for a new "toy factory" for activities could look like a product from an inkjet printer manufacturer. A restaurant is a good thematic setting for their upcoming math area, and the company is talking to fast food chains for sponsorship of that area. Falcon is aware that there are objections to any overlay of commerce and young children, but RVI's market research shows that parents prefer tasteful sponsorship to subscription services.

RVI Solutions was founded in 1999 with angel funding. Falcon originally wanted to publish children's stories based on wildlife photography, but investors were more interested in Internet products. She brought the concept to the web, and the delivery mechanism soon overshadowed the content. The company is now looking for additional financing.

This concludes ISEM's "Growth Spurt" business update.