When talking about her journey to entrepreneurship, Kate Reimann says it happened completely by accident. As an accomplished writer in the political and private sectors, Reimann never saw herself starting a company. “I studied Spanish and political science in college,” she said. “I got my master’s in education and married my husband, who was an F-16 pilot in the Air Force. I started writing as an expression of my emotions during my husband’s cancer diagnosis and treatments. Those writings opened a few doors when we were stationed at the Pentagon,” she said. “I was a writer in the political realm, doing ghost writing, political speeches, op eds. So I had a really interesting, engaged sort of a career that really fit where we were.”
The idea for her company, Rogue Wave Toys, emerged when Reimann took a vacation to Virginia Beach with her family. While her children were playing on the beach, something happened that triggered a profound realization in Reimann. “I had a bunch of beach toys that I bought for my kids and they went out in the ocean. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! This is terrible!” Reimann said. “I went out and grabbed them all, and then I had this moment when I sat on the shore. I thought, ‘What are we doing? There’s got to be a better way.’”
Determined to do something about the growing plastic problem in our oceans, Reimann came up with the idea to create beach toys that were compostable and not made from petroleum plastics. She wasn’t sure where to begin. “That first year, I was talking to people and asking ‘How would I do this? What material would I use?’” she said. “There was a lot of pounding the pavement and trying to figure out how to start a company.” By 2017, she had registered her company and had begun working on prototype designs for her toys. Two years later, in 2019, Reimann started her Kickstarter campaign, which she called a “total failure.”
But failure didn’t stop her. Shortly after, Reimann met her business advisor through her local Veterans Business Outreach Center (VBOC), a free resource available to veterans and military spouses. She credits her advisor with being able to move forward with her business plan. “He brought down what I needed to get started by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and helped me secure a loan. I really don’t know where I would be without him,” Reimann said.
It was important to Reimann that her toys were not only eco-friendly themselves, but produced in an eco-friendly way. “When you go to the store and buy regular toys or any kind of conventional plastic product, they are made with petroleum oil, which we know can be detrimental to the health of our oceans and our own health, as well as our surrounding ecosystems. It’s not just the plastic itself, it’s the way that we extract the oil to make the plastics —it’s all very dirty,” she said. “It was really important to me that when I found a material, it had no petroleum in it. So we could say this is a clean product from start to finish.”
While creating compostable beach toys is an important step forward, Reimann also says that there’s more to it. She also wants to help others develop their own concepts for products that are made better. “You know this is about so much more than beach toys for me. I think that for me this is proof of concept,” she said. “We’re still contributing to the problem. It’s not something we’ve solved yet. The beach toys for me, are proof of concept and they’re used at the beach where we interface with the ocean where we are seeing the problem washing ashore. The goal is to prove that consumers are ready for an alternative. They WANT an alternative.”
Reimann said starting a company was also about creating a legacy—one inspired by her husband and children. “My husband’s cancer diagnosis was brutal, but he was never deterred by that. On a subconscious level, he inspired this journey of mine, because he was facing an uphill battle. He just took it one step at a time. I’ll never be as strong or as optimistic as my husband. There’s no one like him,” she said. “So, I would say yeah, my kids and my husband have definitely shaped this entrepreneurship journey.”
All toys at Rogue Wave Toys are certified compostable, BPA-free, made from plants, and made in the USA. They are available for pre-order at roguewavetoys.com.
