SKA family business that makes kits for creative play. Because learning through play is important for healthy development and has many positive effects that can reach into adulthood.
We are a family business. The creator of the kits, PaedDr. Peter Hudák, intiially invented them more than 25 years ago. As a former primary school teacher and methodologist, he saw that many children lacked fine motor skills and wanted to help them. Coincidentally, he also had young son and daughter at home. Together with Peter, the family took the plunge and started creating variable wooden building blocks. The whole family was involved in the making and packing, including Peter’s mom (pictured here packing the toys into banana boxes)
They wanted to offer them to nurseries, but after the regime change from communism in Czechoslovakia, these had very little money to spend on things like children’s toys. They kept trying for a while, but during the 1990s that dream disappeared. The instructions for toys were already invented to attract the children and help them understand very quickly how to build the toys.
Even then, the aim was mainly to improve fine motor skills, technical skills and social interaction, thus helping to strengthen children’s self-esteem.
The Hudak family then moved to Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, and Peter devoted himself to other things. However, when the MOY TOY kit won 2nd place in the “Etudes from Wood” competition, organized by the Forestry Museum in Zvolen, and after considering the current situation of the toy market, he considered that he could reignite his vision of improving children’s play. After careful consideration of the whole concept and collaboration with methodologists, MOY TOY kits came to the market in a new and improved look, with the same mission – to bring children opportunities for creative play. Because a tablet is not enough.
For his second entry into the market, Peter was helped by his now-grown son Martin, who graduated from Harvard in 2016 and came to help his father to expand the toys that he too loved to play with as a child. Together they formed a great team, combining both the technical expertise and a solid business approach. The toys are yet again made near the village in the eastern Slovakia where Peter Hudak was born to help bring employment opportunities. The toy parts are made from high quality Slovak beech wood (the pegs are made from the wood of the linden tree).
Peter and Martin Hudák – photo from their Forbes article in 2016: