'Then I started seriously thinking, ‘How am I going to tell these people the project is over?’'Īt nearly the same time and almost 2,500 kilometres away, Melissa Hardee opened Facebook, and clicked on a jaunty notification bubble. 'By the time the plane took off, I knew it wasn’t a joke,' she said. Suddenly, Lumo Play wasn’t on life support anymore, though that hadn’t sunk in yet. As the plane prepared for takeoff, she hid her phone from the flight attendant, trying to squeeze out a few more moments to figure out what had happened. In her seat now, Athavale frantically flipped through her messages. For some reason and out of the blue, more than 100,000 people from across the globe were clamouring to learn about Lumo Play. In other words, they were sticking around to read about the company.Īn automated prank program would just sign up for the newsletter and leave the site, she knew. There, she found another clue: visitors to the site weren’t 'bouncing,' she said. So she checked the traffic data from Lumo’s website. Maybe it was a friendly rival having a laugh. Maybe it was one of the guys back in the office playing a prank, she thought. The app, Athavale remembered, also dinged whenever anyone signed up for the Lumo Interactive newsletter. Suddenly, it had become so seized by incoming message notifications it was almost unusable. She found the culprit in an application called Slack, which the Lumo team used to chat.

There were hundreds at first then there were thousands.Ĭonfused, Athavale thumbed through her phone. She waited for it to stop, but it kept quivering, convulsing with the shock of incoming messages. That is what Athavale was thinking about at the airport, when her phone started buzzing. 'All the work we put in to generate a revenue stream from the commercial side was meant to allow us to launch to consumers. 'It felt like we were stepping backwards,' Athavale said. In Winnipeg that week, the team decided to give it a few more months then they would start refunding all the supporters who had given cash to the crowdfunding campaign. Now, she realized, the dream of Lumo Play might be ending. Lumo’s team started to focus on making interactive installations for companies such as McDonald’s Athavale relocated to Toronto, to stay close to a growing stable of corporate clients. Yet by the turn of 2016, the next step was still out of reach. She met with manufacturers in China and toy giants in Los Angeles. Buoyed by the support, Athavale bounced around the world looking to make it happen. In 2015, a crowdfunding campaign raised US$98,866 to support the toy’s development. In Lumo Play, they saw a device that could help their children connect with the world around them. The concept had attracted a fervent fan base, many of them parents of kids with autism.

They had fine-tuned its software, and developed dozens of bright and kid-friendly games.Īthavale believed deeply in the idea, and she wasn’t alone. Together, they realized it was time to let go of their founding vision.įor three years, Lumo staff had poured their hearts into the Lumo Play, a projector that could transform any floor into an interactive wonderland. At her company’s McDermot Avenue office that week, her team had made a heart-wrenching decision. In fact, as she walked to the gate, the CEO of Lumo Interactive felt deflated.

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