By Peter Viele • Photography by Allison Potter
IT H E MOTHER
IT’S A PLIGHT FACED BY MILLIONS OF PARENTS EVERY SINGLE
DAY: GETTING THE KIDS TO HELP WITH CHORES.
An application developed by a Wilmington family aims to solve the problem
and financially incentivize children to help around the house. In addition to the
obvious chores like taking out the trash, there’s a myriad of additional options that
the coastal lifestyle affords to get kids excited from washing the boat to rinsing the
sand off the beach chairs and surfboards to organizing fishing tackle.
The app Chorez creates required checkpoints for kids to complete, such as
photo verifications, timestamps, and before-and-after images. It also supplies a
payment platform, including a prepaid debit card for each child,
It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention and Peter, Christine, Isaac and
Marina Robichau had a firsthand need in 2015.
“Two areas where we felt defeated as parents were focused on household chores
and finances,” says Christine, Co-Founder, Mom and Head of Operations. “We
wanted our children to help out with family chores, and we also wanted them
to understand that spending money is tied to hard work. We, like most parents,
hated nagging the kids to do their chores, but we normally ended up giving in
and footing the bills for those things the kids wanted to buy or do. We knew this
was a universal struggle, and there had to be a better way to do family chores and
earnings. So, we set out to crack the code.”
Beginning with an idea, in 2017 the family created Cool Organization with a
Lame Acronym. COWALA Co. faced the uphill struggle of building a team on a
self-funded, tight budget from the outset of the proof of concept phase through
the product launch of the app in July of 2019.
The area continues to experience a growth in tech-based companies.
“We’ve launched this venture on the coattails of some truly great, successful dig-ital
businesses in Wilmington,” says Peter, Co-founder and Head of Household.
Though just launched, the app is on track to exceed first-year projections.
“We were crossing our fingers when we flipped the switch and went live, but
there has been a great deal of market fit validation,” says Peter, who brought 20
years of tech experience into the mix. “All of our marketing efforts since our pub-lic
launch have been organic, so we’re pretty comfortable that, at scale, we have a
solid business model. Our goal for the next 12 months is to expand our product
offering with additional features. Once we have a stable, mature product we’ll start
to reach out to private equity partners and institutional investors so we can focus
on more rapid growth.”
Chorez is available from Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
Peter and Christine Robichau, co-founders of the Chorez app, clean up the kitchen with
help from their children, Marina and Isaac.
40
WBM october 2019
O F A L L