Article published in Nekrize.lv on May 8, 2012.

Lullabies sang by mummy stick in one’s mind for ever. Still nowadays only a few recognize that lulls a baby singing a song by him or her own. There is a whole spectrum of reasons for that, and they encouraged Benita Vāvera from Ventspils to create a special toy – teddy-bear who sings lullabies. At the end of the last year Singing toys LTD. was established and in case everything goes as it’s planned approximately 500 teddy-bears already this year are going to find their owners.

Day to day Benita combines two professions – she is a staff manager for the Ventspils Electronics Factory Ltd. and Hanzas elektronika Ltd., as well as piano teacher and singing-master for Piltene Music School. „I have studied at the Ventspils Music College and then obtained bachelor degree of music pedagogy and master of entrepreneurship and management in Riga” – explains Benita.

Work with 6-7 year-old children in the music school has shown Benita that children poorly know Latvian folk songs. When she asked her friends whether they used to sing lullabies for the children, she received negative answers.  One has no time, another has no voice, and other comes back home when baby already sleeps. „This was how a couple of year ago idea about singing toy came into my mind. Besides I had great circumstances for its creation – in my principal work there are knowing electronics engineers with me, and they helped me to make the first prototype of the bear. But I use my musical education and vocal skills to sing songs for recording” - says Benita about the origin of the idea.

The first prototype was created in more than a year. The quality of a song must be ideal therefore work with playback device was not easy. There were a number of device modules used. The first was made purchasing separate details and brazing them together by us own. The second was purchased already made in China but the third was ordered from Russia. Then all of them were compared and the best one was chosen. „As regards quality both the Chinese and Russian model satisfied our demands. Still we gave priority to the Chinese module as it was offered in a set with a box that was very significantly” – explains Benita.

Last autumn Benita with her idea decided to participate in the competition of business ideas Idea cup organized by the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia. From the total 485 ideas submitted, 189 were nominated for the second stage, among them also the idea of Benita. „This evaluation gave me strength and conviction to fight further on. At the end of 2011, I participated in the competition Brave idea, got the highest evaluation in the Northern Kurzeme and received a portable PC as award. On December I already registered my enterprise the Singing toys” – she proudly says.

Full text of the article is available here!