After almost a decade of harmony, the market for Ida Larsen's song kits has hit a sour note.
The music teacher turned entrepreneur expects to sell at least $200,000 this year of the colorful posters and music CDs that use "Farmer in the Dell," "Yankee Doodle" and other classic children's songs to teach language, reading and vocabulary. But her company, Singlish Enterprises Inc., has done much better.
The Singlish kits, which Larsen developed to help teach music to the young Spanish-speaking children in her former elementary classroom in Chatsworth, have earned kudos from users and reviewers, including Scholastic Inc.'s Instructor magazine.
Customers include more than half the elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Some buyers are located as far away as Peru and Puerto Rico, where a government agency ordered several hundred of the $99.95 kits, she says.
And Larsen prides herself on the quality of the song recordings, samples of which are available on her website, www.singlish.com. She uses Los Angeles studio musicians, she says, to make the sing-along and the instrumental-only versions of the songs.
But her business, which saw annual sales peak at $700,000 in 2003, is being buffeted by complicated crosscurrents that are pounding many publishers in the $3-billion supplemental educational materials industry.
School budgets are being slashed. Music education often is taking a back seat in time and money in classrooms where teachers are busy teaching to standardized tests. And shifts in public education policy make it hard for a small player to compete.
"I believe so much in my materials, and when these teachers are calling me and telling me how much they love it and how their kids love it -- they're using it with Eskimo kids in Alaska -- I mean, it makes me feel like I have a bigger purpose and that I have to rage against the machine," Larsen says.
Larsen is still signing up new customers, especially for her most recent kit, whose 48 nursery rhymes are targeted at the preschool market. But her small business, which moved into a 2,000-square-foot office and warehouse a few years ago, has had to cut employee hours.
She has put a compilation of classic patriotic songs on hold until times improve.
It may be little comfort, but Singlish is not alone, says consultant Suzanne Barchers, president-elect of the Assn. of Educational Publishers.
