Photographer Spencer Rutting was volunteering for a youth organization when he had an activity idea: To organize a race where the kids would build their own self-powered vehicles. It was a success, as "The kids loved building real stuff and they were really creative with the material that was available." (Example below.)

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Rutting wondered if he could take the concept further, and brought it up with his brother-in-law Sander Letema. He couldn't have picked a better person to bounce the idea off of: Letema was an engineer who worked for a tool manufacturing company, and the idea struck a particular chord with him. That's because Letema was raised in a house without a TV, and when he asked his father why, the answer was "You shouldn't look at people who are doing things, but do fun stuff yourself."

Rutting and Letema then launched Infento, which produces modular kit vehicles for kids:

"All parts that were developed first had to comply with two crucial criteria," the duo writes. "They needed to be super safe and they needed to be extremely durable. We only took the next step in development when they fulfilled these two demands."

Every part can always be reused for another ride or structure. Year after year Infento material can be transformed into new shapes. Wouldn't it be great if you could hand over your Kit to your grandson or granddaughter eventually? Well that's exactly the goal we set for ourselves in terms of quality.

Below you can see an example of our thinking in terms of safety. In this picture you see we chose a tooth belt instead of a chain. Why? Well, a tooth belt is much safer for children than a chain.

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The overall idea behind Infento is alluring as it not only invests children in their possessions by empowering them to build them, but also provides pretty good bang for the buck: A $300 kit contains options for six different vehicles, a $500 kit yields nine vehicles, and the top-of-the-line $600 kit yields eleven.

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To get things going they launched a Kickstarter campaign, and the response was overwhelming. At press time they'd garnered $282,659 on a $50,000 goal, and there are still ten days left to pledge.

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Ultimately we hope the company will expand into other youth-based products based around their very attractive philosophy: "[Infento] empowers your family," writes the company, "to be makers instead of consumers."