GIRLS POWER.

When Ayla Hutchinson was 13 years old, she saw her mother cut her finger with a hatchet while splitting kindling and became determined to find a safer way to cut firewood. This Mighty Girl from Taranaki, New Zealand took on that challenge as a science fair project -- the result was the Kindling Cracker, a cast iron tool that allows people to split kindling quickly and safely. Over the past four years, the 18-year-old entrepreneur has built her invention into a thriving business which now ships tens of thousands of Kindling Crackers around the world each month. Her invention has been such a success that she even rolled out a new extra-large version to accommodate larger pieces of firewood this year, both versions of which she now sells at http://amzn.to/2AaK1c3

After Ayla came up with the initial design of the Kindling Cracker for her 8th grade science fair project, her father, Vaughn Hutchinson, helped her build the original prototype. She had such a positive response to her school project that she decided to develop the idea further, stating that “it took a few months or so to get it to the final product." The cast-iron tool uses a built-in axe blade and a safety cage to prevent injuries; just put the wood into the cage and hit it with a hammer to split perfect kindling. Soon, Ayla was winning awards for her invention, including the Regional Finalist Award at the prestigious Google Science Fair.

While her company's growth and the rave reviews her invention receives are exciting, Ayla says that one of her favorite parts of her invention's success is that it's "making a really positive impact in many people’s lives... It makes it easier and safer for everyone to cut kindling which is great to have when you fire up a wood fire, pizza oven, brazier etc. It also gives people with disabilities or physical impairments the freedom to cut their own kindling again." Over the past few years, Ayla has also become a role model for budding young inventors worldwide; as her proud father observes, "The amount of kids she inspires is just awesome.